Emo songs recommended for junior high school students: A roundup of classic and popular Japanese tracks!
There are moments when anyone feels like laying their sadness and sorrow directly over music.
Especially in middle school, emotions are delicate, and you’re often drawn to lyrics that sink into your heart or melodies tinged with melancholy.
Songs that stay close to those feelings—so-called “yami songs” (songs steeped in emotional pain)—can be precious sources of empathy and comfort.
This time, from tracks with fragile sensitivity to more intense songs that cut deep into the heart, we’re introducing yami songs recommended for middle schoolers.
You’re sure to find a track that resonates with your heart.
Recommended emo songs for middle schoolers. A roundup of classic and popular Japanese tracks! (1–10)
IdentitySakanakushon
Released in August 2010, this single is a somewhat wistful dance tune that fuses an intense Latin beat with electronic sounds.
It was featured in a commercial for Toshin High School and used as the theme song for the film “Judge!”, and can be seen as a turning point for Sakanaction.
When you feel like you’re losing your sense of self or get anxious comparing yourself to others, this song gently asks, “What does being you really mean?” It’s a number that empathizes with the hazy, restless feelings of junior high schoolers.
Overdosenatori
The track released digitally in September 2022 sparked a huge response at home and abroad through social media, helping to spread Natori’s name.
The lyrics depict a relationship you know you shouldn’t be in but can’t escape, mistaking what slips through your fingers for love—an urgent, chest-tightening plunge into a sweet yet perilous whirl of emotion.
Singing of a fleeting romance like a fruit on the verge of breaking, this piece is likely to resonate with middle schoolers grappling with inner darkness.
It’s a recommended number for those who feel loneliness or conflict and wish for someone to understand the pain they carry alone.
Premeditated revengeMakishimamu Za Horumon
The album “Yoshu Fukushu,” released in July 2013 after roughly six years in the making, keeps Maximum the Hormone’s signature ferocious sound and genre-blurring musicality intact, while taking a further step by placing greater emphasis on the lyrics.
Shifting away from their traditional style of clever rhymes and wordplay, the band pivots to raw Japanese expressions that focus on delivering the message clearly.
The result is a work where overwhelming sonic brutality coexists with the weight of words, as if laying bare the impulses and emotions deep within.
A masterful record that topped the Oricon charts for three consecutive weeks and won the Grand Prize at the 6th CD Shop Awards in 2014, it also features “Benjo Sandal Dance,” which was used as a support theme song for the film “Kick-Ass 2.” It’s a work that resonates especially with those carrying a haze of unresolved feelings or struggling to find the right words to tell someone something important.
to liveMizuno Atsu
This is a song that gently stays close to a delicate heart that feels weighed down even by the smallest moments of everyday life.
Released in July 2021 as a collaboration between Atsu Mizuno and the Vocaloid Kafu, it has reached 10 million views on YouTube.
The conflicting emotions—wanting distance from school or relationships, blaming oneself, yet still wishing to keep living somewhere deep inside—are carefully portrayed within a simple, piano-centered soundscape.
Listen to it on nights when tomorrow feels frightening, or in moments when you feel no one will understand you.
There was no meaning to being born.mafumafu
This is Mafumafu’s signature work, a cry from the heart that chronicles losing one’s sense of self-worth and ceaselessly questioning the meaning of life.
It’s included on the album “Kagurairo Artifact,” released in October 2019.
The song confronts the value of discarded lives, a society indifferent to others, and the powerlessness of being unable to save anything despite having the potential to become anyone.
Though the lyrics are filled with despairing questions, they ultimately resound with a strong resolve that we must go on living.
It’s a song that stands beside those who find life hard or have lost sight of their own worth.
MarshmallowDECO*27
Despite its sweet-sounding title, DECO*27’s track released in October 2025 stands out for its hard guitar riffs and aggressive sound.
The lyrics, depicting the protagonist’s psychological struggle as they realize the relationship is a sham and try to cut through the other person’s deceit, shake the listener with their sharp wording.
Its structure—rooted in rock while incorporating rap elements and drop-like developments—recalls “Ghost Rule” and “Hibana,” yet delivers an even more intense finish.
It’s a song that middle schoolers grappling with the complexities of human relationships can relate to, and one that will likely resonate deeply.
He was alive, wasn’t he?aimyon
This is the major-label debut single by Aimyon, a singer-songwriter from Hyogo Prefecture, released in November 2016.
Shocked by news of a suicide by jumping, Aimyon wrote this piece with honest words about life and death.
The contrast between the fact that an unknown someone undeniably lived and the cold reactions online pierces the heart.
It was also used as the opening theme for the drama “Is Kichijoji the Only Place You Want to Live?” It’s a deeply moving number that offers support to junior high school students who feel lonely or find life hard.