From the grungy, melodious punk of I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love to the stadium-soaring Queen-rock opera of The Black Parade — few bands managed to re-invent themselves so many times over the course of just four albums as My Chemical Romance did.
Gerard Way and co. eschewed the confines of the “emo” label pretty much the second that they had set the parameters for it, and spent their 10 years together proving that they were a rock band like no other.
I’ve set myself the difficult task of ranking their songs (exlcuding B-sides and bonus tracks) from worst to best. This is what I came up with:
48. Interlude
It wouldn’t be very fair on any of MCR’s other songs, even the shakier ones, to stick them behind an interlude on a league table — so we’ll kick it off here. Interlude is bookended by The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You and Thank You For The Venom, a respite in the middle of a two-act play that never really changes in theme nor energy, thereby raising questions as to the real need for an interlude at all. Does what it says on the track listing though.
Well done, Interlude, now run along you little scamp.
47. Romance
As far as tracks that aren’t really songs go, Romance is a little bit better than Interlude. Interlude has a moan-y sort of vocal thing going on that Romance just breezes straight past with some staticky Spanish guitar that kicks off the album in a creepy, cinematic fashion.
46. Party Poison
This is the kind of song that you’d write if you’d only been allowed to listened to the music from car commercials growing up. Genericsville, USA. Perhaps the only song MCR ever recorded that you lose literally nothing by skipping.
45. Cancer
Based on a Venn Diagram of everything that My Chemical Romance knew they were good at, and everything they knew that their fans enjoyed, they never really needed to write this song.
Cancer, a song which featured nothing more than Way’s vocals and accompaniment on the piano, relied heavily on the emotional investment of the listener to really stir up any kind of feeling at all.
Where the band was uniquely inventive within punk-rock, their attempt at a piano-ballad felt almost surprisingly straightforward and forgettable.
44. SING
Despite their unrelentingly morbid lyrics, Gerard Way had always insisted that MCR’s mission was to save lives and help people. By the time the band had grown up and dropped Danger Days, this message had become a lot more explicit in their music.
Perhaps at the loss of somepoetry and passion, MCR finally released a forced, fist-pumping feel-good pseudo-anthem for people a lot younger than their original fanbase, complete with lyrics like “Sing it for the boys, sing it for the girls, sing it for the deaf, sing it for the blind” — it was all a bit Michael Jackson’s Earth Song.
43. Planetary (Go!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvfNmXbVHi4Oftentimes when a band starts their career as one thing, it’s likely because that thing reflects what they grew up listening to and their own tastes in music. MCR unexpectedly careening into disco was never going to be without teething problems, but the key frustration of Planetary (Go!) was that it wasted one of the finest bridges that MCR have ever written on a song that didn’t deserve one. “You keep eternity, give us the radio,” is also one hell of a line.
If nothing else, Planetary (Go!) is evidence that MCR couldn’t really write a bad song if they tried — because sometimes, they were trying. Planetary (Go!) is a phenomenal song hidden in an average song, which makes it all the more annoying.
42. Sleep
Sleep has ended up so low on this list because of how much it asks of the listener despite delivering very little, a little like Cancer. The majority of the 45-second intro is Gerard Way describing some kind of sleep paralysis on a loop before the guitars and drums kick in in earnest.
Though the song is pretty compelling emotionally and lyrically, the chorus dithers on one syllable in a way that’s a lot more droney and less dynamic than your typical MCR fare. After the second chorus there’s a 90-second outro meaning that the song is like 50% not-song at all.
41. Disenchanted
If you really want to make it in the mainstream, you can’t just conquer the left-field — you’ve also got to prove you have what it takes in the middle of the road. For all its flamboyant pageantry, The Black Parade was certainly designed to come across as a more mature My Chem.
The price that the band and their fans paid for this was a handful of bland ballads that probably did a lot for the parent demographic MCR had previously frightened away with their eyeliner.
40. The Sharpest Lives
The Sharpest Lives, following hot on the heels of This Is How I Disappear, was evidence of a far sharper sound for the band (yeah, pun intended, what do you want?). A lot of the distortion and wayward yelps of feedback were sacrificed in favour of guitars that U2 would probably be pleased with. That might not sound like a criticism, but it was quite a departure from MCR’s earlier work and sounded a little bit more polished than seasoned fans were used to.
The track earns major bonus points, though, for being probably the horniest song Gerard ever wrote: “Juliet loves the beat and the lust it commands, drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo.” Yes, sir.
39. Destroya
Destroya might be the only song on MCR’s final album that would have fit on I Brought You My Bullets just as comfortably. On an album that dialled down the trademark aggression by several notches, Destroya had the kind of defiant kicking and screaming that first lured fans who were at peak-hormonal imbalance when Bullets and Three Cheers were released.
The anthemic chorus harkens back to the “never-take-me-alive” spirit of the debut album and stands out nicely against the rest of Danger Days which often went a bit overboard on the synths and disco rock riffs.
38. Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_492D-tLAMy Chemical Romance took risks from the get-go. Despite the album being largely based around infectious vocal melodies and fuzzy guitars (and no small measure of screaming where appropriate), Bullets opened with dark, slow, grinding music and a mumbled, messy first verse. MCR pretty much always banked on their listeners to stay with them until the pay-off, which often came in the form of Gerard Way delivering the exact right words the exact right way.
On Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us, this moment comes when Gerard slips out of the shouted verse and into some singing pretty, his voice losing its edge as he croons: “And you can cry all you want to I don’t-“ one beat and the edge is back “-care how much you’ll invest yourself in me,” and everything feels right.
37. Our Lady Of Sorrows
MCR loved the Misfits growing up, but generally it seemed as though Gerard was too concerned with soaring vocal melodies to really embrace some screechy gutter-punk.
Our Lady Of Sorrows was probably the closest MCR ever came to writing a song specifically for the mosh crowd and even the grungy feel of the track gave way to some Thin Lizzy twin guitars at the end. This is also responsible for the peak-MCR line: “Oh how wrong we were to think that immortality meant never dying.”
36. Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back
Gerard Way’s vocals on Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back are only 50% Way — the rest is pure Billy Corgan on Zeitgeist (a thoroughly underrated album). The My Chems commitment to ‘na-na-na’ rock on their final album may have felt a little filler-y at times but this song’s twisting guitars and scorching solo make it a stomper. It’s the kind of performance that Ned Schneebly from School of Rock would call “a facemelter.”
Special mention for the strong Coheed & Cambria vibes on this song, and lines like “We can live forever if you’ve got the time… I’m the only friend that makes you cry.” If there’s one MCR song you only need to listen to the second-half of, this is it.
35. This Is How I Disappear
When it was released, the intro to This Is How I Disappear sounded a lot like what Afi were doing on Decemberundergound, which felt a little disappointing at the time given that MCR’s first two albums were unlike anything else in the mainstream. 11 years later and taken on its own, This Is How I Disappear is a great song in its own right.
Even when your music doesn’t necessarily stand out, proclamations like “There’s things that I have done you never should ever know” can really breathe life into a song.
34. The End.
The brief introduction to The Black Parade features Gerard Way as the androgynous 1930s carnival barker he absolutely was in a previous life. Way knew perfectly how to play each role he cast himself in, and in The Black Parade’s opener he was in full-effect.
Special mention for the closing line: “When I grow up I want to be nothing at all.” The song might be too short to match the impact of the rest of the band’s back catalogue, but as a quick curtains-up, it can’t be faulted.
33. Hang ’Em High
When Gerard Way took emo to meet the wild, wild west he probably didn’t expect the two would fuse so comfortably. Hang ’Em High begins with a spaghetti western whistle before the vocals start screaming and the guitars start shredding.
32. S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W
“Everybody hide your body from the scarecrow”: My Chemical Romance’s forays into the mainstream were just about always tempered by Gerard Way’s insistence on staying aggressively on-message when it came to the weird-ass concept of the albums.
Tracks like this one suggest that the further MCR had continued, the more completely Gerard Way would have transitioned into Billy Corgan on Real Love or Perfect.
31. Vampires Will Never Hurt You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1FHpCs8tD4In the early 2000s, other very capable East Coast pop-punk bands like Taking Back Sunday and Brand New were proving that you could make a name for yourself by writing and recording 11 songs about the same ex-girlfriend and then getting the hell out of the studio.
Vampires Will Never Hurt You was perhaps the best example that MCR had more of an edge than their peers not only musically, but also thematically.
30. Give ’Em Hell, Kid
“We are young and we don’t care/ Your dreams and your hopeless hair/ We never wanted it to be this way for all our lives,” always suggested an interesting self-awareness about the self-pity inherent to emo lyrics. Gerard’s androgynous “don’t I look pretty walking down the street in the best damn dress I own?” the valley-girl “A-wuh-oh”s.
It was like somebody took Clueless and ran it through Instagram’s emo filter. Which is pretty much how it felt to be a teenager in the 2000s for a lot of people.
29. Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IUBy the time MCR dropped their fourth album, gone were the over-the-top titles that were maybe cramming a little bit too much of “the vision” into a small space. Danger Days opened on the other end of the spectrum. Na Na Na was a Ronseal job, doing exactly what it said on the tin, non-descript car-chase rock ’n’ roll.
Sometimes there’s a lot to be said for verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus music, though Way can’t help himself from including a messianic monologue here for good measure.
28. You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison
You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison is the first, and perhaps the best, example of Gerard Way’s penchant for vaudevillian vamping. Hamming up his performance as a prisoner in the second verse, you’d have to say that Gerard was acting as much as he was singing.
It’s that showmanship that left MCR utterly separated from the rest of the bands with whom they’d have otherwise shared a genre — much in the way that Freddie Mercury turned Queen from a group of wonderful musicians into an experience. Guys Like Us was the epitome of Gerard Way taking a song and turning it into a story, told by a master craftsman.
27. Ghost Of You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUpvTMis-YLike Helena, Ghost Of You’s reputation has likely been plumped a bit by the another fantastic music video that depicted the band as World War II soldiers (spoiler: Mikey Way is shot dead while his older brother helplessly watches on). Ghost Of You is the only big ballad of Three Cheers, and the mid-verse high-note riffing is reminiscent of Early Sunsets Over Monroeville.
It occupies a weird space on the album, following I’m Not OK — the only song on the album that’s actually set in the real world. The vocals on the chorus ring clear and haunting as a church bell and the wails at the breakdown sound like waves crashing against a shore with the full force of Matt Pelissier’s drums behind them. Ghost Of You was the only song of its kind on Three Cheers, and they nailed it.
26. I Don’t Love You
The next time you listen to I Don’t Love You, as the opening riff dies out and you prepare yourself for the vocals, do your very best to block out Gerard Way’s voice and try your best to imagine Liam Gallagher singing the lyrics. It comes an awful lot easier than you might thing.
That most of MCR’s best songs are fast-paced and energetic is no accident, but raw emotion, lyrical prowess and the six-stringed virtuosity of Ray Toro was enough to turn what could have been a boring ballad into a gut-punch worthy of Oasis at their most poignant.
25. The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Way’s vox never sounded smoother than on the verses for Jetset Life, accompanied by church organ. Of course, the edge came back in full force once he was howling the “give up, get down” chorus. It should be noted that MCR’s attempts on Danger Days of making a dance track all paled in comparison to this song.
You don’t always need a drum machine to make people want to dance, sometimes you just need to shoot at their feet.
24. Famous Last Words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbTtPL1jRsMCR were no strangers to reinvention, performing their third album as a fictional band called The Black Parade and their fourth and final album as The Fabulous Killjoys. Famous Last Words, however, feels like the final song written by the first iteration of My Chemical Romance. Over three albums blighted by sorrow and driven by anger, Famous Last Words was as triumphant an anthem as they come –– those final few bars confirming that MCR was never about winning, but about living.
Though the chorus was a little clichéd, there’s no mistaking its power and the breakdown (“awake and unafraid, asleep or dead”), well, it’s hard to think of another frontman who put so much of himself into a performance. A grand finale indeed.
23. The Only Hope For Me Is You
MCR tried their hand at a few ballads on The Black Parade but it took until The Only Hope For Me Is You for the band to find their comfort level. The Only Hope For Me Is You matched Disenchanted for mass appeal but had a sound far truer to MCR’s origins. No stilted acoustic riffs or big stadium chords hanging for a whole bar.
This ballad doesn’t sacrifice energy or emotion for the big chorus. Where Disenchanted sounded tired, Only Hope is pleading and defiant all at once.
The song also contains a nice reference to “purifying flame” — a phrase Gerard used on the Sister To Sleep demo that came out around the same time as their first album. Glad he found a use for it eventually.
22. Teenagers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6EQAOmJrbwThe Black Parade was unquestionably the rock ’n’ roll equivalent of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. After a certain point, it was as if Gerard Way throwing darts at a cork-board labelled with various genres to step into and artists to emulate. Teenagers is an anthem that unmistakably owes a lot to the glam-rock of T. Rex, though it is also inevitably Chemical, as with all things the group ever put their name too.
No matter how hard Ray Toro shredded through that seventies solo, there’s no mistaking “If you’re troubled and hurt what you got under your shirt will make them pay for the things that they did.” There aren’t many other bands so ready to get so sinister so playfully.
21. It’s Not A Fashion Statement It’s A Fucking Deathwish
The older one gets, the more likely one might be to cringe at Gerard’s opening monologue at the start of It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Fucking Deathwish. Probably more likely to cringe at the song’s lengthy title too. It’s the kind of song title that if you were listening to the song and someone asked what you were listening to, you’d probably just lie.
Fashion Statement rocks though, particularly once Way’s vocals are left alone with the drums, but it suffers for coming after To The End, Thank You For The Venom and Hang ’Em High. Coming so late in the album (11th of 13 tracks) it doesn’t do as much as the two tracks that follow it to stand out. It hurts to have it so low down, so that’s the reason I’ve confabulated.
20. Helena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCCyoocDxBAHelena, as a song, was undeniably aided by the eminently watchable music video that came with it — perhaps especially for teenagers who’d grown up being dragged to mass and dreaming that an impromptu gothic flashmob would break out in front of the altar during a guest-sermon from Gerard Way.
The 11-o’clock number chorus hinted at the kind of songwriting Gerard would produce in future, and if comic book writing doesn’t work out the man surely has good prospects as a composer on Broadway.
19. Summertime
By their fourth album, MCR were proficient in turning themes like vampires, bloody revenge, cancer and apocalyptic wastelands into unavoidably radio-friendly rock.
Summertime was never released as a single, but if it had been it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t have outsold, say, SING, which peaked at 58 on the US Billboard Chart. While Gerard kept his verge-of-tears vocal delivery, the song’s vibe is uncharacteristically chilled out — with a tone and structure that probably owes a lot to Smashing Pumpkins 1979. Which, to be fair, is a great song to borrow from.
18. Bulletproof Heart
The second track on Danger Days, Bulletproof Heart pretty much confirmed that MCR would be keeping The Black Parade’s polished, tightened sound rather than going back to the fret-sliding feedback-drowned style of their first two albums. They had also kicked the optimism-metre up a notch once more.
Following Na Na Na on the track listing, Bulletproof Heart was another instalment of pretty stadium rock that isn’t a million miles from Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel. It would almost be straightforward if it weren’t for Gerard Way’s propensity for “We ain’t gonna be the ones left standing” dose of demagoguery.
17. House Of Wolves
House Of Wolves was a song built around a simple and frequently-used blues chord progression that everyone has heard a million times over — perhaps most famously on Merle Travis’ 16 Tonnes. Of course, MCR play it like they’re the backing band for Satan in Charlie Daniel’s The Devil went down to Georgia, while Gerard howls like an oversexed, lapsed preacher, so it’s still pretty special.
I don’t know if a Catholic upbringing makes this song all the more potent but if it does then it was worth eating all that communion.
16. Demolition Lovers
Demolition Lovers is a microcosm of MCR’s ambition and vision. A six-minute closer to a 10-track debut album on an indie label, the song starts a mess of drizzly melancholy and nasal vocals before building to a crescendo, cutting out, starting again, diving into a minute-long guitar solo and ending to the song with three layers of vocals singing about being gunned down in the desert. If nothing else, you have to admire the concept.
Luckily, Gerard Way and Ray Toro combine so well whether it’s haunting vocals over finger-picking or tortured howls over shredding that everything always fits like a bullet in a chamber.
15. The Kids From Yesterday
Given that it’s the final studio album track we might ever hear from the band, The Kids From Yesterday really didn’t have any job other than to be poignant as fuck — a criterion it meets with relish.
It’s hard to imagine that Gerard wasn’t writing with a pretty definite sense of finality when he chose to end Danger Days with “You only live forever in the light you make… You only hear the music when your heart begins to break, now we are the kids from yesterday.”
It’s a shimmering song, reflective rather than reactive, and a stellar way to cap off the My Chems final act.
14. Cubicles
Lyrically, Cubicles will go down in history as the biggest ever overreaction to a short-lived unrequited office romance. The lyrics pretty explicitly and repeatedly refer to a coworker the singer fell in love with who eventually left the office, causing the singer to conclude that “This happens all the time and I can’t help but think I’ll die alone.” Which would be really easy to make fun of if it wasn’t so damn relatable. Every day life taken to its catastrophically emo peak. You have to respect the commitment. You win again, My Chemical Romance.
13. Cemetery Drive
The verses of Cemetery Drive offer MCR fans something that they don’t get to see very often: Gerard reduced to a whisper. This quiet-loud dynamic only makes it all the more earth-shattering when Matt Pellissier’s drums kick in and tear the walls down.
It might be the most romantic song that MCR ever penned, from the hushed openings to the “Way down” breakdown overwrought with longing. This is the angst equivalent of mainlining morphine and my God is it sweet.
12. Thank You For The Venom
Thank You For The Venom’s vaguely militaristic tone probably owns a lot of the credit for steeling the zealous devotion of My Chemical Romance fans. To this day, anyone who ever counted themselves as a die-hard MCR fans will likely to defend them to death, and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that the band really made fans feel as though they were fighting against something (whatever that something was was pretty much open to interpretation).
“Give me all your poison and give me all your pills, give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill” sounded like Gerard giving himself up for his fans, and his fans took this message to heart, lionising him as something between a father figure and messiah.
11. This Is The Best Day Ever
If this were a list of My Chemical Romance’s most underrated songs, This Is The Best Day Ever might just snag the number one spot. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone else about this song, or ever had anyone bring it up in the many conversations I have had about My Chemical Romance. Most songs from I Brought You My Bullets (eg Headfirst For Halos, Skylines And Turnstiles, Early Sunsets, Vampires Will Never Hurt You and Demolition Lovers) come with big reputations, quotable lyrics and catchy riffs.
This Is The Best Day Ever clocks in at two minutes and 14 seconds, with no chorus to speak of. It’s a mad dash of a song, which is all the more fitting since it’s about a couple escaping from a hospital — and it gathers pace as the story progresses, with the vocals going from staccatic syllables to squeezing every inch of life out of “Well I thought I heard you to say to me…” It’s a mischievous moment of hope on a dark album, and it was desperately needed.
10. Welcome To The Black Parade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRKJiM9Njr8As bands like Metro Station and All Time Low began to take pop-punk in an increasingly safe and uninventive direction, My Chemical Romance did the very opposite. While their first two albums had proven that the band feared neither pageantry nor guitar-solo, The Black Parade took the band’s commitment to bombast to the next level.
The titular lead single did a lot of the work with the opening notes and libretto that would have made infinitely more sense in a Broadway show before a big finale that Queen would have been proud of, with the pop-punk part of the the song taking up about two minutes in the middle.
The band had sacrificed not a whit of energy nor electricity to accommodate their new vision, and sighs of relief were breathed into stripy, fingerless gloves everywhere.
9. Skylines And Turnstiles
No matter how how much Queen, Black Flag or The Smiths leaked into MCR’s sound, they were always quite literally a post 9/11 band. Way witnessed the September 11th attack while on a ferry to work and immediately went home, wrote Skylines and Turnstiles and started piecing together My Chemical Romance. A few months later the album was recorded.
Skylines and Turnstiles is a great tune, but it’s hard to listen to it and not think that it set the whole tone for the band’s 11 years. Good a song as any to start to your band with.
8. Dead!
The Black Parade was heavy record. Cancer patients, war vets, “bodies in the streets.” It’s funny then that the most fun record on the whole track would be the one that deals with death most directly. Mortality stared you down from every track on the album but Dead! had the decency to turn it into one big joke with some party pop-punk that sounded like Andrew WK telling you your cancer is terminal.
There’s also a bit in the guitar solo that sounds like Woody Woodpecker laughing. Bonus points for however Ray Toro worked out how to do that.
7. I Never Told You What I Do For A Living
Three Cheers’ explosive finale is not an anthem. It’s frantic pace and shifts in tempo don’t lend themselves to being played live as well as, say, Thank You For The Venom or To The End… The album ends in a pile of mangled feedback Gut-wrenched and breathless, and so unforgettably real. MCR proved that not every emo song had to read like an open-letter to your ex-girlfriend.
I Never Told You What I Do For A Living was a violent, waltzing, cascading climax to a journey — Gerard Way took all of his raw feeling and created something lasting, a genuine story, and put the rest of the genre to shame while he was at it.
6. I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhZTNgAs4FcIf ever a song encapsulated a whole movement… I’m Not Okay was the pinnacle of smartmouth adolescent aggro, the flagship store for emo right slap bang in the middle of Times Square.
The movie-trailer music video for I’m Not Okay came with title cards — “If you ever felt ashamed/angry/used” — it was emo for everybody, emo on demad, the wuh-oh-piate of the masses. I’m Not Okay catapulted MCR into the stratosphere with emo on its back.
5. To The End
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYCvuBbWj0YRay Toro proved himself time and again to be the ace up Gerard Way’s sleeve. Though the lead singer was a fine song-writer with an undeniable knack for melody, the band’s big-haired guitarist was able to pull out riffs and solos that simply weren’t the traditional fare within a genre that generally preferred the safety of four-chords followed by a brief key change.
Toro’s guitar solos on To The End, Thank You For The Venom and I’m Not OK added a uniqueness that a band can only achieve when allowed to explore the full potential of their instruments.
The blistering solo peeling away into the powerful, immersive harmonies of the final chorus is the kind of thing that Hawthorne Heights or whoever else could only dream of producing.
4. Headfirst For Halos
Listening to Headfirst For Halos as an adult, it’s hard not to be impressed and stricken by the sheer intimacy of the lyrics. Headfirst For Halos has aged like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
There’s an argument to be made that younger fans might not have developed the perspective to interpret such an up-close look at suicidal thoughts, but those fans, now in their twenties and thirties must be impressed by the nakedness of the pain on show here.
All that coupled with Ray Toro’s finest Slash impression at the start of the song, and Headfirst For Halos is just another MCR song that no other band could have written.
3. Drowning Lessons
Strip away all of the bombast, wipe off all the eyeliner, forget everything you know about My Chemical Romance — and you have Drowning Lessons. No matter what the venue, no matter your tastes, this is a song that anyone can rock out to, a song that anyone can dance to, a song that anyone can drive too fast to. MCR were often cerebral, often asking the listener to engage with their play. Drowning Lessons asks nothing and gives all.
2. Early Sunsets Over Monroeville
Early Sunsets Over Monroeville is Frank Iero’s finest moment, and if your rhythm guitarist is having a good game then your whole team is having a good game.
Iero joined the band with just two songs left to record on I Brought You My Bullets. The band had recorded the rough draft of Early Sunsets already when Iero took the recording into a van and wrote a second, distinct melody on guitar to run alongside the vocals, doubling the impact and beauty of the song.
Way’s vocals also stand out as an aberration on the track. Where Gerard’s voice is usually strained by sheer passion, Early Sunsets is slow, sweet and subtle in a way that the band never actually captured again — making it all the more memorable.
1. Mama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEvLye15sq0First things first: if you put Liza Minnelli on a pop-punk track, that song is immediately issued a first-class, one-way ticket to your band’s top five, no questions asked.
Mama is pretty much the pinnacle of Gerard’s development as a songwriter, demonstrating fully his transition from a kid who mostly wrote about vampires and killing the undead to a guy who could write a stomping accordion-punk song featuring vocals from an undisputed icon of musical theatre like it was nothing.
Mama proved that Gerard Way was as much Steven Sondheim as he was Freddie Mercury as he was Glenn Danzig, and made it impossible to question the musical importance of My Chemical Romance.
