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Emotional-punk music's history is highly debatable, both because bands that have been part of the "emo" movement shun the term and try to distance themselves and because there is no clear-cut beginning to or emergence of the movement itself.
Most emo-privy people mark the emergence of the genre as being in 1984, when the band Rites of Spring began playing in Washington, D.C. In a surprising deviation from standard punk music, the RoS lead singer produced heavily emotion-laden lyrics, dangerously exposing himself and his personal feelings in each song. There was no precedent for this sort of direct vulnerability, with the closest comparable exposure being country/western music, in which singers lamented about dying dogs and insufferable in-laws. However, emo made the pain even more personal, as the singers exposed not those around them but themselves through their heart-wrenching tales of woe.
