self recognition through the celebrity: my thoughts on my chemical romance
Two nights after My Chemical Romance’s final show of their reunion tour, I was sitting in a crowded pub with a friend who I met through MCR fandom, and we were yelling to each other about how much the band meant to us. It was a moment in my life that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. The thing bringing me unexplainable amounts joy in my adult life was a band I’d once dismissed as something for cringey teenagers.
I was very late to discovering MCR. Rather than having an emo phase as a young teen, I instead became obsessed with the band at the age of twenty, to the surprise of absolutely everyone who knew me.
I’d known about My Chemical Romance before, of course. But they were the kind of band I never would have allowed myself to enjoy—far too embarrassing, a setup for getting bullied. A band for kids who wore edgy clothes and thick eyeliner, kids who wanted to stand out, be different. Different was the last thing I wanted to be.
In my middle school and high school years, I was constantly striving to fit in with the girls around me. Whenever people asked me what music or movies or TV shows I liked, it always felt like some kind of trick question, with a right and wrong answer. I remember looking at the people asking, trying to remember what I knew of them, what they liked, so I could give a response they agreed with. The idea of liking something that other people didn’t felt humiliating, as if a song I enjoyed was a key aspect of who I was, and someone disliking it meant they disliked me.
I avoided this humiliation by rarely allowing myself to like anything. When I did care for a piece of media deeply, it was often because a friend or family member had cared first, and in doing so given me permission. Even then I would hide it from the people who didn’t love it the way I did, constantly talking about my favorite books to my mom and my sister but never mentioning them in school unless someone else brought up the subject first.
Most of my early experience with music came from listening to the radio in the car with my mom. Unlike me, she had no problem expressing what she thought of songs. Whenever she mentioned disliking something, I felt an unexplainable discomfort, her offhand comments leading me to experience an overwhelming sense of dread whenever those songs played on the radio. There are a few songs I remembered my mom particularly disliking. One of them was “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance.
“Welcome to the Black Parade” has a very distinctive opening. The single G note on the piano has been the subject of countless memes, jokes about how that one second alone will make any emo cry. I could recognize that song just as fast as any fan. But instead of feeling a deep connection to it, I always thought, why did they have to play this? Even when my mom wasn’t there, the song had become embarrassing in my mind. Every moment after that first note, I was waiting for it to be over.
By the time I was twenty, MCR felt like less of a band and more of a meme. From the G note Tumblr posts to the references in infamous fanfiction My Immortal, MCR represented a certain type of embarrassing teenage internet user. Even my interest in them began with a joke—my sister saying that a character in the show we were watching would listen to them, since he frequently wore black and had magical powers relating to death. Then she made a video of clips from the show set to “Teenagers.”
When I first listened to “Teenagers,” I dismissed it as exactly what I’d expected from an emo band, clearly not a song for me. But it was catchy, and it stuck in my head. I had the urge to listen to it again. And again. And again. Then I went home from college for the summer, and my sister played “Welcome to the Black Parade,” which I hadn’t heard in years, and I was once again struck by the perplexing urge to listen to it again.
The whole thing felt absurd. How could I, a normal, well-adjusted, not even a little bit emo twenty year old be interested in My Chemical Romance?
Finally, after days of resisting the urge, thinking it was too embarrassing to do even in the privacy of my own home, I sat down and listened to all of The Black Parade for the first time. And I knew, right away, that it was something special. That it didn’t matter if other people looked down on the band, judged their fans—I couldn’t keep myself from loving it.
MCR is a band for the people who were bullied by boy band fans. A band for the people who needed something outside of their everyday, mundane world to obsess over, but didn’t feel that they could share the perfectly polished, perfectly attractive boys that normal girls seemed to like. They are, in many ways, quite similar to a boy band. A group of men with a fanbase largely made up of teenage girls, often dismissed as not being serious musicians for that very reason. A band conscious of their own image, a band with a distinct aesthetic and focus on visual performance. They even have a documentary introducing fans to the members and giving an inside look at their personalities, the same way boy bands like One Direction and BTS did.
But MCR is not a boy band. They were a group of people playing shows in basements, trying to break into the local New Jersey rock scene, not a group assembled by a manager or company destined for pop stardom. Rather than trying to look attractive, their aesthetic was about looking strange and unsettling, bringing to mind images of vampires. And there was another element of their looks that they were constantly mocked for—wearing makeup and looking feminine.
It was these differences, the things that made them unlike a boy band, that gave them a fanbase so powerful it would last well beyond the breakup of the band. A fanbase of people who were never interested in the conventional attractiveness of bands like One Direction, instead drawn to the weird and unusual. A fanbase of people who saw their idols at genuine low points, and connected to them because of that.
The power of MCR comes from a perfect blend of performance and authenticity. The makeup and the costumes and the grand overarching narratives of their albums make them feel like something bigger than any of us. But at the same time, we see the reality of them. Gerard has been open about struggles with mental health and addiction, both in interviews and in songs. Many of their songs tell the stories of their own personal traumas, from Gerard’s experience witnessing the September 11 attacks to the death of Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother. And while some people worried that their willingness to address difficult topics, their honest expression that they weren’t okay, was driving young fans to self-harm and suicide, it was actually doing the opposite. Even long after their breakup, the band retained a legacy of saving lives.
Before I became interested in MCR, I was a dedicated fan of BTS. At the time I started listening to them, they had released the second in a series of albums centering around the theme of loving yourself. It was a theme that meant a great deal to many fans, one that had helped their self confidence grow and gotten them through difficult moments in life. But it never quite resonated with me.
In theory, I understood what they were saying. But BTS seemed so perfect, so far above me, that I couldn’t truly listen. Of course they loved themselves—they were all beautiful and talented, skilled singers and dancers with millions of adoring fans. There were so many reasons to love them. But I didn’t have those skills, those strengths. Them loving themselves didn’t mean I should love myself, too.
The reason MCR affected me when BTS didn’t is because none of their songs were wholly positive. They understood something so few artists seemed to—that hope is most powerful when coming from someone who first acknowledges what it is like to feel hopeless. Take the song “Famous Last Words,” the closing track of The Black Parade. The chorus refrain of I am not afraid to keep on living feels almost cheesy on its own. But it’s the verses that come before that give it power. Is it hard understanding, I'm incomplete? A life that's so demanding, I get so weak. When they tell me they’re unafraid, it means so much more because they know what it’s like to be afraid. They have experienced the darkest depths of depression, and they still overcame it. Maybe, then, so can I.
That is the aspect of fandom that has always meant the most to me: self recognition. It is the reason I was initially so scared of MCR, and the reason I now love them so much. Here is a group of people, famous and successful and well-loved, and they’re weird. And they didn’t succeed despite it, they succeeded because of it.
But what made MCR weird? What made them embarrassing? The makeup, the costumes, the drama, the open expression of emotions. All things that are considered feminine. All things that are considered gay.
Because deep down, that’s so much of the reason people disliked MCR when I was growing up, and so much of the reason people love them now. While none of the members have ever come out, they have always been defined by a willingness to play with gender and sexuality. From the members wearing makeup to Frank and Gerard kissing onstage to the song “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison” being very clearly about gay sex, they have never been afraid to play with boundaries, and that made many people uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable.
Because as a teenager, and even as an adult, I wasn’t just scared of being weird. I was scared of being gay. And the two things were, in my mind, synonymous. Being gay would mean the thing I’d feared for most of my life was true: that I was different, in a deep and unchangeable way, from the other girls around me.
When I saw MCR live, I had finally come to terms with my own sexuality. Still, it was something I was afraid to admit to anyone else, besides the select few people in my life who were gay themselves, people who would connect with that part of me.
I saw MCR twice, at their first and third shows in Milton Keynes. There was a moment during Day 3 where Gerard began talking about his costume from Day 1, a bloodstained white suit and mask, the first time on tour where he wore anything other than normal clothes. Witnessing that in person had been a moment of unbelievable excitement and disbelief, a sudden realization that I was experiencing something special.
On Day 3, Gerard talked about that costume, about how people might think he was crazy, unhinged, for dressing the way he did, but he didn’t care because he was free. It would have sounded corny coming from anyone else, but this was Gerard Way. Someone who was genuinely weird, constantly doing things that resulted in ridicule and cruel comments. And I loved him. Every one of the thousands of people in the stadium loved him, not in spite of the qualities other people laughed at, but because of them.
And in that moment, while experiencing the euphoria of watching a band that meant so much to me play live, I felt that maybe one day people could love me for those reasons, too. For being weird. Being gay. Caring, so very deeply, about the art that had inspired me and the art that I wanted to make.
I am not alone in my experience. There is a film that has grown popular within the MCR fandom called Velvet Goldmine. Despite focusing on 1970s glam rock, there are elements of the story that parallel the MCR narrative. Androgynous style and homosexual activity between musicians are part of the film, but its thesis is not about the musicians themselves as much as it is about fans’ reactions to them. There is a moment in the film where young fan Arthur Stewart is watching an interview where musician Brian Slade discusses his bisexuality. Arthur imagines himself pointing to the TV, repeating, “That’s me!”
This perfectly captures the experience of being an MCR fan to me. Seeing someone so widely admired, so far above you, be open about something you are ashamed of. Looking at someone you love and seeing yourself, and thinking that maybe it is not so bad, what you are.
That is the power of My Chemical Romance. They make us believe we can be better. They are real enough that when we watch them perform, listen to them speak, we can recognize their humanity, see ourselves in them rather than being overwhelmed by the perfection of a boy band member or pop star. But at the same time, they are still famous, they are still powerful, they are still adored with a passion that borders on worship. They are remarkable enough that as fans, we think that if we share something with them, it is something we should be proud of.