It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Taylor Swift loves emo. Respectfully, you don’t write lyrics like “If I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?“ and “I might be okay, but I’m not fine at all” if you didn’t have at least a couple screamy songs in your music library growing up. Nevertheless, the internet is absolutely buzzing thanks to a New York Times interview where she confirmed it for us once again.

“I was the most intensely impacted by emo music,” Taylor tells NYT. “Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba, Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz’s lyrics — how they take a common phrase and then they just twist the knife on it.” She also cites FOB’s “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” and Dashboard’s “Hands Down” with the same enthusiasm many of us probably had when we were 14 and explaining to our parents why these bands were THEE POETS OF OUR GENERATION: “I would be reading the lyrics, and I’d finish reading a line and just go, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Taylor’s emo fandom hasn’t exactly been a secret all these years. I mean, she’s collabed with Brendon Urie, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore, and she organizes Dashboard sing-alongs in her spare time. Also, never forget the time she played a corpse with a lip ring on CSI.

We’re not so different, us emo freaks and Taylor. Did we not all grow up on the same internet in the 2000s? Did we not all yearn to cure the itch of our teenage angst brushing up against Bush-era politics? Did we not all watch the same MTV video countdowns? Did we not all have a Hot Topic in our malls? I digress. But it’s not just her. From Billie Eilish to Miley Cyrus, our pop artists have been pretty open about their pop punk proclivities.

I bet you’d be hard pressed to find any who don’t like some emo, but for now, here are the stars who’ve shouted their love from the rooftops.

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Maybe there’s a reason Charli believes the dance floor is dead. Is her upcoming rock album secretly an emo album?

Charli has been open about her passion for groups like Siouxsie and the Banshees, punk shows, and “. Back in 2014, when she was still getting her start, she said she wanted her shows to feel more like punk shows than pop shows. And last year, as she explained her collab with (of course) Converse, she looked back with fondness on her “emo phase.”

“Avril Lavigne used to wear them a lot, and the bands I was listening to around that time,” she said. “I definitely went through my Sum 41 phase, and the shoe was always around in that scene.” No kidding. Will Charli XCX be performing at Warped Tour in 2027? We can only hope so.

You know it’s serious when you credit the person you are today to emo’s “motherfucking princess.”

A devout Avril Lavigne fan, Billie has cited Avril as a major inspiration. “‘Complicated’? Fire. ‘I’m With You’? Fire. ‘Sk8er Boi’? Fire.” Want to see just how deep this runs? Here’s a video of Billie geeking out over Avril for 10 straight minutes. Sure, Billie has also expressed a deep admiration for pop punk legends Green Day, but something tells me Avril will always be No. 1.

You knew she was gonna be in here, and not just because songs like “good 4 u” have clearly studied “Misery Business” like their lives depend on it. Olivia’s ascent a couple years ago felt like confirmation that emo had officially infiltrated pop. She’s angsty, has the belty vocals down pat, and, like Billie, she’s a big Avril fan. She said as much while accepting Variety’s Songwriter of the Year award in 2021.

“First of all, I want to thank Avril for coming here today,” Olivia said after accepting her award from Avril herself. “I am such a massive fan of you I look up to you so much.” No wonder she eventually brought Avril on stage during her SOUR tour so that they could sing “Complicated” together. When life’s like this, things don’t feel half bad.

Given that her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, was once (briefly) in a nu metal band, it appears the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. During her pivot to pop punk, Willow revealed that the scene had not always been so welcoming to her.

“[B]eing a Black woman in the metal crowd is very, very different on top of the pressures that the music industry puts on you,” Willow told V Magazine in 2021. “Now, it’s like an added pressure of the metal culture, the metal world, and just rock in general. I used to get bullied in school for listening to Paramore and My Chemical Romance.” Those who follow Willow on Instagram already know she loves System of a Down as well.

If you somehow missed Willow’s pop punk era, the time to listen to “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” (featuring Travis Barker) is now.

She might’ve come up on Disney, but Demi was in deep into metal, metalcore, and deathcore for a while. Need proof? Watch her name drop Job for a Cowboy, Bring Me the Horizon, Unearth, Dimmu Borgir, Lorna Shore.

Maybe that’s part of what she was talking about back in 2023, when she talked about shifting her sound toward emo in her eighth studio album Holy Fvck.

“I grew up listening to this music, and so I wanted to go back to my roots,” Demi told CBS News. “Whether you're going through depression or you're having fun with your friends, there's so many emotions that's in this music. I think this generation is hungry for it.”

Don’t sleep on Holy Fvck, by the way. It’s got some real bangers.

You don’t need to do much detective work for this one; she just tweeted it out. In case the colorful hair and introspective lyrics and creepy sound on tracks like “Castle” weren’t enough to tip you off, Halsey was into emo in a big way.

If you’re curious as to who some of her faves are, that, too, is readily accessible information. She filled out Alternative Press’s emo bands bracket in 2020, and her top choices include My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, Circa Survive, Jimmy Eat World, and Say Anything. Taste!

I could go on about popular artists who like rock in general, like Lizzo and SZA’s shared love of Nickelback, or Carrie Underwood’s friendship (and collaboration) with Papa Roach, but then we’d be getting way off topic. Let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we?

I’ll just leave you with this…

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