In the scheme of rock-band careers, emo-posterboys My Chemical Romance enjoyed a relatively precipitous climb, forming in the wake of 9/11 and achieving mainstream commercial success and stardom with only their second studio album, 2003’s platinum-selling “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge”.
Wishing to encapsulate their rise to fame in the music video for “The Kids From Yesterday”, the final single from their 2010 album “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys”, the band reportedly stumbled across a retrospecive YouTube video (embedded below) put together by 21-year-old super-fan Emily Eisemann and, clearly impressed, subsequently hired the New Yorker to direct the official “Yesterday” music video.
The result is a clip that uses documentary footage to depict the band’s journey from their early days as an “underground” act to international superstardom, and it will no doubt be adored by the concept-happy group’s legion of worshipful fans.
For anyone who isn’t already a convert and/or never will be, on the other hand, the video will likely come off as one long, unabashed hagiography in video form, with the eye-rolling pronouncement – “ART IS THE WEAPON. Your imagination is the ammunition. Stay dirty, and stay dangerous. Create and Destroy as you see fit” – flashing across the screen near the very end of the clip – as if the words “dirty” and “dangerous” have anything to do with a band that’s made a career out of crafting blatantly commercial pop-rock anthems built for giant stadiums. For the record, that’s not a knock on the band’s music – only Gerard Way and co.’s disingenuous conflation of it with words that frankly don’t apply to what they do.
But hey, MCR fans will love the video, so there you go. I doubt the band made this for anyone else to begin with.
My grade for the video: B-. After watching it below, you can rate it for yourself at top left!
Eisemann’s original YouTube video: