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He isnt quite sure what to do with that responsibility now.
Thank you for making a short album.
So I had to surrender that idea.
I already got the job.
I dont know that I need to keep proving that I have.
Theres plenty of time to release the other stuff.
Theres something to be said for curation.And especially the way we consume music now.
But when I do find a record I love now, its usually the short ones.
I just dont care.
Because you were making music before streaming.I was.
Also, Im not a record label.
For my generation, Fueled by Ramen is the mecca of emo.
They really championed that genre and fought for its legitimacy.
They worked together on a lot of projects.
There was a camp of bands that signed to Fueled By and another that signed to Vagrant.
Thats where I wanted to be.
ButJimmy Iovinemade it impossible to say no to Interscope.
The promises were too big and I believed him.
I enjoyed my time there, but almost instantly knew I made the wrong choice.
But you make decisions for other reasons.
Other friends of mine went there Jimmy Eat World, All American Rejects, AFI.
I thought,Okay, this is looking good for me.
Its another version of being with my friends.
It wasnt quite the same.
When we came back, I had one dart on the board: Fueled by Ramen.
That was it, but I dont think they wanted to sign me.
I struck on something pure here with this music.
Its been the best experience of my life so far.
So you pitched them an already-completed album?Yeah, pretty much.
Wow, thats a bold approach.Well, sort of.
I came with what could have been several different records because I had 60 songs.
So when theyve come to me with suggestions, its really trepidatious.
But those werent the kinds of notes I was getting.
They probably knew the right answer but didnt give it to me.
They said, Heres whats wrong, now go fishing.
I cant wait for the next record already because I have some songs that I think are really great.
How so?I signed for Jimmy Iovines legacy of being this maverick.
When I signed there, hewasbeing a maverick, but I think he was finished with rock and roll.
He was really concentrating at that time on pop music, breaking pop music very, very wide.
We were never going to get the attention that the Pussycat Dolls got.
He found that much more interesting at the time.
I think he found it harder to do.
He probably loves taking something that he thinks is hard to do and making it work.
But he was super supportive of the band and wanted us to be successful.
We just caught him a year or two late or maybe a year or two early.
But he was so great to us.
When it was time for us to go, he let us go graciously.
He said [imitates Iovines voice], All right.
You got it, buddy.
He just let me go and that just doesnt happen.
So I have nothing but great, wonderful things to say about Interscope and my time there.
People there were wonderful.
But it was a big company.
Fueled by Ramen is not a big company.
This is where I came up.
I came up with mom-and-pops.
Though this has the far reach of a big company.
Paramore lives down the street.
I notice there are so many now signed to these major labels that struggle to market them.
Im thinking specifically right now of the new Fall Out Boy album.
But somehow it seems to be concurrent with whats working in the music world all the time.
I guess I didnt notice that its not working because it seems to be working to me.
I think the labels saw that that we collectively had very large audiences that were very dedicated.
They thought,Well just be the ones that put out the record.
Theyve already got the audience.
Not because their fans didnt care, but because they just became disheartened.
In other cases, they rose above and became something altogether more powerful, like My Chemical Romance.
Now that was a story of success, though.
That was a success story of every measure.
They were if Smashing Pumpkins and Queen had a baby.
Tonally, it would have sounded like a Dashboard record and it may have felt like a Dashboard record.
I knew that was wrong for several reasons.
One, I just know its wrong.
But two, I knew it wouldnt work.
Maybe it would work the first week it was out.
People would be excited about these new songs, but they wouldnt have held them.
Suddenly, seven or eight years had gone by.
Actually, it was six before I started writing again.
My fans didnt complain.
They were vocal that they wanted a new record but they didnt turn on me.
We kept doing shows and they kept coming.
So I could just wait until the songs came out.
I finished it and thought,I better not have a go at do that tomorrow.
I didnt want to start forcing things.
Again I thought,Dont do it again tomorrow, Chris.
I just kept running until I realized, Oh, this is it.
Why fight it?I wasnt sure.
Could I trust it yet and was it a tease?
Was it going to break my heart?
I thought maybe it would.
But it didnt break my heart.
When Dashboard started performing again, all those shows sold out.
I had no idea.
I just had no expectations.
Do I love it as much as Dashboard?
Not in the same way, but I really love it.
Its special to me.
So in that, I felt very satisfied.
I thought, There will be so few people there.
Maybe we can cut our set short and I can run over and see the other bands playing.
But what happened was there was something like 30,000 people when we played.
We walked offstage and we were a band again, simple as that.
I dont know that it was because there were so many people.
I think it was that it was thespecificpeople that were there.
Who were they?The crowd looked just like our crowd always looked.
Were not like other bands from our scene where everybody wears the same … almost costumes.
Our crowd is very disparate, but theyre openhearted in the moment and thats what I saw out there.
There was no doubt in my mind that it would lead to playing basement shows again.
I was just shocked when we booked our first tour.
But it kept on like that.
I would then walk out there and just mill about and got to meet hundreds of people a day.
I think people think, Oh, hes the guy that does it.
I get to be a part of this with everybody else.
In that time off, emo has come back ina big, almost unrecognizable way.
We sounded the least like the other bands.
The other bands had a more obvious through line to each other and ours was less obvious.
Theyre digging further back than our era.
Our ethos is the same.
I play shows with those bands were talking about.
I take those bands on tour.
Your return could be perceived as capitalizing on nostalgia, especially now that theres been a revival.
There cant be nostalgia if its currently part of your life still.
My relationship with my fans continues.
I just made the record I made at the time I made it.
I actually thought that what people call the emo revival I thought I missed it.
It seemed like it was a couple of years ago to me.
It was.So if I was being opportunistic, I would have put the record out three years ago.
But I didnt have a record to put out.
Talk me through your reaction to allegations that Jesse Lacey preyed on teenage girls.
I could not equate the behavior Id seen to the behavior being reported.
I wasnt as close with those guys during that period of time when this went down.
We drifted apart, these things happen.
But I was disheartened …
I had disbelief because its hard to reconcile.
… and is frankly harming people.
I just didnt see any of it, but I certainly watched and read as the reporting come out.
I cant imagine that was easy.
But I dont know that the behavior by several people is emblematic of a problem within our scene.
I think its emblematic of a problem within our society.
Does this specific scene deserve its own reckoning?That the scene Im from deserves it?
Emo, yes.Well, I suppose now is the time for every corner of genres to examine their behavior.
It was one of the first subgenres that was really established and popularized online.
These bands were male-dominated and their fans were largely young girls.
I can only answer for myself.
I think Ive asked that question continually through my career: Am I handling this right?
Now is the time, but its always the time.
I dont know that the scene needs to be guilty by association.
Most people made really good choices.
Youre still friends with a lot of men from that era.
Have there been conversations?Absolutely.
It shattered our [world].
Were all talking about it.
I think were assessing our own behavior in retrospect.
Youre asking if all of these bands that are friends are talking to each other about [Lacey]?
Anyone can get hurt anytime and they have the right to say so.
Its such a point of concern that it seems pervasive.
So how do we fix it?
I can only control me and I just continue to give a shot to walk a straight line.
These girls werent wrong to be trusting.
That was what our whole scene was built on.
What happened to them because of that, thats wrong.
This will ensure that that actually wont change.
I hope, anyway.
Youve said before that you prefer your older work.
Which was what?Thats really hard to define.
It may be impossible to define.
It is something I have absolute certainty about.
I know exactly what the song needs and wants to be and Im able to make it that.
I internalize in the moment the songs and the ones that resonate with me.
I might be right, by the way.
This may be the only record Ill ever get to make again.
I wanted to be as deeply committed and honest as I could possibly be.
The answer I came up with was, Yeah, I think I am.
I managed to never exit the door on youth by virtue of the lucky straw that I pulled.
I get to make music so thats like the fountain of youth.
But Ive seen some shit and Imseeingsome shit.
Now were seeing some shit, like with the #MeToo movement.
Ive seen more shit in my life than most people will see in their whole lives.
Ive had a complicated life, but I had a complicated life as a child and a teenager.
So thats kind of par for the course for me.
Are we a legacy act?
No one expected that because no one knows what to do with a new genre.
They change as I change and so they bear a lot of fruit.
I cant speak for other people and I cant speak for the genre.
The advantage some men are taking over some girls and women, thats not specific to our scene.
But what is specific to our scene is the fact that we are artists and fans in this together.
How did you two even connect?I met her online.
We started going to each others shows.
I think by then shed already told people that I was an influence for her.
I can absolutely hear it in her work.I hear it too and Im kind of proud of that.
How do you feel about that?I feel great about that.
Its a macro version of word of mouth.
Thats the way our whole scene came into popularity was just word of mouth.
She just has a big ol megaphone, but you know.
I really dont like when people pick on her.
Ill never get that.
Ill never understand that.
Shes a good person.
Her music isfucking great.
She is super brave.
She could write the same song over and over again but shes jumping genres.
Shes writing about different things.
Shes navigating the world of ultra fame with grace.
She still manages to be kind to the people she knows and the people she doesnt know.
What more can you say about somebody?
We talked about it.
Shes on a tear with Jack [Antonoff] right now.
I think in time it may come to pass, or it wont.
But theres no burning rush for me to do that.
If that kind of thing happens, it will just happen.
So who do you write for?
It seems you could easily have a whole second career as a songwriter.I write for some of theAmerican Idolwinners.
I write for a handful of people.
Ghostwrite?I quietly write for other people.
Thats an interesting way to put that.I enjoy it.
I find it to be very challenging to write from somebody elses point of view.
I quite like it and I think it makes my writing for myself much stronger.
The better you get, the more you become a craftsman of some kind.
You know which tools to grab.
You know how hot to make the flame if youre working with steel.
Then later I would just write lyrics first, which never panned out as well.
This record came down to me racing against the clock.
Thats really strict.But it reminded me of when I wrote theSwiss Army Romance.
I wrote most of it on my lunch breaks, so I only had exactly an hour.
The immediacy is apparent.
Sometimes the jagged edges are what makes it beautiful and then you smooth them.
Its just pretty, so what?
The other thing was that I recorded the songs that same day.
As soon as the song was written, Id record it.
I figured its not going to be the best vocal performance of that song Ill ever do.
Do you like where emo is headed?
To now seeLil Uzi Vert become a face of the new emofeels progressive.
Theres more inclusion than there ever was.Was it not inclusive?
No one said, You cant be in this band or you cant do this.
But now you havePhoebe BridgersandJulien Baker.
Its really exciting to me that theres more female representation.
It just proves the inverse is equal.
I listen to Phoebe and it doesnt matter that shes a woman singing about how she feels.
Im hearing the song and feeling what I feel and thinking that she wrote this just for me.
Music is not football.
How do you feel about rap adapting emo and taking ownership of it?
My lyrics are pretty rapid fire, very wordy.
And I listened to a lot of hip-hop, emulated it.
I didnt talk about it too much at the time because nobody seemed to ask.
Historically speaking, theres so much attention to lyrics in hip-hop.
I cant think of another rock genre where thats as important other than the one Im from.
So I dont find it surprising at all.
I love it, frankly.
Im a big fan of whats happening with the lines being blurred.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
