"It paved the way for the shape of punk to come." The 10 most essential emo albums released before the scene sold out and went mainstream

Embrace.

Emo is one of the more difficult genres to define, so much so that a website called isthisbandemo once existed to pass judgement on who made the cut. Fall Out Boy? Not emo. Jimmy Eat World? Emo.

Deal with it.

We're not going to get into that debate here, but each record below not only helped define the genre, but also transcended it.