It's been 2025 for just over a month now, and I can honestly say I'm pretty unhappy about the entire situation. I don't just mean the political environment or major American cities burning down; I mean the fact that the music world just saw an algorithmically-extracted Beatles song and an album by acclaimed octagenarians, the Rolling Stones, just win Grammy Awards. It's absurd, and I know I can't be the only person having an "Old Woman Yells At Cloud" moment about it.
While I do my best to not succumb to the rose-colored temptation of nostalgia, I can't help but think things were better when I was still in high school. Don't get me wrong, music and movies were awful in the 2000s, from rampant homophobia to blatant warmongering to... Actually, never mind, none of those things have really changed, because the world is awful.
So, as much as I'd like to just sit quietly and listen to a bunch of weirdly morbid yet cheerful songs while I wait for my entire existence to be criminalized, instead I'll try to dwell on something at least marginally more cheerful. It's time to talk about the state of the emo scene in the far-distant year of 2005 (and also try not to think about how much my back hurts). These are all albums that turn 20 years old this year - if you can believe it.
10 Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Saddle Creek Records, January 25, 2005
Conor Oberst's indie emo band Bright Eyes actually released two albums on January 25, 2005 – the acoustic, folksy I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and the electronic-pop-inspired Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Ironically, I never actually listened to either when they came out. While my peers were determined to paint me with the "emo kid" label, I gave Bright Eyes short shrift at the time, mostly out of spite and a misplaced lack of interest in the gentler sound found on I'm Wide Awake.
Over the twenty years since then (which is a painful phrase to type), I've been genuinely happy to find out how wrong I was. I'm Wide Awake is a beautiful album, full of the painful earnestness that has been the hallmark of Bright Eyes since Oberst started refining his folk-adjacent sound on 1998's Letting Off the Happiness. I'm Wide Awake shows a mastery of melody and poetry, from the monologue that kicks off opening track "At the Bottom of Everything" to the interpolation and reinterpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on the closer "Road to Joy."
9 …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Worlds Apart
Interscope Records, January 25, 2005
Initially set for a winter 2004 release, the fourth album from the Texan progressive-emo mouthful …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead was moved to the end of January. This helped it to avoid trying to compete for chart space with both Eminem's Encore and Destiny's Child's Destiny Fulfilled. That change in release date allowed it to get as high as #81 on the Billboard 200.
Worlds Apart is very much an early-00s album in the sense that it almost boils over with rage at the post-9/11 status quo in the United States. The title track in particular is very directly aimed at the American aristocracy and the way that the media doubled down on focusing on celebrity largesse rather than discussing the consequences of America's imperialist actions. This is a frustration that feels all too familiar these days.
8 Fall Out Boy – From Under the Cork Tree
Island Records, May 3, 2005
Fall Out Boy exploded onto the emo scene with From Under the Cork Tree, and it eventually hit the point that by the summer of 2005, you couldn't turn on an alt-rock radio station without hearing "Sugar, We're Goin Down" or "Dance, Dance." More than one school dance I attended that year turned into a legitimate circle pit as soon as Fall Out Boy started playing. For context, I went to a high school that generally considered emo to be, musically speaking, at best only a step above the collected works of Kenny G.
In the decades since, Fall Out Boy have absolutely had some records that almost compare to Cork Tree, but they've never really managed to recapture the initial magic that happened when they accidentally redefined the entire genre of emo. Now, because time makes fools of us all, you can hear "Sugar, We're Goin Down" and all the other emo hits on classic rock and oldies radio. Don't even get me started on how kids these days probably have no emotional investment in Sixteen Candles.
7 Panic! At the Disco – A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
Decaydence/Fueled By Ramen Records, September 27, 2005
Panic! at the Disco would never have made it if it weren't for Fall Out Boy frontman Pete Wentz answering a timely LiveJournal message (MTV News via the Internet Archive), because back in 2005, it was still possible to get someone to listen to your demo by messaging them on social media. That message meant Panic!'s debut album was released just in time to not only be a smash success by itself, but also rekindle the waning s for Fall Out Boy's From Under the Cork Tree. Thus, emo's stranglehold on the year 2005 was assured.
In the years since, Panic! never quite managed to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies," and years of musical attrition led to Urie supposedly letting the band disband in 2023. Since nostalgia makes ungodly amounts of money, however, they'll be reuniting to play 2025's When We Were Young festival, where they'll play A Fever You Can't Sweat Out in its entirety. Tickets for that festival start at over $300, by the way, just in case any of my other recovering mid-30s emo kids think that's a good deal
Personally, if I want to watch a 37-year-old sweat a lot, I'll just look in the mirror after doing some cardio.
6 Alkaline Trio – Crimson
Vagrant Records, May 24, 2005
I want to take a moment and be honest: the only Alkaline Trio song I listened to in high school was their cover of "Over at the Frankenstein Place" off the Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show tribute compilation that Springman Records put out in 2003. After that, my favorite Alkaline Trio record was their 2002 split with Hot Water Music (but I liked HWM's covers of Alkaline Trio's songs more than the other way around). My second-favorite was Matt Skiba's acoustic split with Kevin Seconds (of 7 Seconds fame) from the same year.
So really, I guess was never an Alkaline Trio fan, at least back in high school. That being said, twenty years of perspective make me perfectly willing to it that Crimson is an album I shouldn't have slept on. At least now, I can truly appreciate its worth.
There's a tight, grim quality to Crimson that takes what I loved about earlier songs like "Radio" and "Bleeder" (the aforementioned tracks Hot Water Music covered on the split) and refines it into the sound heard on "Sadie" and "Prevent This Tragedy." Unfortunately, Alkaline Trio moved away from that sound on later releases (likely in part due to the tragic death of legendary punk producer Jerry Finn, who had also produced their previous album, 2003's Vagrant). Instead, they shifted to something a little more pop-focused and a little less interesting.
5 The All-American Rejects – Move Along
Interscope Records, July 12, 2005
Sometimes, the chorus of "Dirty Little Secret" pops into my head at random moments, like when I'm washing dishes or trying to rank thrash metal bands. I'm then forced to it that the All-American Rejects wrote some pretty catchy songs. Considering Move Along was finally certified Triple Platinum by the RIAA in December 2024, and that all three of its singles hit the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005, it's clear that the fans feel the same way.
Looking over Move Along's critical reception, it's gratifying to find that the critics of 2005 and in the years since also feel there was something a bit insipid about "Dirty Little Secret" and the album's other hits. As antiMusic.com's Morley Seaver put it back in 2005, "These guys have got the art of the hook down so well that you have no choice but to submit to their wills." I can't help but agree.
4 Motion City Soundtrack – Commit This To Memory
Epitaph Records, June 7, 2005
Motion City Soundtrack was a band I slept on back in 2005. If you'd asked me at the time, I would have proudly itted I couldn't name a single one of their songs – and looking back at Commit This to Memory, I'm kicking myself for having been such a hipster. Westword's 2006 interview with frontman Justin Pierre pointed out that MCS was "frequently characterized as the sort of ultra-commercial punk poseurs who water down the genre to the point of drowning it," which tracks with my own memory of the 2005 emo scene.
Yet after setting aside a 20-year-old bias, I absolutely it that Commit This to Memory is a fun album, start to finish. Motion City Soundtrack may not have been the edgiest of punks, especially in contrast with some of the other acts on the scene at the time, but Pierre's lyricism is incredibly strong. After Memory's release, he described his process as having drawn a lot of influence from some of my own personal favorite songwriters, namely Tom Waits and Canadian indie legend John K. Samson, former frontman of the now-defunct Weakerthans and one-time bassist of Manitoban punk outfit Propaghandi.
Motion City Soundtrack, in retrospect, released an excellent soundtrack for 2005's vibe. This was at a time when the world was learning that you could, as Pierre said in a long-lost interview with Alternative Press, be "a complete f*ckup, yet, at the same time, [be] somewhat successful." They certainly proved that.
3 Paramore – All We Know Is Falling
Fueled By Ramen Records, July 26, 2005
Looking back at Paramore's debut album is strange, given the way that Hayley Williams and her band have grown in the two decades since its release. While All We Know Is Falling isn't a bad album, the critical opinion at the time was merely that the band was fun, but forgettable. No one could have imagined that they'd still be going 20 years later, or that they would become part of Taylor Swift's mind-bogglingly huge Eras Tour, playing shows all across Europe for four months in 2024 (of course, in 2005, no one knew who Taylor Swift was yet).
All We Know Is Falling isn't Paramore's best release. That accolade changes depending on just which critic you ask (my personal favorite remains 2007's Riot!, and not just because "Misery Business" remains an absolute banger). Yet all the pieces of what would eventually make Paramore one of the biggest bands in the world are still in place on All We Know Is Falling – namely Zac Farro's impeccable drums and Hayley Williams' vocal perfection – they just hadn't hit their stride quite yet.
2 Against Me – Searching For A Former Clarity
Fat Wreck Chords, September 6, 2005
Few things make it clear how much time has ed since 2005 than considering the career arc of Floridian anarcho-punks Against Me! and their frontwoman, the indefatigable Laura Jane Grace. Searching for a Former Clarity, the band's third full studio album and final release on iconic punk label Fat Wreck Chords, is heavily steeped in the political climate of the time. Its second single, "From Her Lips To God's Ears (The Energizer)," directly skewers America's then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her contributions to the international boondoggle that was the Iraq War.
Searching is the last of Against Me!'s first wave of rougher-sounding albums, but rough production is a key part of its emotional vulnerability, and very much reflects the chaos of 2005. The album's title song, a second-person saga of someone dying alone of AIDS, is an anti-climax in the best sense of the word, relentlessly driving towards an understated finish. Of course, that was one of the first Against Me! songs to have a subtle nod to Grace's then-closeted transness – something that resonated deeply with me in 2005, although at the time I couldn't have said why.
1 The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
4AD, April 26, 2005
I'm well aware that The Mountain Goats aren't an emo band in any technical way, and I'm not claiming they should be, but when it comes to albums from 2005 that got me called an emo kid, The Sunset Tree is at the top of the list. The Goats had only just made the shift to high-fidelity recording with 2002's Tallahassee, after a decade of John Darnielle recording himself on his Panasonic boom box. By The Sunset Tree, he proved that he no longer needed tape hiss as an integral part of his sound.
The Sunset Tree is an unimpeachably emotional album. Darnielle dedicated it "to any young men and women anywhere who live with people who abuse them, with the following good news: you are going to make it out of there alive, you will live to tell your story, never lose hope." It's the album that gave us "This Year," the power ballad for hopeful cynics everywhere.
Even in high school, I needed the reminder that I was, in fact, going to make it through each year, even if it killed me. Now, in 2025, we all need that reassurance more than ever. It's likely no coincidence that the band re-ed "This Year"'s music video to YouTube on January 20, 2025, a day which left more than a few people in need of a reason to live.