BY GEORGIA BEARD
GET UP COWARD: A Rallying Cry for Authenticity
All Night Long
January 2024
January 2024
When I was 14, my friend casually observed that I liked My Chemical Romance. I heard something accusatory in her tone, as if she’d seen a new creature overtake the rest of me and branded me accordingly.
In hindsight, my anxiety made all that up.
I got defensive and joked something along the lines of, “Yeah, but I’m not like all those MCR fans, I just like the music.”
As it stood, the statement was true. I only warmed up to about four songs of theirs. I didn’t look or act as though I belonged in the emo subculture roiling around them. Having only reached the band through the YouTube fandom pipeline, I sat on the outskirts.
But those at the epicentre shared the pain I harboured – recoiling from judgement and humiliation, warping myself to fit moulds, trapping everything real about me inside my head.
Like a lot of art, music and stories I consumed at the time, My Chemical Romance offered an empty amphitheatre where I could scream my identity, nebulous and contradictory as it was.
Years later, as the band tears away grandiosity and spectacle to reveal raw, unapologetic truth, I’ve realised my catharsis mirrors their own – a relentless expression of sincerity, ambiguity and the refusal to be categorised.
In hindsight, my anxiety made all that up.
I got defensive and joked something along the lines of, “Yeah, but I’m not like all those MCR fans, I just like the music.”
As it stood, the statement was true. I only warmed up to about four songs of theirs. I didn’t look or act as though I belonged in the emo subculture roiling around them. Having only reached the band through the YouTube fandom pipeline, I sat on the outskirts.
But those at the epicentre shared the pain I harboured – recoiling from judgement and humiliation, warping myself to fit moulds, trapping everything real about me inside my head.
Like a lot of art, music and stories I consumed at the time, My Chemical Romance offered an empty amphitheatre where I could scream my identity, nebulous and contradictory as it was.
Years later, as the band tears away grandiosity and spectacle to reveal raw, unapologetic truth, I’ve realised my catharsis mirrors their own – a relentless expression of sincerity, ambiguity and the refusal to be categorised.
