Brand New is back. 

After a few months of playing small private shows, a full reunion tour is about to be underway, and we’re probably looking at another album somewhere down the line. The reception across the scene hasn’t been polarizing, not quite, but an alarming number of fans aren’t horrified by this news, they’re excited by it. Excited, despite the allegations from two separate women who were children at the time Jesse Lacey groomed and sexually assaulted them. Excited, despite Lacey’s acknowledgement of what he did, and his half-assed “apology.” Excited, despite the fact that there are going to be children at these shows.

For too many people, his behavior doesn’t matter. They’ll be going to these shows, buying the merch and singing along to all the favorites—some of which, like “Me vs Maradona vs Elvis” contain in the lyrics hints at the predatory mindset of the man who wrote and sings them. For these fans, a man can get away with having manipulated and assaulted teenage girls, so long as the music he makes is good, so long as—most crucially—it’s imbued with an element that has become so potent over the past few years: nostalgia.

This is the most distilled example of the dark side of the post-lockdown emo revival. With so many bands reuniting, or coming back from 2010s relative obscurity, some of them are bound to bring with them demonstrable histories of abuse and violence, as well as racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic views. The scene has always struggled with this, and while you can point out the growing diversity among younger bands to show that we’re getting better about it, you can just as easily point out that the fact that artists like Brand New regaining popularity indicates that, yeah, we’ve sort of improved, but not really, not enough. Dance Gavin Dance is popular again, so is Say Anything, so is Brendon Urie, so is…

I mean, who’s next? At this rate, we’ll be seeing a reunion tour for lostprophets.

It shows that too many people are comfortable with erasing the pain of others, all in the name of nostalgia. To ignore what was done to the victims is to ignore their pain, which is particularly cruel in a genre built on our shared experiences with, and confrontation of, suffering. To ignore the violence of men like Jesse Lacey is to decide whose pain, whose trauma, matters—and whose doesn’t. It’s to say that you can only tell us about your hurt so long as it isn’t an inconvenience to everyone else.

And it tells girls today that they have no real support if one of these men hurts them, that if they speak out then at best those men will hide under a rock for a decade, then come back clean in the eyes of the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of fans who prioritize nostalgia over the safety of children. For those of us with kids, I’m curious: Would you let your daughters go to a Brand New show alone? Would you leave them alone in a room with Jesse Lacey? Would you let them chat with him on videocalls?

A lot of us talk about how we believe victims, how we don’t tolerate abuse, we talk about how pedophiles don’t deserve to live. And yet tickets are currently being bought, seats will be filled, and voices will join his as he sings up on that stage, emboldened now that he’s been told that he can get away with it again.

I don’t want to hear that he’s changed—I’ve heard nothing from him that genuinely addresses what he’s done, no further apologies (and certainly none that were sincere) nor evidence to show that he’s taken steps to make up for it or to control his behavior. I also don’t want to hear that he’s a private person and doesn’t have to tell us what he does, because in this case, yes, he does. Silence in the face of something this monstrous is a statement, it’s saying, “I don’t think I did anything wrong.” Which is one sentence away—and another underage girl away—from saying, “And I’ll do it again.”

The artists make the music of a scene, but we, the fans, decide who defines it. We have to speak up against the bad ones, we have to refuse to support them, and we have to make sure that this shit does not represent us. Not unless everything we’ve said and done since #MeToo and the push for accountability has just been posturing.

But I don’t think it was.

And I don’t think it will be.

When everything came out about Lacey in that fall of 2017, I was utterly crushed. I know what it feels like to learn that the frontman of a band whose music meant so much to you, who helped you navigate through some of the most severe emotional wreckage of your life, is a monster. It was like learning that one of your best friends is an abuser. It poisons everything that came before, your history together, it makes you question yourself and how you could have been fooled by this kind of person. And yet sometimes, you miss them; you want to stalk their socials, give them a call, will them to be thinking about you. You want to put on their music, when the daylight runs grey and yet for a little while, “Millstone” is there with “Jesus Christ” and “Sic Transit Gloria,” and it’s like he never did it, like you can let this music do what it’s supposed to, which is to show you the depths so that you can claw your way back out of them. Even just thinking about the chorus of “The Archers Bows Have Broken” makes me swell and explode in a complicated emotional maelstrom.

But you have to move on from the former friend who is a monster. It hurts, it leaves a hole in you—but that hole is better than supporting a rapist. And one day you’ll find new friends who will, if not fill in that hole, then will at least help you live with the fact that it’s there.

It’s been eight years, and we’ve found new friends.

We decide who represents us in this scene, and in doing so we decide what kind of people we are. I want to be standing in a crowd at the show, at the emo night, at the festival, with people who protect each other—especially the kids, the baby emos—and cheer for those people onstage who are safe. That’s what we do for each other, especially for those younger fans who are vulnerable and will be impacted by what we allow—and what we don’t.

Our nostalgia isn’t worth their lives, but their lives are worth our nostalgia. If that means the pain of not enjoying some of the music we once survived on, that’s fine. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. We didn’t know better then, but we do now. Scary as it is, we’re the grown-ups this time, and we can protect the kids the way we wished we had been protected. To refuse supporting artists like Brand New, to speak up against them, is to tell each other—especially the kids—that nobody is allowed to hurt you, or to get away with it if they do. Even if they’re our heroes.