So I was on Shoutcast looking for some online radio stations and I noticed a music style called 'Emo' in the Alternative section. I am usually pretty aware of cultural stuff and having never heard of this type of music before I decided to see what it was about.

After a short bit of research, apparently Emo has been around for a while and we all probably know what it is, it's just that the Emo label may not be used to describe the songs when we hear it played on a radio station. Emo comes from a shortened version of the term 'emotive hardcore', although it is commonly thought of as an abreviation of the word 'emotional'.

Anyway, you can go on wikipedia to get a much more detailed history but basically Emo is a type of rock music. Emocore as it is also known is a combination between hardcore and punk music that started in the '80s. Then in the mid 1990s, Emo began to reflect the indie scene and became more mainstream and less 'violent and depressing than in it's beginning.

The term Emo has gotten very vaste at this point and now means anything to do with counterculture. Emo is not only an attitude, but also a fashion that stems from emocore. Emo fashion is made up mostly of black clothing, dyed black hair, black makeup around the eyes. The cartoon kid below is a good example of the emo fashion style.

Well, that's a short version of what Emo is. I hope that I have made you smarter today with this bit of infomation.