I recently listened to "The Sharpest Lives" with high quality headphones and fell in absolute love with the vocal doubling leading to a point of contrapuntal melody and the harmonisation it creates. The way it's then married up in the pre-chorus before dropping out in the chorus to give Gerard's voice more presence is such a phenomenal way to approach vocal effects - I am vastly tired of people denigrating My Chemical Romance's contribution to music because they absolutely deserve credit. They're not The Beatles but they still presided over a hugely important era of 2000s music and their music is just absolutely fantastic! The complexity in their songwriting and especially Ray Toro's guitar playing is sublime. The amount of influences they draw from between genuine post-hardcore to Queen stylised operatic rock is unusually large and rich, and if they aren't good or worthwhile music then I don't know what is.
I've been toying around with the idea of earning things in music lately, the idea that to do gratifying and explosive in songs you really need to set them up properly so that they feel earnt and not just contrived, and MCR are one of the pop bands with the greatest understanding of their own music to understand exactly when and where they have earnt their own music and I think that in itself earns them high acclaim. The solo in "I'm Not Okay is an awesome example of that - its such a small little moment but the smallest of pauses Ray gives before he starts soloing is just exquisite, because it gives the solo section the effect of being a breakdown as well as a solo, and it makes the whole passage which is just a pretty operatic and basic guitar solo so much weight that it wouldnt have had if they didnt pay that much attention to their own songwriting. sensitive songwriting is one of the most important skills in music and i think MCR are an awesome band to bring attention to it to a wider audience because i genuinely think the main reason they're so critically acclaimed is just because they understand their audience and their own music so well; you can usually track it via a bands growth too and mcr grew so much from their first album to Black Parade. I really think that there is an mcr album for everyone on account of it
Other mcr moments I point out as being absolutely amazing songwriting:
- The melodic singing in the pre-chorus of "Thank You for the Venom" which leads so perfectly into an anthemic and harmonious chorus.
- The emotion imbued into "WELL IT DID" in "It's not a Fashion Statement it's a Deathwish" adding so much interest and staying power to what is already a drawn out run to the verse section - acknowledging where the song needs to be picked up!
- The vocal sampling in "Party Poison" so perfectly frames the atmosphere of the song, and lampshades how much Gerard was influenced by other bands that pursued a similar sample heavy approach.
- The slow, self-indulgent spoken word part of "Na na na" could be considered contrived if it wasn't placed so perfectly and with such a degree of verbosity and emotion in Gerard's voice making it so perfect.
- Where "Sleep" is essentially a rock opera song, the Nirvana/Pixies "start/stop" approach it has keeps a lot of the interest there where one part on it's own may be a little boring/
-The line "mass convulsions strike the choir, by the grace of god" in "Hang 'Em High" is so well enunciated and delivered powerfully, right before the chorus, that it provides it's own transition into the fairly driven and anthemic chorus from a fairly understated verse section.
MCR are truly just one of the gods of modern pop songwriting and they need to be appreciated for it.