3 Emo Epics to Celebrate 20 Years of My Chemical Romance’s ‘The Black Parade’

Twenty years after releasing The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance finally topped the Billboard 200 with the LP’s anniversary edition. It marks the New Jersey band’s first No. 1 album since forming in 2001.

Co-produced with Rob Cavallo, the rock opera helped define mid-2000s emo and pop-punk and remains My Chemical Romance’s signature work. To celebrate the culture-shifting epic, let’s revisit three standout tracks below.

“Welcome To The Black Parade”

The Patient is the story’s hero who is dying of cancer. Echoing the multi-part suite-rock of Queen, “Welcome To The Black Parade” describes The Patient’s death as a dark carnival inside a warm childhood memory. It’s about outlasting mortality and the idea that no one is ever gone as long as their memory persists. This song alone launched countless bands.

When I was a young boy,
My father took me into the city,
To see a marching band.
He said, “Son, when you grow up
Would you be the savior of the broken,
The beaten and the damned?”

“Teenagers”

A teen anthem that would make Pete Townshend proud, singer Gerard Way shouts his own “My Generation”. My Chemical Romance seemed to inspire a new counterculture, with a fashion and ethos centered on The Black Parade—keeping malls afloat via Hot Topic. And the album’s recent ascent to the top of the charts proves the enduring legacy of both the band and its most ambitious effort. Aesthetics aside, none of it would have happened without maddeningly catchy hooks like “Teenagers”.

“I Don’t Love You”

You don’t get to emo without a high dose of melodrama. And you don’t get to high doses of melodrama without crushing heartbreak. “When you go, would you even turn to say, ‘I don’t love you like I did yesterday’?” Way sings. And there’s one sure path to depression, and that’s loneliness. As with The Cure, listeners found a band that described exactly how they felt. Emo kids now had a community of like-minded outsiders. They fill stadiums, and 20 years on, multiple generations wear black to this parade.

Photo by Matthew Simmons/WireImage for AOL Music