So...anyone who's known me for longer than 12 months knows that something I absolutely cannot stand is a band called My Chemical Romance. You may have heard of them. With "wonderful" hits such as I'm Not Okay (I Promise), Helena and basically everything off the The Black Parade album, and if you grew up in Britain, they were on the cover of Kerrang!, the biggest selling rock magazine and has been for about thirty years at least once every couple of months and in their posters with alarming regularity.
I know my saying how much I cannot stand this bad, or that I would quite happily punch lead singer Gerard Way in the face and have felt that way since about 2004 will get me a lot of hate, but that's okay. However...right now, as a music fan and a compassionate human being, my need to do this has hit levels that I never thought it would hit. Now, allow me to explain.
Yesterday (20 July 2016), social media went completely batty over a video that MCR had released over their Facebook page. And rightful was their reaction; their split had broken their hearts as many have done to others before them, and I have been part of that heartbreak more than once. So to see this teaser video yesterday may have had me rolling my eyes but it most certainly did have possibly millions of people freaking out because something that defined their adolescence was returning. Part of that may have come from the fact so many of them are products of the 90s, where anything that brings the slightest feelings of nostalgia is something to be cherished and held onto for dear life, unlike so much of what we were taught, what we believed as children.
I fully admit that I didn't especially give a damn about the video or what its intentions might be. I was vaguely aware that we were coming on the anniversary of The Black Parade, whose title track I will fully admit is a wonderfully put together piece of music. The album that had Teenagers which I have definitely caught myself singing more than once, But I knew a lot of my friends did and do, so I kept my mouth shut out of respect for that. For them, I hoped they got the news they wanted. Would it be new material? Would it be a tour in celebration of The Black Parade's tenth anniversary? Like I said, I cared because I like to see those I care about happy, and I know a lot of people who adore this band.
And then it happened. I watched it all fall apart.
I...I have nothing. What the actual fuck, guys?! You go to all that effort, doing something you knew was going to cause something like this...for that. To announce that you were re releasing an album for its tenth anniversary. Something that you could have done over social media in a Facebook or Twitter post that would have taken you less time than it did for me to work out how to embed your godforsaken heartbreak of a post in this thing that I so rarely actually use?! Fuck. Just...what the fuck, guys.
Well done. It was never a secret that I dislike you guys, but now you've given me an actual reason beyond "I just don't like their music". Toying with people like that is not, and never, ever will be okay. It's almost as if for these guys it was no different to telling your holiday fling you're going home, but you promise to write occasionally, knowing that you never will - now there's a reference my boy is never going to get, he'll have his holiday flings on social media. Anyway, notes about my boy and the change of the world in the last 15 years isn't what's important here. The important thing is how this is literally breaking thousands of hearts and making them angry. And I don't blame them. Not a jot.
I wanted my friends to be happy. I wanted them, after how fucking horrible this year has been on so many fronts, to have something to look forward to. You know...the year that was terrible before it even started with the death of Lemmy, then carried on with David Bowie and Alan Rickman in less than two weeks of each other. The latter especially, as so many of us know him as a certain snivelling, greasy-haired borderline necrophiliac. I mean right in the childhood for fuck sake. Depending on where you come from, the death toll in pop culture...Britain lost the other half of the Two Ronnies, for example. Again, for Britain and especially Scotland and Northern Ireland, the fact we are now being forced to leave a political agreement that was in our best interest to stay in, The list is almost endless, and they just wanted something to look forward to. Maybe not the heartbreak at not getting tickets that would then sell for £3000 on eBay because people would actually pay money they do not have to see a band that got them through the hardest years of their life.
And they wrecked it. They dealt yet another fucking blow.
That's not okay.
Release your anniversary edition that maybe has a couple of tracks that didn't make the original cut. Enjoy the royalties that come from a re release,,,and enjoy knowing how many hearts your broke in the process.
Congratulations, My Chemical Romance. You made yourselves from a band I just didn't like who happened to have a singer that had (to me) a very punchable face, to a band that I will honestly view as complete arseholes from here until the day I die, who I now have a legitimate reason for wanting to punch in the face. And the worst part of it all is...they're heartbroken. The people whose lives you may or may not have saved, the people whose lives you changed, and the people who adore you because you're you. They're heartbroken because of you, made bitter sweet for you because they will still buy whatever it is you're doing for the anniversary of that album. Because you would rather pay a pretty penny and wait a few weeks than take two minutes to announce your intentions over social media textually.
Enjoy those extra bucks, because you sure as shit don't deserve them.
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