How This Outsider Anthem by My Chemical Romance Became an Emo Touchstone

My Chemical Romance released its ambitious rock opera, The Black Parade, in 2006. Twenty years later, the album has topped the Billboard 200 while the New Jersey band packs stadiums.

In the 2000s, My Chemical Romance helped define emo, which is as much a rock subgenre as it is an entire counterculture. And in the song “Teenagers”, the track breaks from the album’s main narrative. Instead, it echoes “The Headmaster Ritual” by The Smiths and serves as a youth rallying cry—making it, the band, and the album, emo touchstones.

All the Lies in the Books

This is domesticating the kids. We teach them to talk and then tell them to be quiet—choking curiosity at every turn. Gerard Way sings about conformity, threats, and scrubbing individuality from teens.

They’re gonna clean up your looks,
With all the lies in the books,
To make a citizen out of you.
Because they sleep with a gun,
And keep an eye on you, son,
So they can watch all the things you do.

Perhaps an ode to The Verve hymn, “The Drugs Don’t Work”, Way describes the crushing of dreams and seems to allude to kids being sent off to fight wars.

Because the drugs never work,
They’re gonna give you a smirk,
’Cause they got methods of keeping you clean.
They’re gonna rip up your heads,
Your aspirations to shreds,
Another cog in the murder machine.

Maybe They’ll Leave You Alone

The stadium-sized hook is an outsiders’ call to action. Darken your clothes, strike the pose. Anything to frighten the oppressors away.

They said, “All teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me.”
They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed.
So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose,
Maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me.

You didn’t have to be an emo kid to connect with “Teenagers”. But My Chemical Romance, like Nirvana, The Cure, The Smiths, and others before them, communicated in a language the kids understood.

Separated from The Patient’s plight in The Black Parade, “Teenagers” didn’t smell like teen spirit. It helped define it for many.

Photo by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images