The Get Up Kids are an Alternative Rock band from Kansas City, Missouri. They are largely considered the Trope Codifier for late-90s-early "second wave" emo music, with personal, often intimate lyrics and a distinctly Pop Punk sound. The band has toured under a fairly consistent membership since reuniting in 2008, and have put out six studio albums. Vocalist Matt Pryor is the band's most significant contributor musically, and James Dewees, who later became My Chemical Romance's keyboardist, made a side project, Reggie And The Full Effect, that was originally songs that the rest of the band found inappropriate or unfit for The Get Up Kids.
The band had a major impact on later Pop Punk and emo musicians. Pete Wentz has said that without their debut, Four Minute Mile, Fall Out Boy would have never been a thing, and Tom Delonge of blink-182 has cited their second album as influential.
Tropes describing The Get Up Kids' music:
- Break-Up Song: "Long Goodnight" and "Don't Hate Me" seem to be from different ends of a post-breakup spectrum.
- Cover Version: Nearly half of the B Sides / rarities compilation Eudora consists of covers: "Suffragette City" (David Bowie), "Close To Me" (The Cure), "Regret" (New Order), "Beer for Breakfast" (The Replacements), "Alec Eiffel" (Pixies), "On With The Show" (Mötley Crüe), and "Burned Bridges" (Coalesce).
- Long Runner Lineup: Their first incarnation lasted ten years straight.
- New Sound Album: On A Wire is mellow indie rock, with only a bit of the punk energy of their first two albums.
- Performance Video: For "Action & Action". It still manages to have somewhat of a plot - as the band are playing the song through a phone to a woman upstairs from them, another woman in the same building tries to get them to stop the music so she can study.
- Shout-Out: "I'm A Loner, Dottie, A Rebel" is named for dialog from Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
- Silly Love Songs: "I'll Catch You" is a particularly sweet one, and one that aforementioned Tom Delonge proposed to his girlfriend with.
