Top Eight: How MySpace Changed Music

by Michael Tedder

In extensive interviews with scene pioneers and mainstays including Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional), Geoff Rickly (Thursday), Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), Gabe Saporta (Midtown/Cobra Starship), and Max Bemis (Say Anything), veteran music journalist Michael Tedder has crafted a once-in-a-generation exploration of emo and The Scene that is as forthright as it is tenderly nostalgic, taking to task the elements of toxic masculinity and crass consumerism that bled out of the early 2000s cultural milieu and ultimately led to the implosion of emo's first home, the first best social media network, MySpace. 

When MySpace thrived, the Internet was still fun. Top Eight recalls the excitement and freedom of the era, an unprecedented time when a generation of fans were able to connect directly with the bands and musicians they idolized, from Colbie Caillat to Lil Jon.

MySpace changed everything, and Top Eight gives major voices of the era the chance to tell us why it couldn't last.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Pop Culture, History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2023

Reviews

[kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 2.5 stars

Okay so I’ve read Sellout, Where Are Your Boys Tonight, and Traffic… so I feel like I hardly got anything from this book. Seriously, the same emo oral historians are here.

I feel like there were some missed opportunities of leaving out some big genres that played out on MySpace here… like how are you really just gonna mention Crunkcore once in a book about MySpace music…… but give Geoff Rickly 75,000 words to tell the same stories in a third book about emo. I was kinda shocked a book about MySpace music didn’t lean into the batshit genres it birthed. How the fuck did Breathe Carolina or Family Force Five not get a single name check?

I got the nostalgia cringe goosebumps so the book did its job.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a person who was deeply entrenched in Myspace music, this book was such a cool perspective on that era and I loved all the interviews with musicians from every genre. It really captured what Myspace meant to us back then and how it was just lightning in a bottle specifically for emo. I didn’t necessarily ~love~ the author going out of their way to trash where the scene went after emo, even if he did try to balance it with some polite “not everything is for me” platitudes, and I do wish we’d gotten some more information about where the scene went post-Myspace peak with places like AbsolutePunk and Property of Zack and honestly even tumblr! I get why it didn’t because hi, not the point, but still. Good book, recommend for us emo oldies.

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

i was really interested in the concept of this book, but the disjointed layout of the interviews made the “oral history” feel extremely clunky. if i did not already have a strong knowledge of the scene, i don’t know if i would have been able to follow this. i’d recommend sellout or where are your boys tonight for a more organized and thorough account of the 90’s/2000’s emo scene.

[Chandler Curry · Rating 2 out of 5]

3 stars because this was a semi-fun nostalgia trip, and that’s generous. Many interviews didn’t really follow the subject of the chapters. It read like a paper you forgot about that’s due at midnight, so you quickly put words down without much thought to the narration.

Also, the author lumped The Early November in with A Day To Remember, Rookie of the Year, Bring Me the Horizon, Black Veil Brides, and other “abovementioned terrible acts”.

You know what? I take it back. 2 stars.

[Lexus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay I read all 350+ pages of this book so I earned the right to be critical

I read Where Are Your Boys Tonight, published just a couple months before this book, and all I can think to excuse some of the big issues with this book is that Tedder was trying to put together a book just like that, and when he found out that book was already in the works, he had to pivot to "emphasizing MySpace" (poorly).

The big issues:
-This book doesn't know what it wants to be. The subtitle is "How MySpace Changed Music" but half of the book is not about MySpace at all. He should have committed to the scope he promised, especially since there are other books that cover the other topics more thoroughly already. Too much time focused on pre-MySpace emo music scene and even on the MySpace-coinciding emo music scene but without connecting it to MySpace at all. Reading on and on about Geoff Rickly and Max Bemis etc. retelling their stories of addiction, of Warped Tour, but without any connection to MySpace at all. I have less of an issue with this, but there was also a lot of talk about MySpace that had nothing to do with how it changed music (i.e. the section about the suicide from cyberbullying). I didn't mind the business discussions as it provided a lot of relevant context and hasn't been explored ad nauseam elsewhere (that I know of).
-The chapters made no sense in terms of a coherent theme. It was clear he was trying to shoehorn in random oral historian quotes that vaguely related to each other, but poorly, and without providing necessary context. The chapters could have been all about one specific topic, or one specific year, but instead it's just kind of a scrambled mess.
-Don't claim to write a book about MySpace and music when it's clear you want to write only about (a specific iteration of) emo music because you love it. I feel like this guy does not know other music exists, let alone how instrumental (lol) MySpace was to a hundred other genres. There's one measly section of a chapter about rap / hip-hop (where we learn rap was the top genre of MySpace artists!!!) and then it's like he feels he did his part and could move on to discussing Fall Out Boy or Sherwood (? the only band I had never in my life ever heard of lmao) for the thousandth time.

Petty complaints:
-didn't discuss the period of time before the embedded music player on MySpace. There was a time where you couldn't just add a song from the player to your page and had to embed it from some random music video or song site (pre-Youtube). I'm just putting this out there because it's worth mentioning in the history of music and MySpace, for anyone who is learning about it from this book...
-also, you couldn't always customize your top 8, that feature came later on. In the beginning, your top 8 was just your 8 MySpace friends with the oldest profiles. That's why Tom was always #1, he had the oldest page. Steve-O was always up there too. And RIP ForBiddeN, gone but not forgotten!!
-the footnote definitions were so insulting to me lol. You think the reader of this book doesn't know who Pharrell or Tyler the Creator are? Also Placebo is not "at the exact intersection of goth and Britpop," please be serious. This wasn't a footnote but also calling My Chem "woke-before-woke Guns n Roses" and then calling them the "millennial analog of Queen" PICK ONE!
-Needed an editor so bad. Several of the "oral historian" quotes appeared multiple times throughout the book, one was repeated just 3 pages later in the same exact chapter, verbatim! Hello?? Also, the last one of the book was also a repeat, but at least on the second printing of it, it used the correct "than".... Also Turn Down for What was described as an "EMD" song. Did anyone read this book before it went to press?
-why would a book like this not have an index??
-the overbearing tone to make us recognize this guy is a FEMINIST ALLY! Little parenthetical asides about misogyny being "so fucking disappointing" or whatever. And did you know PATD using the word "whore" in a song was "ugly then and ugly now"? I'm sure the author never said anything remotely problematic in 2005, and he's better than the rest of us. Your ally award is in the mail!
-Bich Ngoc Cao was probably the most interesting and worthwhile contributor to the book, but I had to laugh when she said that MySpace didn't tolerate homophobia. That was not my experience at all. I'm just saying let's not rewrite history. It wasn't exactly like modern Facebook where you say a slur and your account is automatically banned for 30 days or whatever. There was tons of homophobia and no consequences for it. I'm not even complaining because people will be people, but there was no moderation in MySpace, let's not lie

Artists I absolutely can't believe were left out of a discussion of MySpace and music:
-Lil B!!!!!!
-Soulja Boy (deserved more than two sentences)
-Uffie
-The Medic Droid
-Cassie
-Chiodos
-From First to Last / Sonny Moore
-Katy Perry
-Calvin Harris
-Kate Nash
-Million $ Mano
-LIGHTS
-M.I.A.
-The Millionaires
-Breathe Carolina
-Hellogoodbye
-Mike Jones
-the entire genre of "bloghouse" hipster music now typically referred to as "indie sleaze"
-scene queens famous for dating musicians (O.G. influencers) (hey it's more relevant to the topic than a lot of the other shit that got 100+ pages of space)

There was so much more to say about the hustle of rappers and DJs on MySpace, truly pioneers of online grassroots self-promotion. So much more to say about rap in general, a genre this guy seems wholly unfamiliar with, since he describes "Hey Ma," "Salt Shaker," "Walk it Out" and "Lean Wit It (Rock Wit It)" as "fight-starting anthems" (???????)

Also, the artists that came in the "wave" after MCR/FOB, I never listened to because I was already too old at that point (no offense) (examples: A Day to Remember, Black Veil Brides, Falling in Reverse, all the bands that were on Warped Tour and Hot Topic walls from 2010 on) -- but despite my lack of familiarity or interest, I found it gross how he just wholly wrote them off as all bad and all copies of the bands before them. It doesn't matter if you don't like it dude, they still have MySpace to thank for their careers, so it's within the purported scope of your book.

Maybe I should have written this book, god damn! It made me mad!! lol

[taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love how this book weaves oral history into the story of myspace and the emo scene. perfectly encapsulates a bygone era. i did find the early part of the story really interesting as someone who didn’t get into this scene until around 2006. i always had the question of why all these bands were from new jersey, and now it makes sense.

one of the most interesting thoughts from an oral history section was the idea that myspace simply could have bought facebook. not sure if that would have fucked up the world more or less than our current state, but it just goes to show how big of a reach this website had.

[Terrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any oral history Top Eight meanders at times, it's overly long, and there are a few left turns hard enough to give you whiplash. Still as a document chronicling the inexorably linked rise and fall of MySpace and third wave emo it's compelling. It even managed to make me nostalgic for a time when social media didn't inherently mean something toxic.

[Suzy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Booooo this rating might be my fault I wanted a history of MySpace not of music but w/e. The book Where Are Your Boys Tonight just hit home way more since a guy from Jersey wrote that one. I’m sure I would have liked this one if I read it before WAYBT

[Annaliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, or at least I wanted to like it. I chose to listen to the audio book instead of reading and it was a bad choice. The way its written is very much like an interview with constantly changing band members. You don't really get too in depth with people you wanted to hear from which I guess is okay. It's more of a narration of life than a deep dive.

[Amy Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a fever dream of my 20s in all the worst ways. There is zero discernible narrative and all it is is like 8 interviews chopped apart to align with a chapter.
If you’re going to read this, for the love of god don’t listen to the audiobook. Hands down the worst audio performance ever done in a weird transatlantic accent for some reason. 2/5 and only for the nostalgia.

[RL Bailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Oral histories can live or die by who they can get to interview. This one falls short. It was outshadowed on the emo front by "Where Are Your Boys Tonight" mere months earlier and seemingly focusing on that way genre way too much. The balancing of the artists and business end of things also gets muddled. And to be honest, if you weren't there it really isn't interesting. And if you were there, this just didn't seem to be how I remembered things.

[Hillary Gunn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like copypasta. Got about halfway through and couldn’t finish it. Was really hoping I’d like this one, but it just didn’t cut it for me. RIP Myspace, gone but never forgotten (and hopefully a better book will be written about the experience in the future)

[MELK · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm reluctantly DNF'ing this. Reluctantly because I don't like to DNF anything, not because I think this is worth reading. In fact, this is possibly the most throw together hot mess I've ever read. It's diabolical how incoherent this book is.

The idea that this book is about how Myspace changed music is a lie. Myspace is touched on briefly and then we quickly diverge into a poor explanation on the history of emo music. Why are we spending so many pages on random asides about the emo era with no link back to Myspace itself? I cannot say if the author ever circles back in any meaningful way but I can say they repeatedly fail to make the connection in the pages so far.

The interviews in this book are assembled in no coherent order. As an example, there are snippets of interviews that focus on Dashboard Confessional and sandwiched in between is another artist talking about how they joined the social medial platform Makeoutclub (something that we had already spent multiple pages on prior and had moved on from). There is no consistent and easy to follow narrative. It genuinely feels like the author took a bunch of interview snippets and put it in a scrambler and then went to print (ChatGPT probably would have done a better job). You could probably have pooled these interviews into more coherent chapters (albeit still very disconnected from Myspace) but extensive editing would be required. Whole portions of interviews would be taken out because they add nothing and are entirely boring. The author would have been better served presenting the interviews in their full, unedited glory instead of this mess. At least then the reader could actually experience the beauty of context.

[Spenser Milo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clunky interviews, bizarre non-sequiturs, and repetitive wikipedia histories about bands nobody actually cares that much about. As someone who enjoyed Motion City Soundtrack a lot in my teens and twenties, learning about the music video shoot for "Broken Heart" is a waste of my time. The same goes for the rise and fall of Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance. Anyone willing to read any article about those bands has already learned all about their histories. Who cares!!!!!!!!!!

However, the MySpace history is unknown! Who knew the site was literally built to be like a PureVolume meets Friendster? Amazing! It was the wild west, creating society online as it discovered new features, strengths, and unique users. The chapters which tell the story of MySpace are fascinating because it's the tale of maybe the only "good" social network that happened to have a major bonus, music.

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This Book Could Have Been a Long-Form Article: A Review by Me

Some interesting info about Internet music culture and the inner workings of Myspace, but this should have been at least half the length it was. Very padded and repetitive.

Also I know it's a book that deals with MySpace, but do we REALLY need to say "MySpace" 5 times in a single paragraph, multiple times throughout? If I had played a drinking game with this, my liver would be deader than MySpace.

Rounded down because the audiobook was pretty dismal. "Hmm, what kind of narrator should we use for a book about millennial youths, emo music, and the downfall of the dawn of the social media age?" "How about an old-timey Transatlantic accent?" "PERFECT."

[Cameron Kuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the Venn diagram that is the millennial generation, music lovers, and early adopters of social media, Top Eight sits perfectly in the middle just blasting nostalgia page after page. I loved Tedder’s wit, the line about having 5 Avril Lavigne videos on your page had me cackling out loud. The rich history of social media, and the rise and fall of “emo” is told so brilliantly in here. I was 16 in 2005 and I remember MySpace and these bands fondly, it was wonderful to return to them. Highly recommend.

[Michelle Leung · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complete nostalgic trip that chronicles the rise and history of emo music, scene kids and how MySpace was created, built and influenced an entire generation. As someone who was deeply entrenched in MySpace- messaging and following indie bands , this made me smile from ear to ear. The story is told in interview snippets from band members key to the scene back in the early 2000s including saves the day, dashboard confessional, Thursday and many more. Recommended for fans of this music -now all I want to do is find my old mix CDs.

[Anna]

This could have been so much more interesting. Instead, it felt like maybe 30-40% of it focused on Myspace and the rest was a rehashing of "Where Are Your Boys Tonight" by Chris Payne.

The narrative was very disjointed. The author would cut an oral history bit, move on to another topic, and then return to the oral history bit they dropped 2 pages ago. There were also a few interview quotes that were used a few times throughout the book.

Also, I should not have listened to the audiobook. I had to give up and finish with the book because the narrator made some ~interesting~ choices.

[Vovka · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who loves to think about platforms and social media and the ways in which they interact with culture, I loved this. The impact of MySpace on music is important history, and this book usefully illuminated the symbiotic nature of MySpace and music between the years of 2003 and 2011. Commercial, cultural, and artistic lessons galore. Some of the "oral history" nature of the book detracted from its value, for me, because those voices weren't always as clear or thoughtful as the author's own voice.

[Kristy Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely great read. A deep dive into the creation, blow up and downfall of MySpace. A dive into its importance in music history. Nicely tied in interviews with musicians from the scene that was cohesive and really enhanced the book. It brought back all of my feelings from that time. And woke me up to some of the darker themes of the time I was ignorant of in my youth.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the hardest things about reading this book is the amount of time I had to stop reading to listen to one of the bands that it talked about. As a person who was in college during this time and very much in the scene, this book was a blast from the past and was really interesting to see from the artist's perspective.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book shows the author's diligent work, not only in conducting the many interviews with all of the key players, but also in his highly sensitive understanding of contemporary music. This is a smartly written portrayal of a mayfly-brief but hugely important period in U.S. music.

[Corey · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not about MySpace as much as it is about Emo. A serious, lengthy, all-encompassing oral history of Emo music. So if you want to know about Emo, this is your book. MySpace, not so much. It's there, but only serves as a background to talk about Emo.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect does of nostalgia for any millennial. An incredibly in-depth history of MySpace emphasizing the role it played in influencing the music scene of the 2000s.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun revisit of what was, but the editing is sloppy and the author seems to lose the thread frequently. Other recent books on early aughts emo do a better job describing the scene at the time.

[Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bled together too much with Where Are Your Boys Tonight. Not a fault of the book, but a fault with this reader. Shame on me.

[Brooke Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the content overall, the book read a bit disjointed and was a tad hard to follow.

[Bramfatura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vacillated between giving this two or three stars - ultimately, I enjoyed what I read, so three. But man, I don't think the book really fulfills the premise it sets up; it's more like An Oral History of Scene-core featuring MySpace. Dan Ozzi's Sellout is, I think, a superior and more focused version of this scene's history.

[Taryn Prisk · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sheer hypocrisy of dunking on all the men in the scene who've ever done anything even slightly wrong as if they're irredeemable douchebags (not defending their actions at all btw), but glossing over the time Juliet Simms got *blackout drunk on a plane and physically assaulted her husband*, by saying that she overcame this by "reinventing herself," and changing her brand is absolutely sickening. It goes both ways homie, we're not going to give her a free pass just because she's a woman and it's just so, soooo hard to be a woman in the scene, are we?

That's not to mention dunking on ADTR, Bring Me The Horizon, Black Veil Brides, and many, many more for legitimately no reason. No wait, the reason was that they came after Fall Out Boy and My Chem? So they were dumbed down copies of them? Well FOB and MCR came after Jawbreaker and The Get Up Kids, so by that logic, MCR and FOB are cheap knockoffs of those who came before. And Jawbreaker and The Get Up Kids would have to be cheap knockoffs of those who came before them, right? And yes, there's nothing new under the sun and all, but no, only ADTR, BMTH, BVB, and FIR are called garbage for it?

I fear we've found the gatekeeping and virtue signaling final boss

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm marking this as finished at p.247 because I don't want to waste my time on the words of a hypocrite. Do yourself a favor and just read "Where Are Your Boys Tonight?", it covers the origins of emo sans Myspace.

Written by an emo purist with boomer-level hypocrisy. At least Chris Payne doesn't outright insult the generations of screamo, metalcore, etc. that came after MCR, Thursday, and FOB. I can respect someone who doesn't like various music genres, but there's no reason to outright insult them (stating that everything after FOB and MCR are "dumbed down copies", "garbage" and are "terrible acts").

Tedder preaches about MySpace and the scene being a safe place for the misfits of society, but then goes on to alienate fans of later iterations of the alt community. Insulting bands (ETF, BMTH, ADTR, Early November, Attack Attack, etc) on name alone is a WILD take. Disgustingly hypocritical and the antithesis to the scene.

Moronic gatekeeping aside, this book was redundant. The interviews were lazy and lacked context, often not relating to the chapter. It just seemed like this book was trying to capitalize on the interest in the history of the scene (especially with the recent publication of "Where Are Your Boys Tonight?").

If you absolutely have to read this, get it from your library. Don't support an elitist feigning inclusivity.