I Will Never Be Afraid Again Mashup
This article is part of the In Defence of the Genre series. Previously, Paramore and demanding the fourth dimension and space to bargain with emotions that nosotros're shamed for expressing.
My Chemic Romance existed to save lives.
It's hard to talk about with the uninitiated. Information technology's not unlike talking about faith to unbelievers: when you have to describe it out loud, you lot can hear how bizarre it is. A believer can concur their faith and their knowledge of their faith'due south applesauce together without contradiction, but an unbeliever cannot empathise that. CS Lewis wrote virtually religion every bit completely derived from reason, and certain, he was a lot more than educated about theology than me, but that'due south nonsense. Religion isn't rational, and information technology wouldn't matter if information technology was. "No one could have in a billion years of their gripping testimony or by showing me a radiant life of good deeds or through song or even the well-nigh beautiful of books brought me to Christ," Nicole Cliffe (from The Toast, now sadly defunct) wrote about her conversion, "I had to be tapped on the shoulder."
My Chemical Romance isn't a religion, apparently. But there'south a necessary leap of faith, to empathize why they affair. To accept what could be pretension or hyperbole as true. "My Chemical Romance is done. But it can never die. Information technology is alive in me, in the guys, and it is alive inside all of you," lead singer Gerard Way wrote in a letter to the fans afterwards the band's pause-upward, "I always knew that, and I think you did also. Because it is not a band – information technology is an thought."
I tin can imagine someone else writing that, and I'd blench. But Gerard Mode believes it then earnestly that I believe it too.
Commitment to sincerity is something that animates every pop punk or pop punk-adjacent ring worth their salt – at the genre'south best, it's sincere enough to alienate everyone but those that need information technology the most. But MCR aren't merely sincere about their emotions, they're sincere most their bulletin. Their sincerity isn't merely exorcising demons – though they're excellent at that – simply something profound, something transcendent.
My Chemical Romance wanted to save your life. And they were so goddamn earnest about it, it was hard to write them off. "I even firmly believed in creating MCR, I was given a mission from God, not unlike the scene in The Dejection Brothers," Gerard Way wrote virtually his religious beliefs, "The mission involved helping people and battling the forces of evil, by using word and the purifying flames produced past Marshall Halfstack amplification."
A lot of bands nosotros cover in this series put words on your worst feelings. Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy sings, "Breaking hearts has never looked so cool / Every bit when y'all wrap your car effectually a tree / Your makeup looks then great next to his teeth," and it's unmediated anger and cruelty and pain. Information technology's a space to permit you feel your worst feelings, to find expression for your worst impulses without hurting anyone. That infinite has been incredibly important to me – in secondary school, aroused and lamentable and writing the ribbon on my wrist says "Do not open before Christmas" in my notebook like something to concord onto in the tumult; in higher, alone and lone and my earphones thrumming with I don't blame you for being you, only y'all can't blame me for antisocial information technology. A study by the Academy of Queensland establish that aroused music doesn't cause acrimony, it matches the listener's feelings and helps them process their anger. Patently.
But that's not what My Chemical Romance is for. Information technology can be part of it: at that place are plenty of MCR songs about feeling awful, virtually wanting to dice and wanting to impale. Their first EP was called Dreams Of Stabbing and/or Being Stabbed.
If that was all MCR was for, I would even so love them. Their merits to salve lives would sound a little overblown, but well-intentioned; creating a space for people to name their demons is a noble pursuit. But what made MCR and then special – what fabricated them so important – was their dedication to hope. Non as a feeling, considering then much of MCR is dealing with the weight of despair, merely as an ideal. Radical hope was the foundation of My Chemical Romance as a ring, every bit an idea, everything they were and everything they wanted for you, also.
MCR were founded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Gerard Style was living in New York, working as an intern at Cartoon Network. He saw the towers autumn, and it transformed something in him. "I literally said to myself, 'Fuck art. I've gotta go out of the basement. I've gotta see the world. I've gotta brand a difference.'" MCR'due south commencement album, I Brought Y'all My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, is chaotic, the sound of screaming in pain and anguish. And when I say screaming, that's non a metaphor. It'due south New Jersey garage punk, sloppy and raw and alive, and Gerard screams out without art or bamboozlement, merely pure feeling. Policing the definition of punk is lame, just Bullets is really and truly a punk anthology – as Richard Hell put it, "Punk was almost succeeding without whatsoever skills except honesty. Honesty isn't easy though. That's where the fine art, unironically, comes in."
But fifty-fifty then, they were pointing to something greater: the first line of 'Skylines and Turnstiles', the commencement song MCR ever wrote, was "You're not in this alone." I'd spent enough fourth dimension listening to 'Adam's Song' by Blink-182 on repeat to already know that. (I've heard that a lot of people retrieve 'Adam'south Song' is lame. They're all idiots.) What really matters comes about thirty seconds later: "And if the world needs something better / Allow's give them one more reason."
MCR's kickoff single on a major characterization was 'I'g Non Okay (I Promise)'. It doesn't sound much similar anything else on that album: Iii Thank you for Sweet Revenge is a quasi-concept album supposedly about "a human, a adult female, and the corpses of a thousand evil men", maybe the purest example of the hardcore-influenced popular punk that fabricated information technology big during George Bush's second term, catchy and polished enough to get radio play merely loud and angry enough to scare your parents. Simply 'I'thousand Not Okay (I Promise)' sounds like California pop punk from the 1990s: information technology's a actually traditional popular song with guitars and occasional wailing in the vocals. Merely it doesn't audio like a label-mandated single. Information technology sounds like a declaration of intent. Gerard screams "I'm non o-fucking-kay", and the first fourth dimension you heard it, your heart outburst in your breast. It'southward a line in the sand, continuing in stark contrast to its pop punk contemporaries – Simple Plan'due south 'Welcome to My Life' or 'I'm Just a Kid' sound bloodless by comparing. That'due south important to what MCR is: the ability to name your demons. I'thousand non o-fucking-kay.
Only y'all tin can't talk about 'I'm Not Okay (I Promise)' without talking nigh the music video. MCR were great at music videos, embracing their storytelling possibilities without ever getting so bogged down in dialogue that the song gets lost, and they're perchance the simply band I love whose music videos feel similar necessary parts of the catechism. The 'I'yard Not Okay' video is particularly special, functioning as a mission statement for a band on a mission. It'southward set in a private school, not unlike Wes Anderson'south Rushmore, and it opens with Ray Toro and Gerard Style sitting on some steps.
"You like D&D, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini and croquet," Ray says, "You can't swim, you tin can't trip the light fantastic, and you don't know karate. Face up information technology, you're never gonna make it."
"I don't wanna make it," Gerard replies, "I just wanna –"
Cue the guitar.
"They left it open, left it bare. I just wanna. I tin't tell yous how important that is to me,I just wanna…" Aly Seeberger wrote for One Ring One Week, "Sometimes it is enough to exist alive, to want in its barest, broadest sense, and to recognize that yous are fucked upward right now and maybe information technology's permanent and peradventure it's not but information technology is yours and you ain it and you tin can scream it from the rooftops someday you want."
Text flashes on the screen throughout: "IF You EVER FELT" and and so a serial of 1-word endings, including alone, rejected, confused, broken-hearted, wrong, angry, and aback. There'south also "curious", accompanied by a male child looking at some other boy in the locker room, and anytime, I'k sure, I'll write almost how cardinal gay and gender non-conforming stuff is to MCR'due south whole deal. Eventually we get the rest of the sentence: "BE PREPARED TO Feel REVENGE. FEEL THE ROMANCE." So some other fill-in-the-blank segment: my brutal romance, my beautiful romance, my miserable romance, and then rapid-fire until it gets to My Chemic Romance.
I beloved that. The annunciation that this is a band for people who feel bad, who feel isolated and agape, but mostly, be prepared to feel. It's not a shallow condolement. It'due south, importantly, not you won't feel that way anymore, or worse, you shouldn't experience that mode. My Chemic Romance don't think there's anything incorrect with being fucked up. But they're a force pushing in the contrary direction.
If Fall Out Male child et al. were salvage for my wounds, My Chemical Romance was my armour.
My Chemical Romance was a force, something uncontainable in whatever person, including the band themselves. Jeremy Gordon wrote for SPIN that MCR were "the last motility of weird-ish guitar-driven bands to reach the millions of immature outsiders and oddballs waiting for something to grab them by the throat." That phrase – grab them by the throat – sticks with me. The throat is vulnerable, a bodily centre for emotion. MCR grab you tight and decline to permit go, growling you amend not fucking dice on me in your ear. And y'all knew that they meant it, because they needed to say it to themselves, as well.
You'll never take me alive
You'll never accept me alive
Exercise what it takes to survive
'Cause I'm still here
MCR meant self-preservation. Not a kind that'due south quiet and selfish, not the kind that'south a moral rebranding of abdicating your responsibleness to help others. MCR is nearly refusing to let a hostile world beat out you into submission. When I call MCR armour, I hateful information technology: the world is a hard identify to live in, full of misery and cruelty, enervating that you make yourself miserable and cruel in club to survive. Millions starve while a scattering of people accumulate more wealth than they could e'er need, and we're meant to take it, unblinking. We are meant to believe that the ongoing mental wellness epidemic is an entirely individual matter, with no social causes and no social cures, with no connectedness to breakdowns of communities. Daring to enquire for the world to be better – to question the accustomed wisdom that competition and greed are human nature – is utopian and naive. Even amidst those who practice dare for the world to exist ameliorate, information technology becomes easy to harden your heart, to make the cause a justification for cruelty. "Alas, nosotros who wished to lay the foundations of kindness could not ourselves be kind."
"We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a immature age where the face is fictile enough to presume the shape of whatever information technology wears," David Foster Wallace wrote, "And and so information technology's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves united states of america from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete."
To refuse this, to keep your heart open, to stare into your hurting and – instead of surrendering to it – hiss what else y'all got, to reject society'southward lie that deadening your feelings will protect you from hurting, and instead scream your feelings at the tiptop of your lungs, to not be ashamed: it takes an immense bravery. It means finding a mode to protect yourself from the hostilities of the globe without closing yourself off to love and beauty and meaning, even when those things can hurt, likewise.
My Chemic Romance wanted to salve my life. Part of that was well-nigh non killing myself – and I will never shut up about how when Gerard Way said I shouldn't kill myself he meant it, similar information technology was the most important affair in the world to him, because information technology nevertheless disgusts me at a visceral level how the Daily Mail accused MCR of beingness a suicide cult – simply it was e'er virtually not dying on the within, either.
The Black Parade was the starting time MCR album I listened to, and information technology's nevertheless my favourite. It's the concept anthology on which the concept is clearest, the moment when the band embraces the full breadth of its influences – most especially glam stone, Queen, and (conceptually if not musically) Sergeant Pepper'south Lonely Hearts Society Band – to go an anthemic rock band ready to take over the globe. Merely by and large it'due south just the best damn thing I've ever heard and I can't intellectualise it much more that. Information technology's been over a decade since I heard 'Welcome to the Blackness Parade' for the offset fourth dimension, and my ears all the same prick up when I hear a One thousand-notation on the piano, I still feel my breast tighten every time it gets to "Do or dice / You'll never make me / Because the world / Volition never have my heart." It's cliche at this point to phone call it "our generation's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'," simply clichés get clichés for a reason. Someday, when I'm in my forties, 'Welcome to the Blackness Parade' will exist given its due past the critical consensus. I can't wait.
The best song on The Black Parade might be 'Welcome…', considering it's one of the best songs ever written, but 'Famous Last Words', the album's last real song (there's a hidden track chosen 'Blood' afterwards) is the one I always come up back to. 'Famous Last Words' is a vocal that knows the textures of the darkest places well enough to discover its way out of them. ("This hole you put me in wasn't deep enough, and I'grand climbing out right at present," Gerard had sang onThree Cheers.) The verses of 'Famous Last Words' are well-nigh frailty: "Well is it hard agreement / I'm incomplete / A life that'south so demanding / I get so weak."
But the chorus. The chorus of 'Famous Concluding Words' is perfect. It might exist my favourite thing MCR ever did.
I am not afraid to go along on living
I am non agape to walk this earth lone
Singing forth to 'I'grand Not Okay (I Promise)' is powerful: information technology'south staring down your demons and coming back breathing. But singing along to 'Famous Last Words' is something transcendent. It is, in function, staring downward your demons – non just in I get so weak, just in how I am not agape to keep on living is merely meaningful if you've been afraid to live. Just it's more than that: it'southward vanquishing your demons. Even if only for the moment, even if they'll exist resurrected when the song ends. But that'south a whole four and a one-half minutes where you're free.
At that place's a narrative urgency to My Chemical Romance, not just in their concept albums but in the ring as a whole. It's function of what makes "it's not a band – it's an idea" something real and meaningful. "Have my fucking paw," Gerard sings on 'Our Lady of Sorrows' from their showtime album, "And never be afraid again." MCR were a band, and a slap-up ane: I defy you not to relish 'Vampire Coin', the most fun song ever written about non writing a song for the Twilight movies (on their terminal album, Danger Days, they abruptly became a powerpop band, and it was awesome). Simply when I talk well-nigh MCR saving lives, it's not – can't be – but that the music is good. "Never be afraid once more" is a command and a promise and a hope against hope and information technology just matters to yous if y'all're already afraid. The hurting is an important part of information technology, because MCR were – are – a ring for people who demand them, desperately. But from that pain, MCR sings a way out.
I believe in MCR as an idea. I burn with the hope that somewhere out at that place correct now a sad and angry kid is listening to 3 Thanks for Sweet Revenge for the get-go time. That MCR will help them know they're non lonely in their pain and give them the strength to not let the bastards grind them down.
The story of My Chemic Romance is backbone and anguish and radical hope and never permit them have yous alive and sing it out for the ones that'll hate your guts and give me all your hopeless hearts and make me sick. And if that means nothing to you – well, it alienates everyone but those that need it the virtually.
Source: https://thesundae.net/2017/11/06/never-be-afraid-again/
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