My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade

Adolescence is like a ladder: you're always looking upwards to the person one rung above you. My musical taste at 12 was influenced by the animators of Newgrounds: I listened to a lot of blink-182 and The Offspring. My sister listened to Evanescence and My Chemical Romance; I remember her playing "Helena" (2004) all day.

When MCR's "Black Parade" (2006) came out, she didn't listen to it all that much; she said the band sold out, undoubtedly because someone on the internet said that. I tacitly agreed with her because I didn't know any better. Seeing "Welcome to the Black Parade" was always on the radio, she was partially right.

But MCR didn't sell out. Metallica sold out, with their self-titled (1991). Drake sold out, with "Views" (2016).

MCR sold out as much as Bob Dylan sold out with "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), or Leonard Cohen sold out with "I'm Your Man" (1988) (though Leonard did kinda sell-out with the Phil Spector-produced "Death of a Ladies Man" (1977)). They did the rarer thing, which is why fans simply dismissed it: they found a different means of expression.

If you went by my sister, MCR was an emo band. If you went by the radio, MCR was a rock band. The latter is a little more true: they were as rock n' roll as The Beatles or Pink Floyd were. The comparison between "Black Parade" and "The Wall" (1979) is not incorrect.

And yet, part of the band's awkward reputation can be blamed on them. "Black Parade" is a mess of an album. It really doesn't succeed in its concept at all, that of a man dying and recalling the events of his life.

Which failure I should touch on, by introducing the three "faces" of the album. I had previously written on the ballad-y tracks "I Don't Love You" and "Disenchanted", where MCR's dying protagonist wears their heart on their sleeve. These songs pretty much have the strongest characterization of the protagonist. Then there are the "theater-kid" tracks, "The End.", "Dead!", "Welcome to the Black Parade", "Cancer" and "Mama", which are drama-heavy tracks explicating that the Patient is dying and how much, yes, dying sucks. Finally, there are the high-velocity rock n' roll tracks, "The Sharpest Lives", "House of Wolves", "Sleep" and "Teenagers". And then "This Is How I Disappear" and "Famous Last Words" and whatever.

You may see where I'm going with this. I've already written on the first category; those are the A+ winners of the album, in my eyes. The meaning of the second category, the drama-heavy tracks, is already evident - they propel the drama of the album, which, and this is how I feel about all drama, is fabricated. However, the dramatic tracks are great because MCR makes them work technically. What makes "The Black Parade" work is that the music is ornate but not busy, and Gerard Way is just ... a fantastic vocalist.

Many frontmen are overrated, but I don't think Gerard Way is. What makes him spectacular is that he understands how a whiny emo kid thinks. It's very different from Fall Out Boy's Peter Stump and The Killers' Brandon Flowers; those vocalists are interested in being angsty and allowing the audience in living vicariously through the singer's rage, while Way is playing a character. He is equal parts pretentious, whiny, full of shit, miserable, but vulnerable, capable of self-reflection, and ultimately just pathetic. I think "The Black Parade" is way more endurable than "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge" (2004) because the way Way plays the Patient allows the listener to know he is both critiquing and empathizing with him.

Take "The End.", where The Patient with a sneer dares the audience:

If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you can find out firsthand what it's like to be me, so gather 'round, piggies, and kiss this goodbye, I'd encourage your smiles, I'll expect you won't cry!

with a booming "cry!" ending the verse, ending his snivelling with a big bullying taunt, his own expression of macho-aggression. Way is defiant and provocative, but lyrically he's shitting on himself. He knows precisely when the Patient is self-deprecating and pathetic, but he also understands when the Patient demonstrates agency i.e. when he spits out the hate back toward the audience who made him so hateful to begin with.

I really want to talk about "Sharpest Lives", but continuing on with the dramatic tracks we move onto the big example, "Welcome to the Black Parade". Never minding the famous "When I was / a young boy" verse - and I do think this verse is cringe-y and theater-kid as fuck - I think almost all of the virtues of the band and the album appear at the end of the second verse.

Right after the Patient's father supposedly (we can't really take his account of reality to be true) says "Because one day, I'll leave you, a phantom / to lead you in the summer / to join the black parade", the guitars crash in, the drums start pounding, and the track hits you with a wall of sound. I don't know how the band accomplished this effect, but the arrangements feel full; it doesn't sound like one or two guitars played really loud, it sounds like an orchestra, a true parade of sound, and the sound isn't jagged and isn't screechy, it feels uniform and genuinely concatenating. It feels extremely good to turn the volume up as a result.

Then Way begins to lose his goddamned mind and starts snarling "WHEN I WAS! A YOUNG BOY! MY FATHER! TOOK ME INTO THE CI-TAY! TO SEE THE MARCHING BAND!" (I wish I could all-caps harder the "SEE THE MARCHING BAND!") He literally loses his mind, and you don't perceive he is just grieving; I get the impression the Patient is undergoing this "Hamlet"-like dilemma of whether or not he should actually do the Black Parading (which adds onto the lyrics later, "Just a man! Not a hero!"). Or whatever. I don't know what the fuck is going on in the song. But that's the brilliance of Way's performance: I may not know what is actually happening, content-wise, in the song, Way's voice does all the work - he is self-righteous, he is defiant, he is overdramatic; you clearly understand how much he is elevating his emotions but you also see how important this stupid Black Parade concept is to him.

And that's art. See, I don't think the Black Parade is "real", as in the Patient actually perceives a real and actual Black Parade, but I think it's important that the Patient believes in the concept of a Black Parade is way more important even if he completely made it up in his head. Him dramatizing his own death and consequently life is a function of all the heartbreak he's suffered in his life; he needs to believe everything goes out in a big, albeit goth, bang, and that's really interesting.

This is also the reason why every cover of "Welcome to the Black Parade" sucks; you need the wall of sound the band produces, that overwhelming feeling, you can't accomplish it with a very loud guitar cranked up to 11; you need Gerard Way's genuine anguish, it needs to be joy mixed with pain and resignation, because I do think it's crucial that you, as the listener, are not sure if the Black Parade is real or not. It is way, way more important that the Patient is constructing the Black Parade to cope with death.

Unless MCR directly contradicts me, I dunno. This is what I got from listening to it.

Also the Black Parade concept is abandoned for the rest of the album so I don't know if I can be faulted for interpreting it this way.

I may not like the "drama" of the album - mostly because I think that drama goes unfulfilled - and yet I can acknowledge fully that the band pulls it off perfectly, on a technical level, not a storytelling level. Well. I don't like "Mama" at all, I think it's way too much.

Then there's the third category of songs, the rock n' roll ones. And now I get to talk about "The Sharpest Lives", the best example of Way's vocalizations.

I love "The Sharpest Lives". I thought it was really cringey initially, but now I completely vibe with it. It begins with a notable thunk-thunk-thunk metallic loop and Way muttering,

Well it rains and it pours when you're out on your own, if I crash on the couch, can I sleep in my clothes? 'Cause I spent the night dancing, I'm drunk, I suppose, if it looks like I'm laughing, I'm really just asking to leave.

I say artists "mutter" a lot, but Way actually sells it completely; he sounds like he has something stuck in his throat and you can somehow hear him staring at the floor. With the words "rains" and "pours", I have the visual in my head that it actually is raining and he looks like a wet dog at someone's porch. What's amazing is the way he doles each word out one at a time, as if he thinks it's too much of a courtesy to speak to his subject. He actually manages to pull out a nervous half-chuckle when he says "laughing"! It's such a bratty performance.

But it's the bridge to the chorus that's truly, truly special:

I've really been, on a bender and it shows, so why don't you blow me a kiss before you go?

Prior to the bridge Way escalates his voice, almost as if he's about to enter a shouting match, taunting his subject with "I'm the one that you loathe"; when he arrives at "I've really been -" he's fully flung himself into the verbal scream-off, but the way Way inflects that "really" - "re-a-la-ly" - is just ... it's like he's expressing regret that he's doing this, and he feels truly guilty for all he's done and what he is, but he's still going to go full "Housewives" because what else is left him? When he lands on that "been" - "be-e-en-ne" - it's like he's stubbed his toe, and then he launches perfectly and smoothly onto that "on a bender and it shows", which is partially eviscerating himself and partially asking angrily, "Why don't you show some goddamn pity for me?"

IT'S. PERFECT. HE DOES IT SO PERFECTLY. This is usually the point when I rewind the song because I just want to hear this over and over again. When Way says that "re-a-la-ly", he just makes me think of Julianne Moore in "Magnolia".

I love "Sharpest Lives" as a result. I get it, it's a song about a dork, and the dork invokes all of this gothic imagery - Romeo, Juliet, vampires - because he thinks he's the biggest victim in the world.

I want to talk about "Teenagers" to round out what I think the album's ultimate theme - I'm not going to get too into "Teenagers", it's a fine song, but I wanted to focus on its chorus:

They say that
teenagers scare, the living shit out of me! They could care less, so long as someone'll bleed!

Based on the analysis so far, we can see this is a fair bit of projection: the Patient is reflecting on violent teenagers because he was a violent teenager once, he knows how angry and animalistic these subhumans can be. Flowing from "Teenagers" is "Disenchanted", where the Patient reflects on his pointless, pitiful, always-angry life. "Black Parade", in my eyes, is the beautiful story of someone who lived all of their life in rage and then, at their deathbed, recognizes how pointless all that anger and suffering was and how they don't regret it whatsoever, thus repenting of their hatred for life.

Now, after this write-up, why do I not think this album is the greatest one ever made?

Mostly because the other songs do not forward this theme.

Again, the album is a mess. The three categories of songs don't really interact with each other. You probably don't even need "Cancer"; it's a redundant track, where other tracks say its meaning just fine. I really can't tell you if "Welcome to the Black Parade" is real or imagined because the other tracks don't really help in that interpretation.

Then, if you look at the rock n' roll songs, they have one common theme: they tell the story of someone who is just an angry dickhead. All of the songs do. There's really no variety. I think "The Sharpest Lives" and "I Don't Love You" establish early on the Patient's relationship with his girlfriends, but then "House of Wolves" and "This is How I Disappear" just repeat that. And I don't think "Mama" deserves its dramatic effect; it's just kind of a ... song.

But let's be clear here: "Black Parade" may have been the last great rock album made. I think this re-evaluation really convinced me of that. It is a ridiculously ambitious album that falls on its face, but you're happier seeing it fail than play it safe. And when the album hits, it hits a fucking home-run. No wonder the emos hated it: it had naked, even arrogant aspirations, and it succeeded in them. I wish more bands tried like MCR tried, and I hope "Black Parade" is seen for what it is: genre-transcending, as all the great monuments of rock n' roll, your "Sgt. Pepper", your "Dark Side of the Moon", are.

For a short time I replaced J Dilla's "Donuts" (2006) with it because I admired it so much, but I'm putting "Donuts" back. I actually replaced "Donuts" with Tim Hecker's "Ultraviolet in Harmony", which I then replaced with "Black Parade". There must have been something about winter that made me not appreciate "Donuts" and its vision and ease. When I reflected on the extent of my dislike for some of the tracks on "Black Parade", I realized it couldn't stay. But someone like the Patient wouldn't want my false pity anyway. So let "The Black Parade" go, where it may be loved by better, more kindred hands.