So Matt’s diatribe last week about pseudo-emo and the certain death knell (at least in terms of reputation) the tag sounds for any band got me thinking about Nada Surf and their 1996 hit, “Popular.” Though really more Weezer impersonators than anything else, NS are, for better or worse, often lumped together with a slew of other borderline emo acts (Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, SDRE, etc.) that have markedly little in common with the current Dashboard Boy at the Disco contingency. What I find most incredible is that this lack of differentiation has stood up to music listeners’ obsession with subdivision. I mean, I can seriously name three different “kinds” of ambient electronic, and yet the expansive and much-loathed category that is emo features no partitions, leaving bands like Cap’n Jazz automatically (and unfairly—there, said it) on the defensive. Maybe it’s just that nobody’s yet found a cool enough name for the sub-styles—“emo” is a pretty hard word to work with. Anywayz, here’s “Popular,” this emo track about that cruelest of combinations—girls and high school.