21 essential songs for every emo playlist

When attending a wedding for an elder emo couple, there is a definite possibility they are going to kick off the night with Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team),” and it will make everyone over 60 wonder why they didn’t just stay home, and send a gift.

There are bigger Paramore songs, like “Misery Business” or “Hard Times,” but there is something extra emo about the opening lines, “I feel happy, I feel sad / I feel like runnin' through the walls.”

One cannot have an emo playlist without one of the Mount Rushmore bands of the genre: Fall Out Boy.

The Midwest emo scene really is unparalleled when it comes to angst, and “Ohio is For Lovers” is proof of that.

Everyone needs a really good “screw my hometown” song, and while there are plenty of them out there, The Used’s “Taste of Ink” feels like the cream of the crop of them all.

It can be argued that Linkin Park helped build the bridge that led millennials from Nu metal to emo in the early ‘00s due to their striking lyrics that highlighted mental health in a way that middle schoolers during that time could really attach themselves to.

If one hasn’t cried in their room to “Perfect” by Simple Plan, are they even really emo?

Motion City Soundtrack makes music for those with an emo soul that is in a constant state of worry.  

Avril Lavigne might have leaned more towards the pop realm when it came to her pop-rock ways, but no one can deny that “I’m with You” is an emo power ballad.

Anyone who shopped at Hot Topic religiously in the early ‘00s can attest to the chokehold “Can’t Be Saved” by Senses Fail had on a generation.

Wonder if Jimmy Eat World knew when they went into the studio and dropped “The Middle” that they were creating the emotional support song?

Before he was a Grammy-winning electronic artist, Skrillex was known as Sonny Moore, the lead singer of From First To Last — a band that, in their short run, delivered some gold with “Note to Self.”

Frustrated folks can always get it all out while singing “A Boy Brushed Red Living in Black and White” by Underoath.

My Chemical Romance is to emo what Nirvana is to grunge, and while some may say “The Black Parade” is the bigger song, there’s something a little more perfect about “I’m Not Okay (I Promise).”

The Wonder Years picked up the slack in the 2010s by holding the hands of emo kids who were transitioning into adulthood, and nothing quite summed up those feelings like “Last Semester” that highlighted that even college is a nightmare.

All Time Low came about in the latter part of the ‘00s during what’s known as the neon era of the genre, and while their music was more upbeat and shinier than what came before it, the lyrical content was still heavily emo; “...I'm so sick of watching while the minutes pass as I go nowhere.”

Tonight Alive held it down with high-energy performances in the ‘10s and inspired tracks that hit hard like “Lonely Girl.”

Papa Roach is more Nu metal than anything, but “Last Resort” ticks every emo box.

In hindsight, Good Charlotte is the guilty pleasure of pop punk, but it’d be a lie to say that they didn’t put out some absolute bangers that delivered lines many scribbled in their Five Star binders, like in “The Motivation Proclamation.”

“Until the Day I Die” is forever a mood.

New Found Glory usually makes music that’s more fun than not, but they did let their emo flag fly with the heartfelt ways of “Sonny.”