Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, released on June 8th, 2004, is the sophomore album by My Chemical Romance. To the emo/alternative community, it’s an iconic collection of songs.
My Chem put out three classic music videos for the album, which included the songs “Helena” and “I’m Not Okay”. They recently released a deluxe edition of the album while on their “Long Live The Black Parade Tour”.
My Chemical Romance is a band that consists of Gerard Way, the band’s lead singer, Mikey Way, the band’s bassist, along with Frank Iero and Ray Toro, the band’s two guitarists. The band has been a giant in the emo and pop-punk genres, despite Way having rejected the “emo” label many times.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is a half-concept, half-reality-based album that revolves around a pair of characters called the Demolition Lovers. This story builds upon the band’s first album, and it’s a story about a man and a woman who become separated by death.
The man ends up in hell, and the devil tells him that his love is still alive and that he can reunite with her if he brings the devil the souls of a thousand evil men. While this story is supposed to revolve around this plotline, Way allowed a lot of his personal life to leak into the album. But I think this improves the album overall, as it helps the lyrics thrive more than if they were bound to a single storyline.
Way also drew the amazing cover art for the album. He took lots of inspiration from a René Magritte painting titled “The Lovers”. Before starting the band, he was a comic artist interning at Cartoon Network.
While on his way to work, making the commute from New Jersey to New York on the Brooklyn Bridge, Way famously witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The event was a wake-up call for a lot of people, including Way, who realized that his job was taking him nowhere and that what he really wanted to do was start a band.
While Way has rejected the “emo” label associated with his band, when you think of emo, you think of him in the “Helena” music video. All of the music videos from that album were recently restored to 4k quality, which makes watching them all the better.
The video for “Helena” was filmed here in Downtown LA at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, and it is arguably the most iconic video by the band, but the music video for “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” is a close second. The video features Way and the rest of the band members dressed in all black and performing at the church. At the end, there’s this awesome short where they load a coffin into a hearse, and the camera shifts to the point of view of the coffin, so you see them all walking away into the distance, and Way is the last one left staring into the hearse.
The music video for “I’m Not Okay” is framed like a trailer for a movie, with different fast-paced cuts toward the end, and there is another cut right before something big happens. All of these things together perfectly emulate that movie trailer feel and are ingenious, especially for the tone of the song.
One of my favorite music videos of all time, which is for “The Ghost Of You”, also happens to be one of the most expensive music videos ever made. It’s right up there with “Touch The Sky” by Kanye West and “Toxic” by Britney Spears.
Set during World War II, this video switches between the band members performing during a military event, then on a coastside battlefield. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, and the song in the background makes the theme all the more heavy-hearted.
The song “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You”, is about Way’s struggles with drugs and alcohol. He personifies his issues with addiction as a woman whom he sings about in the song.
If you listen to this album in sequential order, this track’s intro perfectly lines up with the outro of the previous song, “The Ghost Of You”. This is my favorite song intro of all time, because it has this melodic organ feel to it that helps set the tone of the song. Fortunately, Way got sober in the summer of 2005 and has been sober ever since.
In the end, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is my favorite album of all time. It’s some of My Chemical Romance’s best work to date, and it has no skips. I highly recommend that you give it a chance!
