203. Breaking Down Our List of The Top 200 Emo Albums of All Time: How We Made The List, How We Scored It Plus The Top 20 is Revealed | Emo Kids Anonymous

Amanda Valdivieso (0:11)

Hey, how are you recovering, Emo Kids? Amanda and Robb here in the Emo Kids Anonymous Podcast. And today we're doing a quick mini-sode on a little project that Robb's brain cooked up and has grown so much past what we could even expect it. And it is our Top 200 Emo Albums. Actually, I think it was supposed to be originally, what, 100, but then you kind of expanded it when you realized the gravity and just the massive amount of responses we're going to get.

Robb Laffoon (0:40)

This is, obviously, everyone had like David, how is Michelangelo, the guy that had made the Brooklyn Bridge.

Andrew McMahon with Constantine. This is my Michelangelo. Constantine was this project here. It started out as a concept after a conversation about a certain album being the best Emo Album of all time. And it was like, well, you can't really fucking just like, you know, say that, subjective, the age, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, oh, you know, it'd be really cool to do this thing where maybe you pull a bunch of people and see, you know, kind of collectively weight rank those answers. So then the next day, I followed Kevin Costner rules, which is if you build it, they will come. Feel the dreams. And I made like a Google form. And I sent it out to people in the world of Emo and Emo adjacent music. I gave them the option to basically list their 10 favorite Emo albums, whatever Emo means to you, no rules, no limits. I ideally in my head, my hope was that we were going to get a hundred or so responses. Then I was like 120 to 150 Like if we can get it in that range, it's a good sample size.

Amanda Valdivieso (1:57)

Yeah.

Robb Laffoon (1:57)

Yada, yada, yada. And it started with, you know, people who have been on the show. And I was thinking it'd be cool. Maybe we can get like an Andrew Soccer or, you know, like, yeah, like Gabe will do it, guys like that. And then I just started sending it to random people that, you know, that we haven't had on the show before. Like, yeah, I mean, we kind of had JT, JT from Hawthorne Heights.

Amanda Valdivieso (2:17)

Yes. Chris Payne, Wear Your Boys Tonight.

Robb Laffoon (2:19)

Chris Payne from Yale 4G.

Amanda Valdivieso (2:20)

Wear Your Boys Tonight.

Robb Laffoon (2:22)

I wanted to tell him, like, bro, I read like two books in the last like six years and both of you contributed.

Amanda Valdivieso (2:28)

He's a dream guest of mine. So the fact that-

Robb Laffoon (2:30)

Amy, Amy Fletcher Madden.

Amanda Valdivieso (2:32)

Yes. What the?

Robb Laffoon (2:33)

She's coming, yeah, she's coming, like, insane. Johnny, Johnny Menardi did it. Like, and, and I started getting all these cool and it's like these big names in my head is like, a lot of these big names are kind of from like Third Wave Emo and then like kind of Fifth Wave. And it's, you know, because we had obviously our friends and bands like Kerosene Heights, Aren't We Amphibians, Thoughts On Bowling, Schemo, like a bunch of these.

And, you know, friends from other shows, we had people contribute, but it's like, fuck, you know, we need some of these old heads. So I fucking went digging and I got, I got, I got Aaron from Antioch Arrow and Heroin. I got, I got, I got like all of the Jazz June to do it. I got, we got, oh my God.

Amanda Valdivieso (3:16)

Who was?

Robb Laffoon (3:17)

Stratego, like so many, and cool, just, yeah, and record label owners.

Amanda Valdivieso (3:25)

And we had some of our friends in the media. We had Hunter from Saturdays. Yeah. If you guys aren't familiar.

Robb Laffoon (3:30)

Shout out Hunter, shout out Dan Campbell from the Wonder Years.

Amanda Valdivieso (3:34)

Yes.

Robb Laffoon (3:35)

Shout out Fred from Cute Is What We Aim For.

Amanda Valdivieso (3:38)

Thank you, Fred.

Robb Laffoon (3:40)

But, you know, retirement party. But there was a lot of those, you know, Piebald took part.

Amanda Valdivieso (3:45)

Yep.

Robb Laffoon (3:47)

Mark from the Coos Art Center in Orange County. They used to put on like a lot of the 90s Emo and post hardcore shows that would come through Southern California. And, you know, Jason Tate and their staff. Andrew did take part in it.

Amanda Valdivieso (4:00)

Don't forget about Mike from Alt Press.

Robb Laffoon (4:02)

Oh, yeah. Mike Shea from Alternative Press.

Amanda Valdivieso (4:04)

Yeah.

Robb Laffoon (4:05)

The founder of Alternative Press was one of our last people to do it.