Quite a few bands have hooks that sort of sound Emo, even though (virtually) no one would consider them to be emo.
A shout out/honorable mention goes to these:
Flickerstick. With Love we Will Survive and Coke would totally be considered emo if they were just sped up twice as fast.
Smells like Teen Spirit. You know of what I speak. Again, the two-note repeated hook before the verses, if done today, would probably be slightly more “major-sounding” and higher-pitched.
Keane, Someplace only We Know (?) One of the few instances of a genuine emo hook – in singing! Anyway, it gets the shoo-in because the melody of the chorus’s hook nearly makes me cry like the hooks of only a few songs do (and they are all emo or Pink Floyd), and I don’t even know the words!
But the winner is: Such Great Heights, the Postal Service. You don’t know how many times I’ve started humming something by the Promise Ring or Modest Mouse only to have it turn into Such Great Heights!
Speaking of Keane (hey, I can do this, I’m the OP!) they are one of the few bands whom I’ve looked up in IMDB and the bands they list that are similar to them are spot on: Snow Patrol and Starsailor. Now, I could take or leave Starsailor and I’d go to see Snow Patrol if they were playing for free across the street from me, so now that I think that they are alike, I don’t have high hopes for the rest of Keane’s songs, even though that is the best new song I’ve heard in two years. Please tell me their other stuff’s good too!
The whole “Hopes and Fears” album by Keane is great, actually. I’m honestly surprised that “Somewhere Only We Know” is the hit it is here in America … there is one other track that is OBVIOUSLY more catchy (and better, in my opinion) than that, and another that is a bit catchier and more single-worthy. I recommend checking it out.
To be fair, though, I have no idea what an “emo” sound is. I just know some bands I like are called emo while other bands I like aren’t. I just shrug.
Well, now that you mention it, “Eleanor Rigby” is the earliest example I can think of of what I call the “New Wave Whine”, exemplified in such songs as:
Valerie Loves Me
Best Looking Boys
Where you going with that ub40 in your hand (or whatever that bangles song is.)
Endless Squeeze songs
(the whine is a slight falsetto, such as: Eleanor Rigby, puts on a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.) And it’s certainly one component of emo, although not qualified to put a song in that category by myself.
(I’m not a big categorical person. I like what I like. I’m just doing this for fun.)
Huh? The Beatles made music derived from injecting open emotion into hardcore punk?
Or, no, surely you can’t want to pretend the Beatles invented emotion in music.
Why this zeal to pretend everything originated with the Beatles? I’m surprised they’re not also credited with inventing the guitar, the E minor chord, the concept of having drums in a song. Oh, and I’ve heard that before John Lennon met Paul McCartney it was seen as affront to the gods to have people sing and play an instrument at the same time.