This selection was picked by Gen Z son.

Gen X dad says… the first Promise Ring album I bought was 1999’s Very Emergency. So that set the stage for them in my mind. It wasn’t until a bit later that I got around to listening to this album and hearing how Very Emergency built so well on the growth they showed here. It is hard to square in my head how what later became the popular conception of emo got its start with bands like the Promise Ring. They’re just a good band with good songs. But you can say the same thing with Bauhaus and the god awful dreck of goth that followed them.

Anyway, back to the album here… I love the simplicity of the sound and production on this record. The band stretches themselves a bit with some well placed bits of indie pop convention and even some synth flourishes. Davey von Bohlen’s emotive, but sometimes artless singing works well within this structure. The downside is that some of the lyrical content is weak in some places and the repetition of lines just drives this home after a while. Maybe that’s the whole point of emo anyway.

Highlights for me are Red & Blue Jeans, Why Did We Ever Meet, and the title track.

Gen Z son says… When many of us think about ’90s emo, we usually think about bands like Weezer or Jimmy Eat World. And while the “Blue Album” certainly is a masterpiece, The Promise Ring’s sophomore album, Nothing Feels Good, is just as influential. There are elements of the aforementioned Weezer (most noticeable in Forget Me), as well as some from later popular emo groups like Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and My Chemical Romance. So, it should be appropriate that Andy Greenwald’s book on the emo genre is titled “Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo,” after this album. In short, Nothing Feels Good is a must-have for every emo – and rock music, in general – fan alike.