Photo: Michael Spencer from Perth, WA, Australia, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
For anyone who was around the age of fifteen during the year 2006, My Chemical Romance will always be remembered as being the poster boys of the emo craze of that period. They first formed in 2001 and released their debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Bought Me Your Love a mere year later. Two years after this they released their breakthrough album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.
Two years after this however, the real MCR craze started with the release of their third album The Black Parade. This album was a massive success as well a youthful cultural phenomenon. However, during this time it was obvious that the band were very much a “marmite” band because even though the band literally had legions of young emo fans who adored them, they also had an almost equal legion of haters who despised them as much as their fans loved them.
However, they did not release their next album for another four years, during which the phenomenon died down somewhat, possibly due to both fans and haters getting older. After releasing one more album in 2012, the band rather surprisingly announced their split in 2013.
In 2019, they announced that they were reforming and were going on a tour to celebrate it which was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. They are currently still back together and presumably plan to resume activity when they are able to play concerts again. In the meantime, let us look at the ten best songs of their career so far.
# 10 – The Kids From Yesterday
Kicking off our top ten My Chemical Romance songs list we have the most recent single from the band’s most recent album Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys released in 2010. The sound here shows a maturity with the band, as it is distant from their past emo sound and sounds much more like adult-orientated alternative rock. Although the band may have now reformed, this song has something of potency about it, as it is from what is so far their final album before their split. The title would suggest that it is a reflective number looking at how the band have grown over the years and how their fans have grown with them.
# 9 – Thank You For The Venom
Up next is the second single from the second album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. In the UK, it peaked at number seventy-one. It is a very early-sounding song from the band, being fast and frantic emo-punk. The song contains a line “Sister, I’m Not Much of A Poet” which is a reference to the song “Sister, I’m A Poet” by Morrissey. The vinyl version of the single contains a cover of the Morrissey song “Jack The Ripper.”
# 8 – Skyline and Turnstiles
This next track is the very first song frontman Gerard Way ever wrote for My Chemical Romance and was inspired by the events of 9/11. The band are not usually political, but the lyrics here are rather disturbing as they rather graphically describe the world-changing event. It was featured on their debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.
# 7 – I Don’t Love You
This song was the third single taken from the third album The Black Parade which was released in 2007. The song was something of a first from the band as it is their first that could be considered a power ballad. It was received well by critics for this move, who felt that it was a mature move for MCR. It got to number sixty-five on the UK singles chart.
# 6 – Dead
This song is another taken from The Black Parade and is My Chemical Romance at their morbid best. The album as whole is a concept rock opera and at the time of its release was compared to Green Day’s American Idiot. Coincidentally, it was produced by Rob Cavallo who also produced that album along with many of Green Day’s other albums.
# 5 – Honey This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us
This was the second single from I Brought You My Bullets… It is also their second ever single in general and also happens to be the second track on the album! It peaked at number 182 in the UK. The song’s lyrics deal with Gerard Way’s past troubles with alcohol addiction. It is one of the more aggressive sounding songs that the band has produced.
# 4 – DESTROYA
With Danger Days, MCR did something quite similar with what Nirvana did with In Utero in the sense that they followed up a massive album with one that did not sound like how people expected it to sound. Whilst it is not quite the U-Turn that Nirvana’s third record was, it is still much more experimental and less commercial sounding, which this song is a prime example of.
# 3 – Na Na Na
At number three we have the first single to be taken from Danger Days. Up until the development of this song, the band had been struggling to come up with ideas for the album. A music video for it was filmed which featured comic writer Grant Morrison who Gerard Way is a fan of. It received a positive critical reception for its different sound and commercially, it performed well,, getting to number six on the Billboard Alternative Songs Chart.
# 2 – Teenagers
Just of the top spot is the fourth and final single from The Black Parade. It charted at sixty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100, number twenty-three on the pop chart and number nine in the United Kingdom. Gerard Way said that he wrote the song after finding himself alone in a New York subway with a group of teenagers which made him “feel old.” It was well received critically for its somewhat unconventional style within the band’s general sound.
# 1 – Helena
At the top of this list is the third single from MCR’s second album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. The song, which is about the grandmother of Gerard Way and his brother Mikey (the band’s bassist,) was a moderately successful song, peaking at number eleven on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts. It was also well received critically, being considered to be a modern gothic classic. It also had a music video which got quite a bit of recognition where it depicted the band members carrying as casket into a church. However, despite the song’s lyrics being about the Way brother’s grandmother, they have stated that the video tells a different story.
My Chemical Romance Songs Ranked article published on Classic RockHistory.com© 2021
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