The HIDDEN Story in the Best Album of All Time (The Black Parade Analysis)

hey everybody so i talk about movies a lot on this channel because that's just what i like i like stories i like to be a storyteller i think that stories are a natural human expression and the best way that we've kept record throughout history and stuff like that but i've mostly stuck away from music and that's for the same reason i just mentioned i like stories so normally music isn't as involved with stories as a straightforward film or short story or something like that however with what i'm talking about today there is one exception if you are not familiar with this album personally you are going to think i'm absolutely crazy when i say this but i believe one of the best stories ever told through song form is that of my chemical romance's welcome to the black parade to understand where i'm coming from this you have to know the background of the album itself it was written as a concept album in other words the entire album is telling one particular story or at least sticking with one particular theme this went so much so to the point that my chemical romance didn't even go by mcr during their tour for it they simply went by the black parade which was essentially an alter ego of these paraders who guided others to death a lot of people applied the band's other work which is what would be considered the emo genre so to speak even though the lead singer would absolutely disagree but this album is entirely separate from any other work the band's put out and is something rarely seen in music when asked about his inspiration for the album gerard way said that he looked to freddie mercury and that cannot be closer to the truth the album is by and large a definitive rock opera what i mean by that is rock music and chords are used to tell a grandiose story in a very epic nature the reason rock opera is the term used for it is because it harkens back to the old epic plays that were put on by homer and the odyssey and things such as during greek opera days that goes so far that many of the songs are ballads or anthems for our main character and as we'll get into it's as if there is a choir or opera that is backing him up in the story but we'll get into all that in a minute now i am not the first person to think of this there have been several who have looked at the entire album listened through tracks 1 through 13 and figured out a story that works in those however i disagree where i'm coming from with this is that when i first listened to this album i had this very clear picture in my head of what the story was supposed to be and every time i listened to it it just strengthened that could this be my own wild delusions yes am i going to learn from them no i believe one of the main hangups people have with the album is that they assume all of the songs have to be chronological and this is not the case according to my theory the songs are told out of order for a reason i will get to at the end which put together a grandiose full three-act story structure about a dying cancer patient as i go through i'm going to talk about my interpretation of the story what it means give you the track list in order in the way that i think the story plays out and then at the end i'm going to try to put it all together and justify why i consider this album one of if not the greatest of all time at least you know my opinion so without further ado let's go ahead and get started and what better place to start than the end now come tragic on the album is gentle in the beginning as the first two tracks according to my theory at least are in chronological order with the way the story is told so if this album is hearkening back to old operas and playwrights of these epic storytelling adventures then what better way to start than a call to theater not only is the story's plot set up where we hear the beeping heart rate monitor implying someone in a hospital and at death's door we also see thematic elements set up in the way that the lead character is talking and pompous with his nature now something i want to explain now because it's going to be a big deal later there are two characters who sing throughout this album they're both done by gerard way but this album is a story told on two different sides one side is that of a dying cancer patient in the hospital the other is that of death or a wayward soul or some spirit who's come to guide the cancer patient to the other side not only that but death itself works as a sort of backup choir for our cancer patient when i say death i want you to think of this there are several legends in old religions and things such as that foretell that lost souls who get trapped on earth are forced to guide other souls on to the afterlife i'll get into later why this death isn't necessarily the grim reaper and it's just another way with soul the way to tell who is singing what song is by the open if a song starts out with acoustic or simple chords then it is one of the patient songs if it starts out with metal or parade instrumentals [Applause] then it is one of death's songs with my timeline of events it plays out that every time the patient has a song death has a song immediately after either critiquing or backing up what the patient just said also to be more specific and again this will be shown later but instead of calling him death i'm going to call him the parader so back to this first track we have the patient opening talking about his lot in life and the fact that he has now died [Music] as he's telling this sort of sad story about what happens immediately it's as if death comes in and cuts him off literally mid-chorus to announce his presence and make this bombastic entrance [Music] this is what i mean by song starting out acoustically versus songs starting out metallic so in dead the second track on the album we have the parader's introduction and we get to see what his character is like very crude crest and completely uncaring to the thought of death which yeah if your place was to guide souls to the afterlife and you've been doing in a while i imagine you would lose some respect for life so much so that in the final chorus the parader continues repeating the phrase if life ain't just a joke then why are we laughing so in our opening we have our character set up we have our patient who is dying and we have the parader who is either going to take him to the afterlife or mock until he gets there this is all set up for the first act of the story for those aren't familiar with traditional 3x structure which was structure followed by opera the first act of the story is always the setup where we meet the characters figure out the trial and then go from there after that our second act is conflict this is normally where characters get into fights with each other and interact and the main action of the story takes place finally our third act is the resolution where our character overcomes the conflict either through changing themselves or besting the villain or whatever the story entails so keep in mind while we're in the setup story let's get some more background on the patient which leads to the third track in order [Music] teenagers now this one's kind of cheating with the whole if the song starts out acoustic but my excuse for it is the song is definitely not the parader because none of it makes sense from the creator's perspective and if you look at where the patient's at now it makes sense he would have lost some of his vigor or at least angst from where he used to be so by this timeline teenagers is a song to set up the life of the patient we can immediately tell that the patient is very hateful and violent and does not at all sound like someone who is dying in a hospital because he's not yet we're immediately painted a picture of a very hateful and violent young man well i think he's a little bit older than your stereotypical teenager maybe 18 or 19 since he's kind of talking about teenagers in the past i'm going to say the attitude of the song and the way he's telling it still feel very adolescent so if he is 20 or in his 20s i wouldn't put him much over it so we have a song from our patient and to set up the cycle that we're going to continue to be in the parader then comes in to make his comment on it in the fourth song in order the sharpest lives essentially in this song the parader is talking about how dangerous some people live their lives how they're reckless don't appreciate it and how it eventually leads to destruction it also kind of paints this picture that the patient deserves what he's going through at least because of the hateful attitude of the prayer in the song now while the patient may not necessarily deserve it that doesn't mean he's exactly a great soul either especially with stuff we'll see later in the album like sleep but we'll get to that so this is the end of the first stack and we have our patient who's dying and used to be kind of a jerk and death who doesn't care and after hearing how he used to be he still doesn't care if anything he doesn't care anything harder but then we get into a major tone shift this leads to the fifth track in the album where the patient realizes what's happening to him and begins to realize the consequences of his actions and that is cancer [Music] cancer would have to be the saddest song on the album as it's just a very honest personal look at someone dying of cancer and while lines like this may seem kind of cliche by today's standards when put in the perspective of a young man who is dying too soon of something that wasn't really in his control it's kind of made more relevant we are not to the patient's point of acceptance yet but here at the beginning of the second act we see the conflict arising the patient came from a very hateful argumentative place and now he's got to face the reality of death something that most people aren't ready for especially a kid we see this very somber tone come out of him which is nothing at all like how he wasn't teenagers however what does this attitude change mean to a reaper of death who's been guiding dead souls for a long time not a lot as the next song in the list is house of wolves [Music] [Applause] [Music] we see here death acting exactly how you'd imagine a pompous parader death rock awkward leader to act he's very mocking and back and forth and one of the core concepts of this song is he's talking about judgment and when it comes to dying we all know what that means he goes back and forth talking about being a good boy being a bad boy and so on and so on he even gets to the point where he's marking religious overtones and sayings showing a complete disregard for life sanctity and all of that [Music] even saying the letters s-i-n over and over implying that because of the patient's life just because he's sad now and dying of cancer it won't save him from damnation now it's my opinion that at this point the patient cannot hear or understand death yet and it's sort of like death is just his backup best example i can think of if you've ever seen the disney animated movie hercules how the what were they called the animated cartoon whoever they were how they were singing in chorus behind hercules anytime you did something that's essentially what death is at this point or the parader only you know a lot more swearing in blood and heavy metals so all good however on the patient side we're still in this conflict and then we see an absolutely heartbreaking turn of events with the seventh track in order i don't love you it seems like what happened here is the patient's lover left him because he was dying of cancer and that brings up this absolutely horrible idea if these people are just kids then what kind of emotional burden is that to put on the spouse or girlfriend or whoever he had with him to now watch someone that young dive cancer but at the same time what a burden that is on him in his final moments to be left alone it's absolutely heartbreaking and while the band normally gets considered emo i would say this is the only track on the entire album that could fit that description however it is so poetic that the only emo track on the album is a teenager who is dying and their lover leaves them and there's this absolute hatred that the patient has when talking about this person would you have the guts to say i don't love you like i loved you [Music] but again it seems justified given the context so again patient says something death has to comment on it so what's death's comment on i don't love you this is how i disappear in the song death is talking about the patient dying alone with no one there to be with him but not only that death also seems to mock the patient with the way he treated people in life this i think more than anything kind of personifies the whole opera theme i was talking about where the patient directly talks about something and then it's like death or the parader is standing behind them with this grandiose bombastic music and orchestra to emphasize what they just said however what i think is very important about how i disappear especially in the whole tone of the album is the last verse see up until this point there has been this complete charisma and charm to the parader as if nothing could touch him but here when the instruments drop down and it becomes more hellish with the tone it's like the parader is screaming and starting to lose it and here i think is the first signs of the parade or cracking [Applause] [Music] he sees someone who's young dying alone and it starts to get to him now you may ask yourself why would that get to death he's done this how many times why am i watching this video who is this guy and i can answer one of those but in a second so we end the eighth track with death starting to break and we see some crack shining through about how he feels about the patient well how does the patient feel and this is where we get into what is in my opinion the most underrated track on the album if the entire album is about redemption and about a dying kid recognizing that that's okay and him making the most of it then this song is that pivot everything that came before was either pompous or sad self-reflection but this is the direction he turns and begins to recognize that he's dying and that's okay and that song is disenchanted this enchanted is not only powerful for some of the lyrics it speaks that have stuck with me to this day [Music] but with the theme of this patient it makes sense he was a kid he didn't appreciate life like so many others have but then he gets slapped with reality all at once and then the person he loves leaves him and now he's completely alone and this whole life thing that he was so big about and ready to go for is falling apart around him and he's simply disenchanted with it all while it is sad especially considering that this kid even has to go through it in the first place there's this odd piece he gets from it as he says in the beginning he hates the ending but it started with the norad scene he's now in a time of self-reflection and recognizes that he can't do anything about it but that's okay it's happening anyway and he'll be here for it when it comes so after one of the most somber tracks on the album that also signifies the end of the second act because that was the end of our conflict the patient dying and going through all this and not knowing how to take it well now he knows how to take it so what's our resolution going to be because we still have the parader as mad and upset as he's ever been especially at the end of how i disappear well the parader opens the third act with his backstory which might possibly be the best song on the entire album mama so people who try to take the entire album chronologically and make it all a metaphor for death struggle on a lot of songs specifically teenagers in this one they say that oh well this is him dying he's already dead and he's talking to a character named mama and i don't like any of that i like this if death or the parader is a wayward soul that at some point in the past became lost then this is the story of how he became a lost soul we're immediately in the beginning given these old sounds of accordions and bombs falling which immediately painted the picture of a soldier in the great war talks about writing letters about how we soon gonna die but not only that there's alliteration to world war one throughout the entire song [Music] as well as the sonograph and voice played at the end so it was without a doubt in my mind that this song is set in world war one well you could ask yourself if you don't know this story why would it randomly cut to a song in the past because this is the backstory for the parader and this is also the reason the parader has sympathy for the patient the parader was a soldier in world war one and as we can hear in the verses he's mad he's upset he hates himself and what happens we hear air raid sirens take over the instrumentals we hear him crying out for his mom [Music] before silence falls we hear his mother [Music] speaking [Music] he's then followed by an orchestra supposedly the field of corpses around him of other lost souls all singing in unison about being damned [Music] together [Music] and then finally the song closes with the strings playing as the parader's mother cries at his [Music] laws i also want to point out i've been talking a lot about the plot of it and that's what i want this video to be focused on but i also want to mention how good this music is like for example this song in particular uses air raid sirens and heavy metal instrumentals as a chorus to talk about a soldier dying in battle and then uses a choir of these supposed corpses on the battlefield to sing about dying in a war and it it's top tier like if if you get nothing else out of this video if you think i'm absolutely wrong about everything and you haven't heard it yet then i i beg you go listen to the album and then come back and tell me how wrong and stupid i am i just listen to the album but back on topic for mama this is the parader's version of teenagers this is our look into what these characters were like beforehand whereas the patient was pompous and silly and ended up dying alone quite possibly due to the way he treated people in life we see here that the parader himself also died alone on a battlefield as a war as another statistic this not only justifies the earlier songs in the album where the creator was super pompous and didn't care about death and seem to hate everything but it also justifies his change of heart now which we haven't seen that change of heart yet but we're about to really soon next song we have in track order is [Music] sleep [Music] so speaking of resolution this is the beginning of our third act resolution between the patient and the parader sleep is essentially the patient coming off of the mood that he earned and disenchanted and talking about how now it's time to die and that's okay and he's done a lot of wrong which is further backs up my point that he's dying alone because of his actions and he doesn't feel like he's worthy of heaven at the end of the song we hear the patient about to slip away into death but if you listen real close and i mean really close behind that wall of instrumentals you can hear the paraders screaming at him to wake up [Music] now not only is this a massive change of pace for the parader as the last time we heard him telling the patient and how i disappear was very angry and against him we now see the parader begging him to hold on which apparently works as the next track in order is the two of them having this argument and that song is famous last words [Music] famous last words opens with the parader side of the discussion and the chorus is the two of them arguing which begins with the patient making his point [Music] we see this going back and forth in a sort of dualism when the patient's explaining why he's not afraid to die and the parador explaining why he has to fight it it's also kind of sad if you think of the parader as this lost kid who died in a completely senseless way just like patience now died it's kind of like he's pushing the patient to fight because he himself never could also going back to that concept of judgment earlier famous last words appears as the 13th track on the original album there are two endings to the song famous last words there is the album version which ends with a choir scene and then there's the radio version that ends with heavy metal guitars the common interpretation of this is that the choir rendition ending means that the patient goes to heaven and the metal ending means that the patient goes to hell i also agree with this but whereas most people view that as the end of the album and woohoo by the patient's gone i view it as the judgment that happens before the actual death because remember in my idea the patient's not dead till the very end and also because the album version which is where this originally happened the story comes ends with the choir version i'm gonna say the patient made it because of his recompense because of his realization and because of his self-betterment in the end the patient made it into heaven or at least passed into the afterlife or whatever positive outcome you want to view this story with so where are we we're 12 tracks in the patient has gone from absolutely hateful and angry at everything to sadness to realizing his situation and coming to comfort with it and the parader himself has gone from this hateful uh non-caring attitude towards human life to recognizing the similarities between the patient and himself and then coming to terms with the patient's resolve so it doesn't seem like there's a lot left to do than throw him a parade welcome to the black parade is the final song in the story of this album and the send-off to our main character also i think this is absolutely beautiful from a story perspective the reason that the parader appeared to him as a parader and not the soldier he originally was or some other element of death is as the patient mentions in the beginning of the song when i was a young boy my father took me into the city to see a marching band he always viewed his father even though supposedly his father died when he was young possibly of the same illness as the sort of mythical figure that always taught him to do good and carry on so in these final moments and these final thoughts he sees death come to him as that vision of good injustice that he always imagined the parade leader marching on so this is it his final moments and he's a piece of that now it's his time to go join the black parade but this time and this is something really important a lot of people miss out on what is it the parade singing [Music] they're singing his song instead of it being the parader trying to tell his story and scream over the voice of the patient he now respects the patient as if not himself than an equal when the patient's final moments that they're dying on the hospital bed the parader uses all of his people all of his resources his strings his brass all of it to sing the patient's song as he's carried into the afterlife and then finally we get that inbound which begins with the parader mentioning his mama from the beforehand song and then talking about how we'll carry on will always have the memory of those who go before us and then in the end as seen in the music video we see the creator grant respect to this patient as he walks off into no man's land before the soldier is [Music] and that's it that's the story of the black parade i mentioned earlier that there is a specific reason that all of these were told out of order and it's this every single song on the album works in complete separation from the album any of them teenagers is an excellent ballad for teenage rebellion house of wolves can be translated as a song from running from the law or just like a carefree spirit i don't love you can be a breakup song that applies to anyone dead sounds like a fighter's ballad the whole dead already ideology and mom is just cool it is my opinion that if the album was told in order then every song would exist within the concept of the story already instead people love the black parade because they just love the songs which is exactly what music should be you can go up to people who have never heard another my chemical romance song in their life and begin playing teenagers and they'll know the words and get along with it because they like it they don't know or care about the story and they shouldn't have to when i talked about the horror of imagination in the lighthouse video i did i mentioned how much more powerful stories are when you come to the realization yourself and i can't think of a place that's more true to this album it's not all laid out in front of you and that's the fun part i listened to this album through for the first time in the 8th grade and i distinctly remember when i finished famous last words thinking there's something bigger here that i'm not getting and over the years after listening to it over and over the story started to take shape and at one point i just sat back and realized every one of these songs that i've come to love so much that i've learned the words to that i've sang with friends are all part of a grander story and when i came to that realization myself because of the clues left for me by the writer and the drums and the music and all of it it was so much more powerful than just an a to z story now did me making this video and telling you all what the track order was keeping you from figuring out for yourself uh yeah but you know the album's been out what like 12 years now so spoiler alert my chemical romance is the black parade was such a great introduction for me into the realm of telling your own story not only do i love the plot and ideas but forward and i love every song on their own merit and i think they come together in this beautiful mosaic of an album but i can definitively say the lessons that i learned figuring it out listening to it over and over were crucial in teaching me to be the storyteller that i'm still trying to become to this day so i know they'll never see this uh i've got less than a thousand subscribers highest youth videos like 500 um i'm just playing but thank you gerard way and frankie and everyone else who had to do with the writing of this album because i can definitively say that if i did not listen to it then i wouldn't be where i am now also there are two tracks that are sort of bonus tracks uh one of which was added in the deluxe edition of the album as a hidden track blood and then one that was on the b side which is essentially like songs that didn't make the cut um called kill all your friends as much as i like them i get why they were cut it kind of breaks up that whole three-act structure i was talking about and it makes it a bit more bloated in the first act however super quick blood is the patient's point of view when he's still snarky and hateful talking about how he doesn't like the nurses and all that and kill all your friends is the parade or mocking him by saying he's gonna die and everyone's gonna party about it so you could just throw those in after the sharpest lives before cancer before he had that turn around i personally don't consider it as much as i like kill all your friends but if you wanted to there you go so here is your final full list for all the songs i may have to i don't know where it's going to be at i guess here um 1 through 13 with your two bonus tracks shoved in there so if you want to listen to it in your own time see if i'm wrong see if you can figure out the story yourself or listen to it in the version it is in the album see if you think it's different some of these in the middle i could be persuaded to flip around but i am ready to fight someone about the rest of the tracks and i will absolutely fight you so if you think you've got a better idea please let me know as always i want to give a massive shout out to all of my patrons i with no exaggeration would not be doing any of this if it wasn't for you all and it really does mean a lot so our patrons of warden tier we've got eddie shoemaker thank you eddie kayla garrett thank you kayla we've got path my boy thank you we've got benjamin allen the goat thank you benjamin we've got tim free love an absolute legend as well and we've got puglius rex who you know you have my heart thank you to all my other patrons of stag and every other tier it really does mean a lot this was something entirely different this is probably going to be the hardest to edit video i've ever done i am dreading it right now but really if you are still here watching thank you it it means the world i ask that you like comment share whatever i would love for this to make the rounds as i'm knowing now i'm going to have to put work into it but something that's this special to me i think deserves this amount of attention so whatever i'm happy to do again thank you guys so much for watching it really does mean the world and without further ado peace out and thank you boys bye

Channel: Wendigoon

Views: 65,633

Rating: 4.9701142 out of 5

Keywords: My chemical romance, MCR, Album review, Album analysis, album reaction, MCR reaction, Gerard Way, Danger Days, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, hidden story, my chemical romance reaction

Id: CfUgBbuSTPQ

Length: 36min 29sec (2189 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020