Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo

While pundits bemoan the death of the music industry and decry teenagers for their morals, earnest, heartfelt bands like Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, and Thursday are quietly selling hundreds of thousands of albums through dedication, relentless touring and respect for their fans. This relationship--between young people and the empathetic music that sets them off down a road of self-discovery and self-definition--is emo, a much-maligned, misunderstood term that has existed for nearly two decades, but has flourished only recently. Here, Andy Greenwald makes the case for emo as more than a genre--it's an essential rite of teenagehood. From the '80s to the '00s, from the basement to the stadium, and from the diary to the computer screen, he narrates the story of emo from the inside out and explores the way this movement is taking shape in real time and with real hearts on the line.--From publisher description.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.