SO LONG AND GOODNIGHT MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

I actually can't believe that I am writing this post to you all, because only months ago I was writing about Conventional Weapons and what I thought the new album would sound like.

But I'm truly heartbroken to say that last night My Chemical Romance officially announced their split.

I don't think many people saw it coming, I for one was convinced their fifth album was just waiting round the corner because following on from previous MCR logic, their new album should have been ready for release in 2014. I was so excited to hear what direction the album would take, where it would go and to finally get the opportunity to see my heroes live, in the flesh, right before my eyes.

So to think that we are never going to hear new music from them or ever get the opportunity to see them live again is a fact I just can't seem to get my head around.

I'm used to bands splitting it up, it's just something that happens and you don't really feel sad because you never had that much of an attachment to them. Yet with My Chemical Romance, I for one had and do have a  huge attachment to them, as do many millions of fans across the world. 

Heading into their twelfth year as global superstars, MCR have managed to touch the hearts of so many people worldwide with a type of music that I would label 'life saving', because that's exactly what it did and will continue to do: save lives. 

Magazines, record labels, Billboard and Top 40 charts, they all chart MCR's success on the amount of albums and singles sold, the quality and production of the music, and if we're going purely on those statistics alone, then My Chemical Romance must have seemed like a dream because they were phenomenally successful, right back from when 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' took off, through to the epic release that was 'The Black Parade' and its successor 'Danger Days'. 

Yet to a fan like you or me, we don't just value MCR for the amount of records they sold or their success on the weekly charts, no, because even if their record sold just 10,000 copies, we would still value them just the same and that is because of the music they made and the messages it held.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you just can't  measure My Chemical Romance's success on the number of records sold, because they aren't a band that works like that.

No, if you're going to measure MCR's success, you measure it with the amount of lives they've saved, the hearts they've touched, the phenomenal impact they've had on millions upon millions of people worldwide, all because of the music they've made.

It's not about earning money, it's about saving lives, and that's what this band has always, always done.

To me personally, MCR will always have a special place in my heart and I will always be grateful to them because their music helped to save me. I'm going to tell you why, and I have never written on here about this before, but I think that now it's the right time.

So when I was fifteen, I went through quite a low, dark period and I don't look back on this part of my life very fondly because truth was I was drowning and I couldn't quite save myself.

Now I'm not saying this to gain sympathy, because I know people had it so much worse than  me, but this was the period of my life was when I faced my battles and demons, and to this day I believe that I only managed to do it because of MCR.

In my time of need I turned to 'The Black Parade' album in particular and I would play it whenever the thoughts in my head became too harsh, mean, hard to bear. 

I would drown out the world around me, filling my ears with the sound of Gerard Way singing to me, telling me to carry on, don't be afraid to walk alone, stay strong, and the loneliness and sadness would fade a little, to be replaced by a strength that made me feel like I could carry on, I could do this.

Even though it felt like no-one was on my side and that no-one understood what I was going through, in My Chemical Romance I had found a group of people who did understand and who were there for me  whenever I needed someone.

I know at the end of the day it's just music, but then again, can it really be just music when the affect it has is so powerful, positive,momentous, life saving? 

When life was a daily struggle for me, My Chemical Romance were there when no-one else was and I would go to school with 'We'll carry on' written on my hand, a constant reminder to myself that I could get through this day, this darkness, this struggle, and I did manage it in the end. 

And it's all because of My Chemical Romance. 

Now this is just my story, just one story in a collection of millions of others, and if you're a fan of MCR, chances are you went through something like me, a period of darkness or struggle, and this band was and maybe still is your coping mechanism, the only reason your still standing and getting through each and every day. 

Gerard and the boys can sing and create music so true because they've experienced that darkness too.

As fans we can relate to that honesty, we appreciate that honesty, and in MCR we see four people who went through that darkness and made it out again, into the light. 

And even though they may not be a band anymore, their music will always remain, there to be listened to whenever we need it, and I can take comfort from that.
I still find myself turning to it now, when things are becoming a little too much, and I truly hope that MCR's music will continue and help to save millions of other people who just need to know that somewhere in this crazy, messed up world, someone understands, someone is there for them, someone cares,

My Chemical Romance have created a legacy, they've broken a fiercely avoided taboo, they've made music that will save lives in a way doctors and therapists could never do.
Look what they've managed to achieve in those twelve years.

And even if the sun is setting for now, I hope that one day it will rise again and for now, like Gerard has said, we should be proud, not sad, and so for now, all I can say is

LONG LIVE MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE.

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING.

CLASH OF THE GENRES AND GUITAR GRENADES

After flicking through a recent copy of NME magazine, I noticed how the musical geniuses there made predictions that a new wave of rock and guitar based front runners, for instance Jake Bugg, Lucy Rose etc. would amass the music top spot in the next couple of years.

We all know that music seems to work in a cyclical pattern, where one particular genre reigns supreme for a said number of years before another knocks it out the water with an almighty bang.

It's like a wrestle in the ring for musical supremacy that seems to pop up every four to six years, like the Olympics, and everyone tunes in to see if the current music champion can hold on to it's crown or if it loses it to the next best thing to happen in music ever. 

There's no telling who will win the crown but we can predict who is in favour of this prestigious title a few years into the current genre's reign. Take for example the 90's run-in to the noughties: the decade began on a high with the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins most definitely holding onto the steering wheel after the all amazing classic American Rock dominance of the late 80's.

A new breed of rock, punk, indie, metal smash-ups were leading the way and they soon gave into the Brit Pop era of the mid 90's where bands like Oasis, Blur and Radiohead popped up to say hi, bleeding that new found rock styling into the pop stratosphere.

Meanwhile America were honing the formula for the perfect boy band which saw the classic five piece with mostly average voices come together in a tsunami of hunkiness to churn out hit after hit full of that cheesy pop music that we all secretly love. Forget Nirvana, Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls; America was saying goodbye to the guitar bands and hello to the pop world, Backstreet Boys, N-Sync, NKOTB, a transition which soon filtered into the UK. It wasn't long before our own Brit pop/ rock smash up gave in to the almighty power of Gary Barlow's dancing and soon Take That, Boyzone, Westflife and the Spice Girls (girl power, boom) were the people that everyone wanted to hear.

The rock beginnings of the 90's lost it's reign pretty quickly to the all too dominant pop stratosphere, so by the time the noughties rolled in, S-Club 7, Steps, Aqua and Bob The Builder (how did that even happen?) had the perfect platform to broadcast their pop offerings to the world. 

But whilst it seems that all the other genre's have vanished off the face of the Earth, alas the truth is very much far from it...

You see, whilst the biggest genre of the day flaunts it's stuff like the new Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell or the hottest club in London town (where all the Royal's like totally go and get wasted), there is always an 'underground' scene of which the majority of people seem to forget.

In the 90's, the underground movement was R & B, hip-hop, soul and the beginnings of dub-step, dance-hall and electronica, all the genre's that we've heard nothing but of the last eight years. If you were remotely pop or rock related during the 90's, you were swept up in the tidal wave, no underground beginnings for you.

 But if you were anything outside of that bracket... well lets just say you were given a first class shove in the direction of the underground door.

It seems to be that whatever is currently not in the charts, the airwaves, the magazines, but is big in the world that exists outside of the ' pop culture', that is what will soon be supreme in a few years time. 

I mean, look what happened to dub-step, grime, R&B etc., after the underground years of the 90's, rappers and soul singers like Kanye West, Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Jay-Z, Mary-J, Alicia Keys all found their way to the top of the pack. Cheesy Pop was definitely on the out and suddenly this movement of music had it's well deserved and long awaited moment.

Of course two or more genre's can easily co-exist in the top spot, for instance now it seems to be a mix of electronic/ dub-step and pop, however it does seem that pop is always going to be the 'blueprint', the underlying construction or basis, and the next biggest genre provides the brick work, the decoration, the fleshing out of the over-used structure.

So will the day ever come when one genre finally kicks pop off the top spot, to which it has clinged to like Madonna clings to her long gone glory days and youthful looks?

Well in recent years, it has looked likely; hip hop and R&B definitely had it's moment in the last decade when it co-existed alongside the very powerful new rock/indie scene of 2001-2007 which was full of the likes of Arctic Monkeys (woo!), The Kooks, Coldplay, The Strokes, Snow Patrol, The Killers, Razorlight, to name but a few.

But of course like that ever so frustrating fly, that has idiotically flown into your house in the hope of claiming that last bit of chicken salad you ate last night, and which you just can't squish, pop always finds a way of fighting it's way back and it probably always will.

But the way in which we embrace new sounds, artists, genres is changing, allowing artists outside of the pop bracket to get the recognition they deserve. Artists like Ed Sheeran, Tinie Tempah, Labrinth and Adele have really come in to their own and shown us what true artists should be like, look like and sound like.

Meanwhile the mega maestro's of dance, electronic and dub-step, such as the almighty Skrillex, Chase & Status, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii are hogging all the airplay and they have clearly been rubbing off on the pop offspring of today. Faster tempo's, powerful bass beats, electronic riffs and auto-tune are a rife and when done well, the product is something literally out of this world.

So I guess the question now is which is direction will music turn to next?

If you ask me, I believe that there are still a few more years left in this current genre mash-up; the Skrillex sound still has enough electric spark to keep the fire blazing, and of course today's culture has fully embraced both this electronic sound and the notion of rap and R&B. If anything, it encourages it; this once foreign concept of speaking words as fast Felix Baumgartner sky falling to Earth instead of singing them, is what we all know and love.

You could say it's part of our culture.

Now being a rock and indie slave, I'm not going to lie that despite my own new found love and appreciation for the likes of Avicii, Drake, Jay-Z, Skrillex and so on, I really want the guitar age to be as powerful as it once was. For me, 2006 was the only year in my sixteen year life where all the bands I adore were triumphantly on top. My Chemical Romance, Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol, all on the airwaves, magazines, internet and despite being only ten years old,  I loved it.

I long for a repetition of that time so badly that it's almost an ache in my chest. Of course the guitar and indie movement never lost it's touch, it's always been there, always will be, but unlike pop, it does get pushed to the sidelines and sometimes, all I want is to turn on the radio and have the Foo Fighters, The Killers, My Chemical Romance and a whole host of other fabulous musical instrument and songwriting enthusiasts dominating the country, the world, just like they once did.

So to conclude this awfully long post, I predict that this current age will last for the next three to four years and will begin to bleed into other genre's, such as the new 'Rock'n'Rave' output, just like back in the 90's.

But from 2016 onwards, I believe that rock, indie and the good old guitar will have it's time once again.

Anyone with me?