Some people might already know I love listening to: old rock, pre-2015 style rock, punk rock, pop punk, and alternative rock. But, my favourite song is very debatable. Some days, I’ll listen to a song I love continuously, and others, it doesn’t exist to me.
My favourite song, by far, right now, is probably “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance (MCR). They released it as a single for their 2006 album, “The Black Parade”, and the music video has surpassed 200 million views on YouTube.
To give you a quick summary, the song starts off quite slow, on the piano. Around the one minute mark, it gets louder, and the first verse kicks in around 1:45. It goes pretty normal in the song build (Beg., Verse, Chorus, Verse two, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, End), but adding to it, the song is just shy of being 5 ½ minutes long.
Some reasons I like it are because of the story within the song, the music video, and just the album itself.
It’s about a guy whose father took him to a parade when he was younger, and that became his fondest memory. Then, later, when he dies, he’s greeted by The Black Parade as, as the vocalist for the band says, a comfortable way for him to be lead on through death.
Another reason is the feelings it gives off. For some reason, it makes me feel really nostalgic, like happy to listen to the song, but sad that it was so long ago (approx. 15 years) and that it’ll never happen again. Nostalgia is a weird feeling, especially over a song that isn’t coherently sad or has a deep, sad meaning to it.
Along with the feeling of the song, the meaning behind it is also a part of why I like it.
Essentially, one of the main guitarist said that it was influenced by how parades symbolized death and war, and took place as a way to honour soldiers who died fighting passing on. The vocalist came up with the story as the song was written, and I think it’s a great meaning to have.
Next is the lyrics. This is a big reason why I like any song, and also how I realized I misheard roughly every second sentence in “Welcome to the Black Parade”. It kind of mislead me to the theme of the song. As an example, there’s one lyrics, “Your weary widow marches”, which I heard as “Well, really we don’t want you”. It made me look at the song as a “ha, you’re dead and there’s nothing to do now” song instead of a “well, you’re dead and people still have been caring” kind of song, which is weird on it’s own.
Also, I like how the story kind of fades in and out with the lyrics. There’s this one where it says, “I’m just a man, I’m not a hero, just a boy who had to sing this song”, which goes back to the guy dying and actually becoming the leader of The Black Parade. It might sound confusing, so you might have to actually listen and watch the music video to understand it completely.
The song itself is definitely one I’d listen to any time, any where, and I really appreciate how the band put in so much work towards the music video (Fun Fact: which was filmed in one day) and how it feels like they’re preforming their hearts out. These are all reasons why I love the song, and I highly recommend you listen to it, even just once.