Emo Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This emo trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and follows the genre from the 1985 Revolution Summer in Washington, DC through the Midwest emo of the 1990s, the Vagrant and Drive-Thru years, the mid-2000s explosion of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco and Paramore, and on to the emo revival, emo rap and the sold-out When We Were Young festival. Questions ask about bands, albums, labels, chart facts and scene history rather than lyrics. It is written for anyone who owned a studded belt or a Hot Topic loyalty card, and for the pub-quiz regular who just wants to know which Simpsons character Fall Out Boy is named after. Difficulty runs from easy band facts to record-label detail only scene veterans will remember. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Emo emerged in the mid-1980s from the hardcore punk scene of which US city?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. Its hardcore shows had turned violent by 1984, and the bands of 1985's 'Revolution Summer' answered with more personal songs, soon tagged 'emocore', a label the bands themselves hated.
Q 02Which Minor Threat frontman formed Embrace and ran Dischord Records?
Ian MacKaye
Ian MacKaye. He co-founded the label in 1980 to put out his own band's record, and when a magazine filed Embrace under 'emocore' he told a crowd it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.
Q 03Rites of Spring's Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty went on to join which post-hardcore band?
Fugazi
Fugazi. Picciotto never accepted the tag pinned on his earlier band: 'I've never recognized emo as a genre of music,' he later said, asking whether other punk bands were robots.
Q 04Which 1994 Sub Pop album by Sunny Day Real Estate is widely seen as a defining record of second-wave emo?
Diary
Diary. Rolling Stone ranked it first among emo albums in 2016; at the time the band gave a single interview, allowed one publicity photo and refused to play California.
Q 05After Sunny Day Real Estate split in 1995, Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith became the rhythm section of which new band?
Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl left the pair a note at one of their last shows; Mendel stayed on, but Goldsmith quit in 1997 after Grohl secretly re-recorded his drum parts.
Q 06Which 1996 Weezer album was retroactively embraced as a cornerstone of 1990s emo?
Pinkerton
Pinkerton. Rolling Stone readers voted it the third-worst album of 1996 and Rivers Cuomo called it 'a hideous record', until emo's next wave of stars named it as an influence.
Q 07Fans make pilgrimages to an Urbana, Illinois house because it is on the cover of which band's 1999 debut?
American Football
American Football. The members never lived in the house, but in 2023 they joined their label and others to buy it, making the band part-owners of its own album cover.
Q 08Which label has released The Emo Diaries compilation series since 1997?
Deep Elm Records
Deep Elm Records. The label says it chose every band from blind submissions, more than 10,000 in all, so mostly unsigned acts filled the volumes.
Q 09Jimmy Eat World formed in 1993 in which Arizona city?
Mesa
Mesa. The name came from a child's drawing of guitarist Tom Linton's younger brother Jimmy stuffing the globe into his mouth, captioned 'Jimmy eat world'.
Q 10Dropped by Capitol, Jimmy Eat World paid for which 2001 album themselves and watched it go platinum?
Bleed American
Bleed American. The band worked odd jobs and toured to pay for the sessions, and signed with DreamWorks only once the record was done.
Q 11Which 1999 Jimmy Eat World album, a commercial flop at the time, became a touchstone for later emo bands?
Clarity
Clarity. Capitol dropped the band when it failed to sell, but the album and its sixteen-minute closer, 'Goodbye Sky Harbor', went on to become a cult classic.
Q 12Which singer, called 'the face of emo' by critic Jim DeRogatis, fronts Dashboard Confessional?
Chris Carrabba
Chris Carrabba. He started Dashboard as a solo side project while singing for Further Seems Forever and teaching at an elementary school in South Florida.
Q 13Dashboard Confessional's 'Vindicated' played over the closing credits of which 2004 blockbuster?
Spider-Man 2
Q 21Which Hollywood legend sings guest vocals on the track 'Mama' on The Black Parade?
Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli. The goth-cabaret song began as a dare: guitarist Ray Toro was bet that he couldn't write a polka in the band's style.
Q 22Which Disney soundtrack kept The Black Parade from number one in 2006?
Hannah Montana
Hannah Montana. The Black Parade sold 240,000 US copies that week, by far the band's biggest, and still lost to the Disney Channel soundtrack's 281,000.
Q 23On which holiday in 2019 did My Chemical Romance announce their reunion?
Halloween
Halloween. Tickets for the single Los Angeles comeback show sold out within minutes, and the pandemic then pushed the full reunion tour back to 2022.
Spider-Man 2. Another of the band's songs was due on the soundtrack until its frontman saw a screening of the film and, by his own account, wrote 'Vindicated' in ten minutes.
Q 14Which record label's 2001 national tour, sponsored by Microsoft and Coca-Cola, signalled emo going corporate?
Vagrant Records
Vagrant Records. Two years earlier its founders had borrowed $50,000 from one partner's parents, who mortgaged their house, to pay for a single band's album.
Q 15Which New Jersey band signed a multimillion-dollar Island Def Jam deal after 2001's Full Collapse?
Thursday
Thursday. Its singer, Geoff Rickly, produced My Chemical Romance's debut album the following year, giving another New Jersey band its start.
Q 16Taking Back Sunday's 2002 debut album on Victory Records was called what?
Tell All Your Friends
Tell All Your Friends. By then original bassist Jesse Lacey had quit after a falling-out with guitarist John Nolan and formed Brand New, and the two bands feuded for years.
Q 17Which Dayton band broke through in 2004 with the single 'Ohio Is for Lovers'?
Hawthorne Heights
Hawthorne Heights. MTV airplay for the song turned their slow-selling debut into a breakout, their next album reached number three in the US, and a long legal fight with their label followed.
Q 18My Chemical Romance formed in New Jersey after Gerard Way witnessed what?
The September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks. Seeing the towers fall made Way rethink his life and start a band, and he poured that day into its first song, 'Skylines and Turnstiles'.
Q 19My Chemical Romance's name comes from a book by which author?
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh. Bassist Mikey Way was working in a Barnes & Noble when the title Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance caught his eye, and he suggested it to his brother.
Q 20The Black Parade is a concept album about a character known as what?
The Patient
The Patient. He is dying of cancer, and death comes for him in the shape of his fondest memory: the day his father took him to see a marching band.
Q 24Fall Out Boy took their name from a character in which TV show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons. Fallout Boy is the young sidekick of the show's comic-book hero Radioactive Man; the name went on the band's shortlist and their friends voted for it.
Q 25Which Fall Out Boy album debuted at number one in 2007, selling 260,000 copies in its first week?
Infinity on High
Infinity on High. Jay-Z guests on the record, and its title comes from a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1888 about his returning health.
Q 26Which Fall Out Boy member founded the Decaydance label that signed Panic! at the Disco?
Pete Wentz
Pete Wentz. Panic! were the first act on his new imprint, signed when they had two songs online and had yet to play a single live show.
Q 27Which Panic! at the Disco video won Video of the Year at the 2006 MTV VMAs?
I Write Sins Not Tragedies
I Write Sins Not Tragedies. Its circus-crashed wedding took the night's top prize while losing every other category it was up for, the first winner since 1989 to do that.
Q 28Which city did Panic! at the Disco come from?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas. The four were school friends there; after the others left one by one, Brendon Urie carried the name on alone from 2015 and retired it in 2023.
Q 29Which Panic! at the Disco single reached number 4 on the Hot 100 in 2018, their best chart placing?
High Hopes
High Hopes. The biggest hit came when the 'band' was down to Brendon Urie alone, and it went on to spend a record 65 weeks in all atop Billboard's Hot Rock Songs chart.
Q 30Paramore's 'Decode' was written for the soundtrack of which 2008 film?
Twilight
Twilight. The song had its premiere on the website of the novels' author, Stephenie Meyer, seven weeks before the film reached cinemas.