The opening track and and lead single endures as its strongest statement: there are shades of Fever‘s Vaudevillian second side in the xylophone intro and those little string inflections in the verses, and once we get to the hard-charging power pop chorus, Urie’s mighty, “whoa, Mona Lisa” announces the exclamation point has returned in dramatic fashion.Ħ. Ross and bassist Jon Walker had recently said goodbye, and with more creative control ceded to Urie, the band bounced back towards the glitzy debauchery of its debut. V&V was another transitional album for Panic!. For the record though, the lyrics of its seismic chorus were actually a nod to a Janet Jackson single in trying to seduce his love interest with a desperate, carnal howl of, “Are you nasty?” Inspired by hip-hop textures and cadences, “Miss Jackson” trumpets a brash call-and-response barrage that doesn’t seem to care a very iconic rap song with virtually the same name already topped the Hot 100. It was the last LP to feature drummer Spencer Smith, whose departure left Urie the last original member, and eventually, the band’s driving creative force. Panic!’s fourth album - the start of that 2.0 phase - marked a major turning point. Someone get this man to the Copa Room at the Sands.Ĩ. “ Sinatra taught DJs to write rock n’ roll” is how he described Death of a Bachelor, and on its title track, Panic! strips away most of its maniacal modern day production clatter and - lo and behold - Urie can flat-out croon. Plenty of millennial rockers have tried to be the Beatles, but a freshly-married, 30-year old Urie tapping into his Sinatra side unlocked a new level of showmanship. “Death of a Bachelor” įinally, some Panic! you can take home to (great?) grandma. It’s also a rare moment in the band’s catalog that features Urie sharing lead vocal duties with guitarist-songwriter Ryan Ross.ĩ. Pepper’s grandeur: a cartoonish cautionary tale about the “poor son of a humble chimney sweep” driven mad as the hatter in Alice In Wonderland. wasn’t as commercially successful as its mighty predecessor, but those who made it all the way to track 15 were treated to this whimsical nugget of Sgt. The eyeliner was swapped for faded floral prints, the scene-approved Fall Out Boy choruses and pop-punk accents for time-tested late-60s Beatles psychedelia. “Mad As Rabbits” įor their sophomore album, Panic at the Disco ditched more than the exclamation point. Witness the trend-bucking revitalization of one of the 21st century’s most popular rock bands told through our picks for their ten greatest songs. Turns out, those recent cuts hold up so well, they’ve bumped that “biggest hit” from the list entirely.ġ0. They’ll look to keep the momentum going with a new album this summer, and its raucous lead single sounds like it could wind up on a list like ours below once it’s had some time to settle in. A seismic record that would be a golden excuse for another band’s 10-year anniversary nostalgia tour is just a tiny blip on a modern day Panic! set. On last year’s tour, he essentially did that with Fever, stringing together condensed versions of all but its biggest hit, while letting the deep cuts from his recent Billboard 200-topping album hog the spotlight. I thought back to interviewing Urie in 2013, when he was getting ready to release Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! - the album that really launched Panic! 2.0 - and how he wanted his shows to match the energy of a DJ at a club night, powering through a mega-mix of familiar hooks and choruses. It was wild, it was silly, and it was very extra. It’s great to have teen fans they’re louder, they’re feistier, they’re actually going through the adolescent mania as a 17-year old Urie when he famously overestimated how not-boring weddings actually are. Frontman Brendon Urie - now the band’s only original member and full-time main attraction - devoted only about ten minutes of the evening to songs off A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, their 2005 debut album once seen as a career albatross. Three years later, I saw them play Madison Square Garden - the arena, not the theater - and sell it out.
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