More than any other genre, emo music, along with its close cousin pop-punk, captured the bizarre, directionless angst of adolescence in the early 21st century. Stuck in the shadow of global events we were too young to really understand, with new information technologies exploding our social networks, a stage of life that has always been confusing and disorienting was made even more so by the unique circumstances of the era. Emo spoke to that confusion in a unique way, making sense of the senselessness by embracing the duality of teenagehood, where everything is so important but nothing really matters, and that ethos can be found not just in its lyrics, but in its rhythms as well. Let's talk about half-time.