‘Danger Days’: My Chemical Romance and the greatest sell-out record of the modern age
The last thing that any artist wants to do is compromise their vision. Any idea that they have going into the studio is like their child, and the thought of them being moulded into something different is a nightmare when they have to be the ones playing them for years at a time on the road. My Chemical Romance were always looking to move in different directions, though, and if they managed to reach the top of the rock world, Gerard Way knew that there were other ways of getting around the sounds of the time.
But let’s shift perspectives for a second. As slimy as it sounds, let’s put ourselves in the mind of a record executive. You have one of the biggest emo bands in the world, who have released a magnum opus in The Black Parade, and since it’s been a while, the music industry has changed from being a fixture of pop-punk to having a lot more synths thrown into the mix. It’s pretty much a no-brainer to ask them to do the same thing, right?
Well, yes and no. You see, Way never intended the band to go much further following The Black Parade, and when it was decided that they wanted to keep going, he figured that he would use it as an excuse to flaunt his new stuff. His focus had already shifted to working on comic books, so Danger Days was envisioned as the kind of album that would act as a soundtrack to his new venture.
In fact, there are moments where the concept seems incredibly ahead of its time. This was a few years from Mad Max: Fury Road, but seeing them drive through the desert in a post-apocalyptic version of America was a much bigger creative risk than most people were willing to take. Especially for long-time emo fans, seeing the band in full neon regalia would have been a bitter pill to swallow, considering their last album was nothing but monochromatic colours.
Although some pieces of the album sound like cash-grabs, they are played a lot straighter than anyone else could. Tunes like ‘Planetary (GO!)’ and ‘Sing’ are flagrant attempts for them to get on the radio next to the Lady Gagas of the world. Still, they each have a specific place in the story of the album, especially the former acting as a strange detour as they work their way through a no man’s land story arc.
However, the album’s greatest strength is what it isn’t rather than what it is. For many people, the band was practically expected to keep going darker and darker, but by subverting expectations and keeping their integrity, Danger Days occupies a strange middle ground very few bands can reach. The songs themselves are meant to challenge what the fans expected, but they also act as a way of using record company suggestions to their own advantage.
They don’t forget the rock and roll enthusiast, either. ‘Party Poison’ is among the finest rock songs they’ve ever made, ‘Scarecrow’ is a nice piece of 1970s-style glam rock halfway through the record, and while ‘The Kids From Yesterday’ makes for a fitting send-off for the group, ‘Vampire Money’ is the piss take that feels genuinely earned, acting as a middle finger to anyone that wanted them to feature a song in the Twilight series.
So while Danger Days is something of a black sheep compared to the other My Chemical Romance records, them “selling out” for the masses may have been the smartest thing they could have done. The macabre side of their sound had become a major part of their story, but by freeing themselves from that style and breaking up right after this record, they now had the ability to do whatever they wanted.
