My Chemical Romance: the last influential rock band.

Let’s define some things first. When I say rock band what I mean is a group of musicians (not a solo artist with a hired band) where the instruments are primarily: guitars, bass, drums, and vocals.

There are clearly more influential rock bands that were formed before MCR. I don’t think I need to list them here because they already popped in your head. And there’s also more influential bands that were formed after MCR, but they are making electronic music.

My Chemical Romance was formed in 2001, but the first album we probably heard from them was “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge” released in 2004, more than 20 years ago. So, why am I claiming that they were the last influential rock band?

There is this history domino effect that got a bit viral connecting the 9/11 attack with the creation of Fifty Shades of Grey series, that highlights the kind of influence they had in pop culture. It goes something like this:

1. 9/11 happens
2. Gerard Way starts playing guitar and forms the band My Chemical Romance as “therapy from the PTSD that everyone had experienced from 9/11” (source)
3. My Chemical Romance inspired Stephanie Meyers to write Twilight, in particular one of its main characters (source)
4. E.L. James wrote Twilight fanfic that got turned into Fifty Shades of Grey (source)

I wouldn’t consider Fifty Shades as relevant as Twilight in pop culture, but Twilight itself is a huge cultural event that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t because of MCR.

Then, there’s the whole emo movement, which MCR didn’t start but they were the cornerstone of the emo music that got popularized in the early 2000s. Even the emos who claimed to hate MCR were listening to them at home (don’t ask me how I know), and most of the popular bands of the time started or say they were heavily influenced by them.

Okay, but what about the other contenders in the category for most influential rock band?

The elephant in the room is clearly Arctic Monkeys. Founded in 2002 (one year later than MCR, which would put them ahead), and releasing their first mega-hit in 2006: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.

Arctic Monkeys were extremely influential in the indie scene. While they enjoyed a lot of success at the time, they were not alone in their category. Bands like The Strokes, or Franz Ferdinand were competing more or less in the same cultural pocket.

It wasn’t until their album “AM” where you could clearly see the band jumping to mainstream stage. The song “Do I wanna Know” probably has more listens than many of the greatest MCR hits combined. But, what legacy did the band leave? Did their influence permeate outside of the music scene? Arctic Monkeys never really created a full-blown cultural movement like MCR did. It also didn’t help that Alex Turner decided to larp as a drunk Frank Sinatra putting a full-stop to the style they helped shape with their earlier albums.

There’s clearly a lot of subjective interpretation of what influential is, and there are clearly newer bands that are wildly more popular and influential than MCR. But they are not rock bands any more. They might have the same instruments, but they are solo artists with session musicians or most of the instrumentation is done with electronic instruments.

Nowadays, getting a group of people together to write music is extremely difficult. Have you looked for rehearsal rooms in your city? they probably closed or moved far away from where you are. Playing guitar is loud, and young artist are forced to share rooms in houses with other people. Forget about “starting out in the garage”, those were turned into Airbnbs already.

Labels don’t want to put up with the risk of the internal fighting that could brew in a traditional band, and it is way cheaper to pay a single star rather than a bunch of them. At the time MCR started there was almost no alternative, if you wanted to make music, you had to support eachother. Today you can make a full album (even if the albums don’t matter, but that’s another story) in the comfort of your room with the cheapest laptop you can get your hands on. I don’t want to imply that it was better before, it was just different. And that difference makes the contemporary rock band a rare species.

I don’t know if there will ever be another influential rock band like MCR was. Specially now that people accepted that music comes attached to an artist name. Chappell Roan, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Harry Styles, whatever.

To me, My Chemical Romance will always represent the end of an era, and the death of the rock band.