'Emo DJ Khaled': Matt Cutshall Talks Crowdfunding Star-Studded Emo's Not Dead Album (Exclusive)
Emo's Not Dead founder Matt Cutshall recently announced that the band is crowdfunding a star-studded Your Broken Hero album. The musician-turned-content creator hopes the album will bring out a star-studded roster of emo band vocalists as special guests, crafting "a DJ Khaled record, but emo." PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Cutshall the day that the album Kickstarter went live, and Emo's Not Dead fans had already been driving it far beyond his expectations.
"Dude, it's funny because my whole team is panicking right now behind the scenes," he revealed, "because essentially we have been wanting to make a full-length album. As Your Broken Hero through the E.N.D. umbrella, we've released two original songs already. "We're like, hey, the fans want more, let's try to make a full album, but how are we going to fund it? We're independent, we don't have a label. So we decided to do a Kickstarter where people can just pre-order the album or pre-order merch. Our goal was $50,777, and we're already at almost 90K in the first four hours." Expressing his gratitude to his fans, Cutshall added, "We crushed the goal and it's going. The E.N.D. army is proving to be strong."
Elaborating on why the massive response is such a big deal, Cutshall explained, "I'm so fired up because, obviously, you start with your goal. Our bare minimum to make the album, just the album is like 50 grand. And then anything over that is now we can get bigger features. Now we can do a music video for every song. Now we can maybe go on tour if we hit the 150K mark. There are certain marks that we need to hit in order to do it all, but the fact that in the first few hours we're at almost 90K is just freaking crazy. I'm fired up. I'm on cloud nine right now."
Emo's Not Dead started as a series of funny videos that Cutshall made based on his time in the musical genre's community, which has a massive rise in the early-mid 2000s with bands like Fall Out Boy, The Used, and Panic! At the Disco. The brand eventually grew to feature merch, as well as its own cruise, which set off on its maiden voyage in 2022 and will return in 2024. Notably, Cutshall revealed the response to crowdfunding an Emo's Not Dead album is not dissimilar to what happened when the company announced the Emo's Not Dead Cruise. "We had like a nine-month game plan on how to sell it out. And we're like, we hope we can sell out a cruise," he said. "We sold out in the first 24 hours."
As Cutshall noted, the satirical emo band he started through Emo's Not Dead, Your Broken Hero, has put out two tracks so far: "A Letter to Ashley" and "Tommy's Face," which featured guest vocals from Underoath frontman Spencer Chamberlain. For the full-length album, they are hoping to add vocalists from a number of other bands. "Essentially, our initial goal to bare minimum to just make the album, to make the music with a dope producer — obviously it's expensive— our goal was $50,000, and we met that goal today. However, anything that goes past it is going to be supporting making a music video for each song, getting all the features paid to be on it.
Comparing the Your Broken Hero album idea to something music fans will be quite familiar with, Cutshall offered, "We want to get some of these legendary... If I can, and we have the money, I want to get a feature on every single song and make it like a DJ Khaled record, but emo, right?"
He also revealed that if the Kickstarter campaign garners enough support, they will be able to make touring plans. "The thing is, what people don't understand is as an independent artist, I have no label," he confessed, "I don't have the financial help, so the only way that I fund this is through my fans. That's it. Our merch, whenever we sell merch, the funds from the merch just make the next video."
Cutshall explained that "the funds from the merch is how I made A Letter to Ashley and that music video. It's expensive, dude. It cost me 30 grand to shoot the "Letter to Ashley" video, and I had to pay for it from what I saved from my merch sales. A lot of people don't understand how pricey it could be."
He continued, "Our goal is if we make enough, if people fund the album, we're not asking for free money. We're saying, if you believe in this project, then pre-order the album. It's $10, and your $10 will go to making the album. And you'll get the full digital download as soon as it comes out. And all our Kickstarter fans will have first couple months with the album, like the physical copy."
Obviously, Emo's Not Dead fans are fully on board for the project. As of this writing, the Kickstarter has brought in over $190,000, with just under 50 days left to donate. "I love the END fans so much," Cutshall said, beaming with pride. "Obviously I've been doing these videos for the last few years, but they never cease to surprise me." Click here to check out the "Emo's Not Dead Presents: The Your Broken Hero Album" Kickstarter. See our complete interview with Matt Cutshall above.