“The Black Parade” By My Chemical Romance is a popular Rock Opera album that most people know about without realizing it. If you’ve heard the song “Teenagers” with the catchy lyrics and melody “They said, “All teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me” They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed” then you’ve listened to MCR. With almost 1 Billion listens on Spotify it’s nearly impossible to not have heard of this song. But if you haven’t, this review aims to encourage all music listeners to give “The Black Parade” a chance.
This album was and continues to be a relatable experience and story to teenagers. It resonates to young people on a deep level by touching on hard to deal with subjects in a time of confusion and desperation. The album talks about depression, death and regrets in a very powerful musical story.
The Story
We as listeners focus on a young man called “The patient” who lost his life to cancer and goes through his memories, regrets, and his experience in the afterlife. “Dead” goes back in time to his diagnosis and we go through his feelings that he never lived his life to the fullest, that he has nobody that cares about his death. “This is How I Disappear” explores his realization that in his death nobody will remember him.
When we jump back into the present day the patient is now in the after life and explores his attempt to stay optimistic in the song “Welcome to The Black Parade.” In this story the parade represents the after life as his fondest memory was of the patient and his father at a parade in the city. Lyrics like “And though your broken and defeated, Your weary widow marches on and on we carry through the fears” and “We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on and though your dead and gone believe me your memory will carry on” aims to focus on the optimism and the idea of pushing forward.
The whole album focuses on many themes but one main theme that plays a big part in the finale is the patient’s lost love. He regrets pushing her away and breaking up with her out of hatred of himself. In “This is How I Disappear” he makes a desperate plea for his lover to come back but realizes that he’s become so distant that he is akin to a ghost and in his death he will metaphorically and in a literal sense become a ghost to his lover.
The end
In the song “Disenchanted” he reflects on his pessimistic and negative view on his life that he had close to death, he realizes that he could have come back to and instead of stewing in sadness he could have in his remaining time done something meaningful with his life. But unfortunately the truth is that he was just “a lifelong wait for a hospital stay”
The album closes off with “Famous Last Words” an emotional finale that ties the story together in a satisfyingly hopeful way. The patient comes back in the form of resuscitation and wakes up with his lover by his bedside. He can’t tell whether he’s living a dream or a reality but he has learned to face death and hopes he has given another chance to truly live life. The best part is that the listener gets to decide whether or not he was truly given that chance. “I am not afraid to keep on living I am not afraid to walk this world alone (or dead) Honey if you stay i’ll be forgiven nothing you can say will stop me going home” are echoed over and over again nailing in the message that regardless of the truth the patient has gone through a revival in his optimism and metaphorical life.
An album for “the broken and the damned”
“The Black Parade” is truly an album for the young people in life looking for a new hope and a new perspective for life. This album is jam packed with details and messages for everyone and it’s only possible to the full scope of the story by listening. MCR has given young people of every generation since the release of this album hope and happiness garnering an audience of people looking for optimism, and this emotional story and album reflects new light and hope.
