The Get Up Kids

Since 1995 · United States

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Something to Write Home About (1999)

Something to Write Home About takes emo's emotional directness and pairs it with hooks big enough to work on rock radio without losing any of the genre's urgency. "Action & Action" rides a driving, straightforward riff into a chorus built for a room singing along, Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic's dual vocals trading the emotional weight back and forth. The record's polish never comes at the expense of its intensity. It became one of the defining albums of emo's more melodic, pop-facing second wave, and one of the releases that helped define Vagrant Records' identity.

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The Get Up Kids

Something to Write Home About · 1999

The Get Up Kids formed in Kansas City in 1995, part of the wave of emo bands emerging from the American midwest and pairing hardcore-derived urgency with unabashedly melodic, pop-informed songwriting. Vocalists and guitarists Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic built songs around big, straightforward hooks rather than the more abrasive or structurally complex approach of some of their post-hardcore contemporaries, helping to popularize a more accessible, radio-friendly version of emo just as the genre was beginning to reach a wider audience.

Something to Write Home About (1999), released on the newly formed Vagrant Records, became one of the label's flagship releases and one of the defining records of what's often called emo's second wave, its combination of pop-punk energy and genuine emotional directness reaching listeners well beyond the underground scene that produced it. The band's commercial visibility during this period helped open doors for many of the more overtly pop-facing emo bands that followed over the next decade.