The Rise, Fall and Revival of Emos, E-Girls and Everything Inbetween
The Barbican Music Library’s “I’m Not Okay” exhibition, created in collaboration with the Museum of Youth Culture, is not just a time capsule but a collaborative love letter to the Emo era. From 2004-2009, this subculture – equal parts music, fashion, and teenage angst-driven existential despair – defined a select group of a generation.
It does seem as though the Barbican Music Library has a knack for curating exhibitions that hit all the right notes. Free to view and always well-received, their showcases celebrate legendary bands, iconic solo artists, and the photographers who immortalised them, like with Grime Stories: From the Corner to the Mainstream, for example — an exhibition that didn’t just chart the genre’s sonic evolution, but mapped its sociopolitical impact, from the estates of East London to global airwaves. The Barbican’s curatorial approach often leans into specificity over spectacle, with a focus on giving subcultures and underrepresented genres the actual treatment they deserve, while remaining accessible and emotionally resonant to everyday listeners. The I'm Not Okay: An Emo Retrospective exhibition is no exception – having opened late September, its curation feels like a retrospective snapshot: sharp, nostalgic, and with pockets of cultural commentary. But it’s small – in a contained room through which you could be done viewing in less than 15 minutes, which might feel anti-climactic at first glance. Yet, this contained feeling is oddly fitting; like scrolling through a MySpace page, it offers snapshots and fragments, rather than a whole deep dive. It invites something of a reflection on how those of us who were enveloped in that era throughout childhood consumed music and culture at the height of Emo's reign – alone, devotedly, and often online. What it lacks in scale, it makes up for in spirit, capturing a moment that was as fleeting as it was transformative. And perhaps that’s the point: in true Emo fashion, the experience is ephemeral, but lingers long after it’s over.
It was one of the last hurrahs of pre-algorithm youth culture: a movement that thrived in the basements of local venues and the chaotic newness of online social media. Against the backdrop of My Chemical Romance’s archetypal emo album Black Parade tour announcement (set for this July) and the growing phenomenon of When We Were Young festivals, “I’m Not Okay” arrives just in time. Emo is back – not just as a nostalgic aesthetic, but as a cultural touchstone that can very much still be felt today. Whether in the rise of the “e-girl aesthetic” or in the resurgence of bands like MCR, Paramore and Fall Out Boy, its legacy continues to find its way into the present.
The exhibition, built on submissions from an open call for memorabilia, feels intimate and lived-in – a direct line to teenage bedrooms where Kerrang! posters overlapped with scrawled band lyrics. “But it’s not just digital ephemera,” the Museum of Youth Culture emphasises in the exhibition itself, “there’s plenty of IRL nostalgia to pore over too.”
On display are scuffed Vans, Drop Dead T-shirts, and studded belts, alongside handwritten diaries chronicling the aching loneliness of adolescence. A grainy loop of gig photos plays on a screen: smeared mascara, sweat-drenched band tees, and the wide-eyed euphoria of hearing MCR’s Helena live for the first time.
Those involved with the exhibition highlight Emo’s unique duality. “It was one of the first subcultures to bridge the physical and digital worlds,” explains Andrew Buckingham, Media Officer for the City of London Corporation. “This exhibition resonates most online—and that was always the intention. Emo was a deeply online phenomenon. For such a small exhibition, it makes sense that social media is doing the talking once more.”
Emo’s deep relationship with the internet is undeniable. The World Wide Web was arguably its lifeblood, a chaotic platform where teens built very expressive profiles, ranked their friends, and shared playlists featuring Panic! At the Disco or Hawthorne Heights. For many, it was their first taste of community and self-expression.
But for all its inclusivity, Emo was never immune to gatekeeping. “This exhibition looks at the years 2004-2009,” Buckingham notes, “when third-wave was dying and it was mostly MySpace kids listening to pop bands and spending too much time at Hot Topic.”
A Reddit user summarised the era interestingly: “Third-wave emo seems to get a bit of hate on this sub, but for better or worse, it introduced a lot of people to the idea of emo. Those first few years, 2000-2004, gave us some great albums and bands that got thrust into the mainstream. From some point in 2004, it really went downhill and became a bit of a joke—pure mall-emo and looking scene.”
Mimi (@plvnetmimi on Instagram) a designer who grew up in this era, agrees. “As with any music genre that gets mainstream, labels don’t want to let it die. They keep pushing more and more poppy acts to try and make a buck. First and second-wave never really got mainstream enough for this, so most bands just fell apart after one or two records. Third wave’s popularity meant bands kept going, often long after they stopped producing good music—or if they did quit, they were replaced with cheap copies to no end.”
The era did, however – with its confessional lyrics and angst – address issues of sexuality, mental health, gender, and belonging, giving a voice to teens who felt out of step with the world; despite its eventual commodification, it had meant something. Henry Jenkins’ fandom theory, for example, particularly the concept of participatory culture, offers a quite useful lens through which to view Emo subculture. Jenkins argues that fans are “active participants who remix, reinterpret, and reimagine cultural texts”, creating communities that thrive on collaboration and collective intelligence. Emo fans exemplified this through their online profiles, fan art, DIY fashion, and debates over authenticity, turning the genre into more than music – it was a really participatory movement. Platforms like Tumblr and YouTube also allowed fans to craft personal identities while collectively shaping the narrative of the subculture, reflecting this notion that fandom is both created and contested. The era’s focus on themes of identity, mental health, and belonging, paired with its quasi-DIY ethos, made it, in many ways, a sort of cultural resistance – a great example of the belief in fandom as a space for agency and subversion.
For Mimi, Emo wasn’t just a subculture – it was a lifeline. “I leaned heavily on the internet back then,” she recalls. Growing up as a Black girl in predominantly white alternative spaces added a unique layer of isolation to navigate, but online forums had offered her her own sense of community. Today, Mimi channels her Emo roots into a clothing line inspired by her childhood loves: nu-metal, anime, and Vivienne Westwood. Her DIY designs – featuring pins, zippers, and provocative slogans – have been worn by many spanning across various genres, including underground performers to R&B girl group FLO.
Through Instagram, Mimi sells her creations, shares her beauty transformations, and connects with others who share her love for Green Day, punk aesthetics, and Sailor Moon. “It’s funny,” she muses, “I’ve gone from one social platform to another. Reddit then, Instagram now.”
In an age where Spotify Wrapped offers personalised “aesthetic” summaries and TikTok trends churn out subcultures as quickly as they discard them, Emo’s resurgence feels both nostalgic and cautionary. Platforms like @deathtostock on Instagram, who describe themselves as a media and news community dedicated to ‘deciphering the cultural chaos into visuals’, have cautioned the impact of gatekeepting: “algorithms are destroying culture in many ways [...] with less cultural gatekeepers, everyone can get in on a subculture. However, there has been a commodification of it all – as seen through the constant churning of subcultures like ‘cottage/bloke/swampcore’ and ‘e-girls’ as well as the most recent Spotify Wrapped which described peoples ‘aesthetics’ based on their listening habits over a stretch of months”
This makes exhibitions like “I’m Not Okay” all the more vital. They remind us of the messy, DIY spirit that gave subcultures like Emo their soul. Whether it’s in the URL or the IRL, the heart of such alternative cultures lies in its community – and perhaps that’s something algorithms can never replicate. As Fall Out Boy once said, “Thnks fr th Mmrs”.