On May 16, 2008, the Daily Mail published an article under the inflammatory headline, “Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo.” It focused on the suicide of 13-year-old schoolgirl Hannah Bond, claiming she had taken her own life just three months after becoming “an emo”. “No child is safe,” its opening paragraph repeated. Mainstream media and bereaved parents alike have a long history of blaming rock music when it comes to the tragic deaths of young fans, of course. In 1984, 19-year-old Ozzy Osbourne fan John McCollum took his own life – his parents alleged that the lyrics to the rock legend’s song, Suicide Solution, were a “proximate cause” of their son’s death. In 1990, Judas Priest were sued by the families of two young men, Raymond Belknap and James Vance, who’d taken ...
