Be My Escape

“Another contusion, my funeral jag
Here’s my resignation, I’ll serve it in drag
You’ve got front row seats to the penitence ball
When I grow up I want to be nothing at all”

Very rarely do bands set out to make a classic album and succeed. My Chemical Romance wanted to make a modern capital-R Rock album which could stand aside their Anglophile heroes: Queen, T-Rex, David Bowie. So great was their drive, so much did they want it, that through their efforts they actually reached out and moved the hand of fate. Your music scene gets one shot at the big time, one actual legendary album to add to the pantheon. And My Chemical Romance blew up the big time.

Following on from their mainstream breakthrough with Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge My Chemical Romance secluded themselves in the haunted Paramour Estate in Los Angeles. The band suffered night terrors, visions, mental collapses and the most potent creative streak of their career. They emerged a new band, yes, not My Chemical Romance anymore, but The Black Parade. The album they held in their hands telling the sprawling tale of a Cancer patient doomed to his illness, dying within the tracklist, reflecting on his life, being visited by ghosts of his father, mother, regrets and accomplishments. Does he die at the start? Is he saved at the end? Does he reach the afterlife? Keep guessing.

My Chemical Romance have always created magical worlds for their fans to fall into.

Three Cheers was a horror slasher. Red, gnashing like a bloodhound, firearms, crime, two central lovers. The Black Parade, stark white, pale on a hospital bed, watching the lights of heaven march towards you. I said this in my Three Cheers essay and I’ll say it again, these are planes that fans could fall into- explore the characters of, make fan-art, write fan-fiction, cosplay, dress-up and dream about. That’s why these albums matter so much to so many people.

I got to see them live on The Black Parade tour at Wembley Arena and I saw the stars of another planet above me.

The music speaks for itself, the enduring popularity of its singles, the quality of its album tracks, and the hidden hunks of gold that are its B-Sides. We all know this album is a grand achievement. But what matters to me, what gives MCR fans the last laugh, is that wasn’t always the case:

I want to pause for a moment and give voice to a group of people who have been almost lost to history, but who I saw and knew first hand. My Chemical Romance fans who did not like The Black Parade. This disgruntled minority of fans often disliked the absolute pomposity, the unapologetic grandeur. This wasn’t just pop, this was rhinestone glitter in gothic platform boots pop. I had personal Emo friends who straight up did not like the album. There exists a face-bendingly silly 5/10 review on Punk News where the reviewer declares, “Is this a good album? Not really.” My Chemical Romance were infamously bottled with piss at the Reading Festival in 2006. This album was not universally loved, and anyone trying to sell you that narrative- to take away the fight, the battle that MCR and their fans had to go through to get the respect they deserve, to stop and say “No, this album has value, this album is important, you need to take this seriously”, is selling you revisionist snake-oil.

“The Black Parade ends up being nothing but an empty void of theatrics riding on the coat-tails of a legitimate success. It will sell millions of copies that will end up being millions of memories of people looking back, years from now, saying with a smile and a chuckle, “Wow, look at the horrible shit I used to listen to.”

I post this not to drive easy victory donuts over a clueless contemporary review, but to argue that history has the final word. The Black Parade is etched into the hearts of Millions of former-teen adults worldwide, an album that meant everything to them when they were growing up and has culturally blossomed into a beloved may-pole of the Emo glory days. Something that everyone can hold hands and dance around. History has been kind to The Black Parade, as it takes its throne as one of the greatest albums of all time.

“I am not afraid to keep on living
I am not afraid to walk this world alone (Or dead)
Honey, if you stay, you’ll be forgiven
Nothing you can say can stop me going home”