It’s not often I’ll admit in public that I like this band, but I’ll make an exception for a 9/11 post.

My Chemical Romance is a band that was born on 9/11. Not the lineup or even the concept, but the emotion that was driving Gerard Way through the whole thing:

“I didn’t see the planes hit. I did see the buildings go down, from I’d say fairly close. It was like being in a science fiction film or some kind of disaster film—it was exactly that kind of feeling. You didn’t believe it. You felt like you were in Independence Day. It made no sense. Your brain couldn’t process it. And for me it was a little different. I’m very empathetic and I’m kind of a conduit emotionally, so I pick up a lot of stuff in that way. There was about three- or four-hundred people around me—and I was right at the edge. All these people behind me, they all had friends and family in those buildings. I didn’t. So when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off. It was like just this emotion and it made you nauseous.”

The thing about MCR is that their sound so perfectly encapsulates a certain feeling, and articulates it in a way that makes sense. I’m sure there were a few kids who were drawn into a dark path from their music, but for the most part people started listening to them because MCR accurately represented how they felt.

This was the first song that Gerard Way wrote for MCR, btw:

Steel corpses stretch out
Towards an ending sun, scorched and black
It reaches in and tears your flesh apart
As ice cold hands rip into your heart

That’s if you’ve still got one life left
Inside that cave you call a chest
And after seeing what we saw
Can we still reclaim our innocence?
And if the world needs something better
Let’s give them one more reason, now

The weird mix of innocence and gore that twists through all MCR songs was there at the beginning.

9/11 wasn’t the only thing that influenced Gerard Way. It was just the catalyst. He was into horror movies and comic books, one of those weird hulky goth kids in high school. Horror pop music (or “kiddie emo” according to the music snobs) was a natural fit for someone with his emotional sensibilities and dramatic flair. And he took that flair to the extreme.

There are a lot of things surrounding MCR that you can take issue with, but sincerity is not one of them.

The reason that I posit that MCR is a 9/11 band is because of this song:

It was one of the lead songs from their last full album. I listened to it for a weekend solid (no lie). At this point. Gerard Way is married, has a kid, kicked alcoholism and has written and recorded an album that failed to capture the “emotion” that MCR’s first three albums did.

This album was more like a message to the future, like what he would tell his daughter as she grew up.

Anyway, the lyrics go:

Where, where will we stand?
When all the lights go out
Across these city streets
Where were you when
All of the embers fell
I still remember there
Covered in ash
Covered in glass
Covered in all my friends
I still
Think of the bombs they built

His hope is in his daughter, in the children of the future…but it’s still hope.*

Between these two bookends lies the bulk of MCR’s career. Much like fiction, there’s the inciting incident, and the epilogue. The turn at the end that shows that the emotional journey is over–the true end of the story.

MCR’s last album, Danger Days, isn’t quite like the other albums. It’s still story-driven, like an auditory comic book, but this time the story is cartoonish, full of color and energy. When you listen to “The Only Hope for Me is You,” you know why.

At some point, Gerard ran out of on-brand stories to tell. The darkness that had been driving with him fell away.

We all have points in our lives that change everything, especially regarding death and destruction. Mine came a few years later, when I was in college, but I can only imagine what it would be like to be even mildly empathetic or intuitive and be around NYC that day. I can understand why someone would react like this.

Overactive imaginations R us.

*That’s not to say there wasn’t hope in any of MCR’s other albums. Bruh have you listened to “Famous Last Words“?