Because there is a lot of confusion in what really is emo and what is not, people started tagging real emo artists and artists which are not emo with the appropiate tags.

Emo is music derived from punk or alternative with emotionally fraught themes and lyrics.

Emo began in the middle of the 1980s as a post-hardcore subgenre in the DC hardcore scene influenced by hardcore punk bands like Bad Brains, Scream, The Faith and Minor Threat as well as early post-hardcore bands like Hüsker Dü, Gray Matter and Dag Nasty. The pioneers of emo were Rites of Spring. Then soon more emo bands came in DC and Maryland like Embrace, One Last Wish, Rain, Happy Go Licky, Moss Icon, The Hated and others. At first emo was first shortened for emotional hardcore/emotive hardcore, but Guy Picciotto from Rites of Spring didn't like the emo label. Ian MacKaye from Embrace, hated the emocore label, and once at an Embrace gig he spoke about the term. In the 1990s, the DC hardcore scene faded a little which split all the emo bands, so then emo was remade being in genres like alternative, indie and pop punk. Although Jawbreaker later became an emo band with their 2nd album with the emo-punk as an emo revival. Bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Weezer, Dashboard Confessional, The Promise Ring had the alternative/indie traits while bands like The Movielife, The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World had the pop punk traits (calling it "emo pop"). Many 1980s emo fans didn't accept this regeneration as emo at all. Even in the 1990s the genre screamo came up with bands like Heroin, Saetia, and Pg. 99. These bands were influenced a lot by hardcore punk but added extremely raw songs and even had screaming. 1990s screamo was often nicknamed as skramz. Other screamo artists include The Saddest Landscape, Alexisonfire, Neil Perry and Circle Takes the Square. In the early 2000s, emo then came up with bands like Jimmy Eats World and The Get-Up Kids, who both had mostly a pop punk sound and the indie emo band Dashboard Confessional. Becoming a popular music style, emo then even expanded later with bands from even genres like post-hardcore and alternative rock. Before 2005, some other emo artists/bands even included My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights, The Used, Senses Fail and Silverstein. Some of these bands had got famous. Most of them have a lot of 1990s emo traits but made their own style and some even began off sounding very old-school emo. Today, many bands are mislabeled as emo. Although many people restrict emo the strictly only the punk-influenced, underground or something type of bands, or bands that don't have fans who have a hair fringe and stuff. But emo still went into many genres of music and these so-called "fake emo" bands play that.

Emo bands:

Rain
Rites of Spring
Thursday
Title Fight (sometimes)
Jawbox
Glassjaw
Heroin
Hot Cross
Policy of 3
Jawbreaker
Alkaline Trio (sometimes)
Silverstein
Bright Eyes
Saves the Day
Matchbook Romance
Drive Like Jehu
Senses Fail
Sunny Day Real Estate
American Football
Midtown
The Movielife
The Get Up Kids
Jimmy Eat World
Cap'n Jazz
Scary Kids Scaring Kids
Saosin
Hawthorne Heights
Thrice
Alexisonfire
I Hate Myself
Indian Summer
You & I
Dashboard Confessional
The Promise Ring
Weezer
The Wrens
Break the Silence
The Hated
Moss Icon
The Used
Underoath (After first two albums especially their 3rd album.)
The Starting Line
Loud?
Braid
Texas is the Reason
Saosin
Brand New
Joan of Arc
Hey Mercedes
Something Corporate
Transit
Bayside
The Story So Far
The Wonder Years
Such Gold
Captain, We're Sinking
Jets to Brazil
Saetia
Orchid
The Saddest Landscape
Pg. 99
One Last Wish
Happy Go Licky
Seaweed
My Chemical Romance (Earlier work. Eg: The debut before they were famous sounded more like old emo.)

Bands and artists mislabeled as emo or screamo:

My Chemical Romance
Black Veil Brides
Avenged Sevenfold
Blink-182
Green Day
Panic! at the Disco
Asking Alexandria
Arch Enemy
In Flames
Fall Out Boy
Whitechapel
Suicide Silence
Bullet for my Valentine
Misfits
Paramore
Murderdolls
Twenty One Pilots
Motionless in White
The Cure
Linkin Park
Chelsea Grin
Bring Me the Horizon
All That Remains
As I Lay Dying
Devil Wears Prada
Make Me Famous
Pierce the Veil
Blood on the Dance Floor
August Burns Red
Evanescence
Marilyn Manson
OTEP
Cannibal Corpse
Job for a Cowboy
Waking the Cadaver
Trivium
Slipknot
Any death metal band