Where were you in 2007? Maybe you were rendered grief-stricken by the end of The OC. Maybe you lived in a velour tracksuit and Uggs, because Paris Hilton taught you. You may well have been skipping through the good primary school years. Or maybe, like a load of people (and me), you split your time between lying on the sofa at your mate's house, watching System of a Down videos and going on MySpace on your family's desktop, posting passive aggressive bulletins to get your crush's attention when signing out and back into MSN didn't work.
If your life revolved around the latter, you may have identified somewhat as "Emo <3". And though there are loads of cultural markers of "emo" as it a decade ago – probably, your hobbies included taking photos of yourself where it looked like you were trying to get your mouth as far off the side of your face as possible – it was really centred on music. Mainstream emo (as opposed to everything that came before it; your Embraces, your Jawbreakers, your American Footballs) is characterised now, in our collective cultural memory, by a few landmark albums. 2005 had Fall Out Boy's From Under the Cork Tree, while 2006 belonged to My Chemical Romance's Welcome to the Black Parade. And then, in 2007, came Riot! by Paramore.
From its scrawled cover art which could well have passed as a page of a high school art sketchbook, to the power chord-heavy breakdowns over which powerhouse frontwoman Hayley Williams wailed fatalistic lyrics, Riot! captured that mainstream emo zeitgeist perfectly. For many of us, listening to it now is like an exercise in going back in time – it was so intrinsic to UK emo culture at the time that it's hard to separate the songs from the experiences you had to them (probably while wearing a studded belt). To celebrate Riot! turning ten, we asked some of our friends to tell us about their memories of the tracks on the record. There is nail polish, there are tears, there is rain and, of course, there is a lot of being underage and cheap cider-drunk in public parks. Thank you, Paramore.
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"For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic" Kicking You in the Face
Loitering to "That's What You Get"
The "Hallelujah" Better Than Jeff Buckley's, Don't @ Me
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"Misery Business" Dominating the Indie Club Night
"When It Rains" AKA Soggy Teen Feelings
"Let the Flames Begin" and Being Lyrically Extra
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The Real-As-Shit Emotional Pull of "Miracle"
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Muffling Loneliness to "Crushcrushcrush"
As If You Didn't Cry to "We Are Broken"
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