Summary of my paper

Title
Emo as a 21st Century Counterculture Drawing from 19th Century English Romanticism

Thesis statement
Using interviews, lyrics and poems, I will compare and contrast the themes and ideas expressed by the North American Emos with those of the 19th Century English Romantics in order to prove that Emo is not a trend, but a new countercultural group.

Summary
This paper is about a relatively new (from 1990's to now) music-related culture which participants are called the Emos. Derived from punk and hardcore, Emo music express a much more emotional aspect of music; through the lyrics of their song, the Emo bands reveal personal thoughts and experiences, from painful love stories to mental disorders or suicidal tendencies, social pressures, feelings of alienation, melancholy, etc.
In the last decade, this counterculture moved from the underground punk scene of Washington and is now almost considered part of the mainstream North American pop culture - with the appearance of the next teenage trend - which drew ridicule and severe critics both from the original Emo musicians and the people from the mainstream. Because of this evolution, which could be more accurately consider a schism scything the movement between a marketed type and an underground type of Emo music, the definition of the very concept of “Emo” is unclear. This paper intend to highlight the ideas behind the music and the far behind the look, ideas similar to those of the 19th Century Romantic movement. It also wants to replace Emo with the sociological concept of counterculture having for basis and expression music.