From alt-pop to screamo, MySpace gave a platform to a plethora of bands, but not all of them are so fondly remembered…
MySpace was a medium that helped launch the careers of bands like Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six and Black Veil Brides. Giving artists a platform to share music, news and instantly connect with their fan base, it was a social media site that, if used right, could improve the fortunes of your band to a significant extent. But whilst some of the names associated with the MySpace era of music have gone on to bigger and better things, so too were many acts left by the wayside. Here, we take a look at 15 MySpace bands that, for better or worse, you’ve probably forgotten about…
The Academy Is… are one of the more successful bands to feature on this list. 2005 debut album Almost Here spawned an emo classic in the form of single Slow Down, whilst 2008’s final LP Fast Times At Barrington High contained another hit, the heartfelt About A Girl. Despite that notoriety, the band split in 2011, and even though reunion rumours have persisted, no official reconciliation has taken place, bar some anniversary shows for Almost Here in 2015.
Formed by Underøath vocalist/drummer Aaron Gillespie, emo rockers The Almost provide an outlet for his less aggressive material, and they’re still going strong in 2020, with fourth LP Fear Caller dropping last year via Fearless Records. It’s their debut, Southern Weather, though, that remains the band’s definitive album, with The Almost heading out on Paramore’s fabled Riot! tour around the time of its release. Despite a period of relative inactivity between 2015 and 2019, it appears that The Almost are still very much an active proposition.
The Possibility And The Promise, the debut album from Seattle emos Amber Pacific, remains a cult favourite in the scene. All tender sentiment and cathartic lamentation, it’s a career highlight the band have never quite replicated, although 2014’s track When I Found You, featuring All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, came pretty close. The band are quieter nowadays, but did play a handful of shows across 2019.
Another low-key emo favourite, Floridians Anberlin have some great songs, notably The Feel Good Drag, taken from 2005 LP Never Take Friendship Personal. It’s been six years since their last album, 2014’s Lowborn, but the band continue to tour, having played across the USA extensively throughout 2019. New music, though, isn’t a sure thing.
There was a period in the late-noughties where Chicago boys The Audition threatened to become a really big deal, and whilst that never quite came to bear, the pop-punks still achieved some cool things as a band, notably appearing on the Warped Tour and at Reading & Leeds, whilst also touring with New Found Glory and You Me At Six. More recently, the band reunited for shows at Slam Dunk 2018, but that aside, news from The Audition camp is thin on the ground.
Vegas power-pop band The Cab did pretty well off just two albums – 2008’s Whisper War and 2011’s Symphony Soldier – collaborating with Brendon Urie and Patrick Stump and playing Warped Tour and SXSW. However, the band have been relatively inactive since the release of 2014 EP Lock Me Up, with vocalist Alexander De Leon focussing on other projects like his alt-pop moniker Bohnes.
There’s no denying that alt-pop party-starters Cobra Starship penned a few bangers in their time; Good Girls Go Bad, Hot Mess and Guilty Pleasure are all irritatingly catchy (and very cheesy) scenester bops. Part of a wave of ‘neon’ emo bands that included Metro Station, Forever The Sickest Kids and The Summer Set, Cobra Starship’s music was at best unadulterated fun, and at its worst pretty fucking annoying. Still, they did some cool things before disbanding in 2015, including releasing music with Mac Miller and Icona Pop, and playing alongside the likes of Fall Out Boy and Thirty Seconds To Mars.
A mid-’00s hardcore band formed out of Long Island, From Autumn To Ashes rose to prominence via second album The Fiction We Live, which featured the band’s most well-known track, The After Dinner Payback. From Autumn To Ashes’ songs were filled with an abrasive angst that made that made them a much-loved band in the screamo scene, and whilst they’ve been generally quiet in recent years, their Facebook page has previously teased the prospect of activity in 2020.
Best-known for quirky 2006 track Monsters, Matchbook Romance have just two albums – 2003 debut Stories And Alibis and its follow-up Voices – to their name. It’s their earlier material that fans hold most dear, though, the New York natives’ earnest brand of emo winning them many fans in the underground scene. However, given their social media has been inactive since mid-2018, it seems unlikely Matchbook Romance are going to be up to anything anytime soon.
They’ve recently announced a comeback to a rather muted response, but back in 2007, power-pop purveyors Metro Station were a pretty big deal indeed. Their self-titled debut was a hit in the emo world, spawning fan-favourites like Kelsey and Control, but the big crossover hit was Shake It, a super-catchy pop-rock smash that’s hit over 100 million streams on Spotify. It’s unlikely they’ll ever reach those heights again, but despite emo’s neon era being well and truly over, vocalist Trace Cyrus has confirmed that new tunes are in the works.
2006 debut Don’t You Fake It spawned some monster hits for Floridian emo band The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Face Down and Your Guardian Angel were some of the biggest tracks to come from the mid-’00s emo scene, the former having racked up nearly 170 million Spotify plays…
Saosin’s self-titled debut remains loved by many to this day. A more mature and experimental band than many associated with MySpace’s emo scene, the Californians had more in common with the likes of Chiodos, Senses Fail and Silverstein than they did with emo’s more pop-leaning bands. Following a seven-year gap between albums, Saosin’s most recent LP, Along The Shadow, dropped in 2016, but it remains to be seen as to whether any new music will materialise.
A Los Angeles-based band that was the passion project of founder Max Bemis, Say Anything’s key release was debut LP …Is A Real Boy, a theatrical emo album with an intriguing narrative about artistic struggle. More recently, the band put out their Oliver Appropriate record last year. However, it appears that may be the last we hear from Say Anything, frontman Bemis releasing a statement via the band’s website around the record’s release stating that he is stepping away from music for health reasons.
Feels, feels and more feels – Secondhand Serenade’s 2009 album A Twist In The Story had emos worldwide sobbing into their pillows thanks to its broken-hearted lamentations on lost love. The solo project of American musician John Veseley, Secondhand Serenade released new single Not Enough in mid-2019, whilst John also toured the States extensively last year. Despite fairly recent activity, though, it’s those ’00s emo classics that Secondhand Serenade will always be best-known for.
Once a hotly-tipped pop-rock proposition, things never quite worked out for VersaEmerge. Their sole album, Fixed At Zero, was a decent example of their obvious abilities, but line-up instability and their departure from label Fueled By Ramen rocked the band, and despite a rebrand as VERSA, they never really delivered on their early potential. Vocalist Sierra Kay Kusterbeck released a solo single, I’m Too Much, under the name Bad Daughter, last year.
