Panic! At the Disco

Plays: Northern Downpour

It's kind of insane that this band exists because it feels like it was made in a lab for me to become obsessed with. And I'm definitely obsessed. Everything about their aesthetic sensibilities, fashion tastes, set designs, album concepts, musical style, and surrealist, overly verbose lyricism fits my tastes perfectly. It also doesn't hurt that they're super cute.
This is completely focused on pre-split panic, not because their later music is bad but because I just don't have much to say about it. And I'm a Ryan fangirl first and foremost :) He's my favorite trainwreck!

What is Panic?


**If you want a better version of panic's history, please watch this amazing video and this one too by souryogurtgirl**

In 2004, Ryan Ross was a loser who'd been kicked out of his dad's house for purposely failing out of college to become a rock star. He started out covering Blink-182 songs with his friend spencer on drums or writing angsty songs about his father and cheating girlfriends. At some point he realized he was "terrible at singing", so Brent Wilson, the bassist, recruited a nerdy mormon kid named Brendon Urie to be the voice for his songs.

"i don't know if i can do it justice, because these are your words, how am i going to be your voice?"- brendon
"it allowed me to write whatever kind of lyrics i wanted because i knew he was going to be singing them" - ryan
"he could kind of hide behing my voice, I guess" - brendon
"it felt right to have confident sounding lyrics behind a confident voice" - ryan

Together the 4 formed Panic. He promoted their music by posting photos of his ass on livejournal for emo girls to drool over, and posting his demos in Fall Out Boy fan groups. By some stroke of luck, Pete Wentz, fob bassist, took notice of his fanboy behavior and listened to his songs. Soon after that he came to watch them play and, well, they must have done something right, because Panic, who had like 3 songs and had never played a concert, was signed to his label in 2005.

"wow. big things have been happening. pete from fob heard the band and liked it. wierd that someone in a band i really like is into my music. it feels good." - ryan ross, 2004 (yes, he spelled weird like that)
"in the lab with the scientists in panic. your next favorite band. I promise." - pete wentz, 2005

Nowadays most people know Panic as Brendon's project, that's quite different from their original creative vision. Over the years members were slowly picked off. Brent was kicked out early on because his drug problem made him unreliable. He was replaced with Jon Walker. Then Ryan and Jon left after prolongued arguments over the band's creative direction, forming a side project called The Yound Veins. This quickly failed (though their (one) album is really good!) during Ryan's prolongued troubles with drug addiction, alcoholism, and harassment from fans and haters alike. (his ex wrote a book about him, he got catfished by a deranged stalker, and he got his image dragged through the mud by shane morris, a pathological liar who pretended to be his manager, threatened to kill fans, made up rumors about him and brendon, leaked his music, and deleted his soundcloud. so not a great decade.) Spencer was the last to go, partially because the pressures of touring and exposure to other members' habits were interfering with his addiction recovery. As of 2024 Panic has been laid to rest by Brendon after releasing 5 albums since the split (if youre curious about my thoughts on them: i love vices, hate pftw, and like vlv, doab, and twtl). I'm not Brendon's #1 fan but he seems like a genuinely nice guy and I feel so bad for how much he was harassed and lied about, and how people try to take all the credit for Panic away from him when he was just as important as ryan to its success. I hope he's enjoying his early retirement lol.
Anyway, Ryan, after a period of understandable radio silence, comes out of hiding once in a while to perform at small venues with longtime friends, like Z Berg of The Like (who are really good and you should listen to them!!) and Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet. He claims he's "working on new music", but he's been saying that for 6 years so I'll believe it when I see it. Here's a playlist of songs from his other projects. Here is an interesting interview with him from 2019, where he talks about sobriety, getting his ego checked, and finding his musical footing again after a pretty rocky 10 years. Jon walker also releases his own music, my favorite songs of his are Only my Mind and The Way it Was. And Brent is ummm.... a personal trainer? No longer in jail so thats good.

Here are some cute panic related videos! <3

Silly quotes

"hi im ryan im new i live in las vegas my chemical romance makes me dance" - ryan ross, 2004
"um hey doods. im new. im ryan. i just wanted to know where you doods get jeans at. thankssss" - ryan ross, 2004
"ah. the cd is fucking sex" "and you're a fucking tool, trendster. Get a new stereotype." - ryan ross getting a beatdown, 2004
"dude, ryan, i found your journal haha, i know you hate it when i show up to practice and i am repeating stuff from your journal, so i will stop, anyways, thats all i guess, later, you haggard ass slut! love always, brendon-brendon-bo-bendon" - brendon urie, 2004
"wait until "screamo" isn't the most popular genre anymore. then you will probably wish fob were the next "scene" thing.but you probably don't know what scene, or the scene is either. whatever this community used to be cool. until the mest tour happened." - ryan ross gatekeeping, 2004
"my boo is back home wutwut" - ryan ross, 2005
"do you still look up to pete wentz?"
"no, i'm taller than him now." - ryan ross, 2006(?)
"what do you think of pete wentz?"
"i don't." - ryan ross, 2010(?)
"if i had an affair with anybody, i'd probably have it with ryan. He's a very good looking guy and he's pretty good looking for a girl too." - pete wentz, ????
"thank god the freakend is over" - ryan ross, 2010
"this is my coming out party. I AM gay. deal with it. done." - ryan ross, 2009
"sorry about that, wish i was gay, cause i hate girls" - ryan ross, 3 minutes later

Even sillier photos


Current Panic-related happenings:

Link to srcs

A Fever

You
Can't

Sweat Out

What a wonderful caricature of intimacy..

Plays: Build God, Then We'll Talk

AFYCSO, Panic's first album, is half techno dance rock and half dark cabaret vaudevillian circus. Whatever tf that means. I love literally every song on this album!! Ryan's edgy but flowery writing gives each one a distinct mood and narrative.
aside from the songs themselves, the visual style of this album is perfect. Ryan perfected his makeup skills during this era, doing elaborate spiral designs across his eyes to boost his confidence on stage. Their costume and set design teams were working overtime to make their live shows fit into the circus aesthetic perfectly. They even hired a crew of performers to tour with them and do tricks in the background.
another key aspect of afycso concerts was brendon's "stage gay", where he and ryan molest eachother in front of thousands of screaming girls. Very high brow stuff.
In this interview, Matt Squire, the producer of afysco, discussed their chaotic recording process. They only had a few songs written, and they had 3 weeks and a 10k budget to finish the album while living in the recording studio, and while brendon was too sick to sing for most of the time. He describes the cracks that were already showing in the band, namely how ryan was “the artist with the idea” that he wouldn’t compromise on, and if anything got in the way of it he would give up. Brendon, meanwhile, would do anything to make the idea a reality. The album is chronological, so the first songs were written before they got signed. They experienced a major creative shift during recording, and the latter half of the album reflects that. They all felt “build god”, the final track, best showed the direction their band was going in.

Favorite Songs

Camisado- a bitter song describing ryan's complicated feelings about his father's alcoholism and emotional/physical abuse. Sadly his dad died from that same addiction while he was away on tour for this album, making him functionally an orphan at 20. He said they reconciled before his passing, but obviously it still hit him pretty hard.
Build God, then we'll talk- leaning into the moody circus theme, it's a black comedy involving lawyers, virgins, and seedy motels. ryan really gets into his pretentious, syrupy and (affectionately) jouvenile attempts at wordplay here. I bet he thought he ate when he was writing this in spencer's basement (he did). Also.. his background vocals in the live in denver version....... i have something to say that's not family friendly.

Oh, we're all too small.. to talk to god.

>

Plays: She Had The World

This album was a complete stylistic shift from fever. They incorporated elements from their favorite 70s bands like The Beatles and made more folksy, classic rock songs. But they kept the same eccentric, literary lyrics. Many of the songs are references to the books Ryan was reading at the time, but Brendon and Jon also contributed to the writing this time. Their lyrics reflect their new experimentation with drugs, their feelings about the band's success and how they've changed since it started, and Ryan's failing relationship during that time (which is a whole other rabbit hole...) They also leaned into the hippie thing, with Ryan using the slogan "reinvent love" and speaking in an exageratted retro drawl that also bordered on a fake british accent at times. In my opinion he sounded like an egotistical asshole trying way too hard to seem like he didn't care butttt i still love him <3 He also got to sing a whole song by himself on this album and he looked scared af everytime he performed it on stage!
Sadly their creative changes also brought constant arguments about what should go where, who should sing what, or if this was even the right direction for the band. A clear divide emerged between the creatively aligned ryan and jon, who wanted to lean into the retro, calmer sound, vs spencer and brendon who both liked the showtunes/cabaret aspects of their first album and wanted to transition to more straightforward 2000s pop music. It also seems that ryan was very caught up in himself in this era. He claimed that Brendon didn’t contribute to P.O. at all and just messed around the whole time, while brendon and spencer said they would come up with several ideas that ryan would instantly shoot down because they didnt align completely with his vision. We can see this in how he treated folkin around, a P.O. song written solely by brendon. In videos of them playing it he calls "brendon's thing", not “song”, and says he doesn't even know the chords for it. Due to all this, the band sadly broke up after touring for P.O. ended, and the hearts of depressed millenial fangirls everywhere were shattered. what a sad day for america.

Favorite Songs

Northern Downpour- This is a song that many people associate with Ryan and Brendon's friendship (or if you're a ryden shipper, their passionate love affair) and since they don't talk anymore its become a lot more bittersweet. But to me its still a soothing song that represents finding comfort and understanding in another person. I've cried to it at least once im ngl. Even Brendon cries when he performs it live since the split, but when ryan was asked about it in a recent interview, he was completely surprised that anyone would find it sad. This is further proof that he's secretly a psychopathic serial killer.
Mad as Rabbits- Do I have any idea what this song is about? No. Do the lyrics even make gramatical sense? That's arguable. But it's still one of the best on the album. It's an upbeat, fast rock song reminiscent of an alice-in-wonderland-ish trip into another world where things don't exactly make sense. None of the songs on Pretty Odd are meaningless despite all using this whimsical, fairytale lyrical style, but this one drifts furthest from the realm of reality (along with Behind The Sea).

Cricket & Clover

Plays: Nearly Witches

also called "the cabin album", this was a heavily mythologized but never realized project worked on between afycso and pretty odd. All i can say i'm glad they dropped this aesthetic. (just kidding I love greasy cartoon villain ryan!)
it was a period of creaive limbo for the band, where they reportedly got so experimental that the final products were completely incomprehensible. my understanding is that it was supposed to be a forbidden love story between the titular cricket and clover, but they kinda had no idea what they were doing with that concept. It was described by pete, one of the few people who actually listened to it during its production, as "a bizarre musical about wolves". He said it sounded forced, and also commented: "I've heard some songs. One was like a film score, then it turns into Beatles 2007… They've got a hard road ahead of them because when you have that amount of success in a short amount of time, you have to repeat it or take a nosedive". It seems like he was getting a little fed up with their weird ideas lol.
Ryan always likes to keep me guessing or try to freak me out with stuff. So he will message me to tell me that they have just written an amazing song, and I will get excited, then he will message me again to tell me it sounds like Aladdin, and I will feel kind of bemused. Or last week he messaged me to say they had written a song that makes him think of France.” - Pete Wentz

the first track they previewed live recieved very mixed reactions from fans, partly because the performance was very unpolished and the lyrics were pretty sappy, leading to someone on livejournal calling them "pussywhipped! at the disco". whoever that was i love you.

Even the members of the band seemed to have no confidence in themselves, and yet way too much at the same time... a bunch of egotistical 20 year olds with infinite money, time, and creative freedom expected to follow up with something great after being instantly launched to worldwide stardom with their very first album and presumably being hyped up by everyone around them... its no surprise they got a little lost in the sauce.

“Oh we were just on mushrooms the whole time. When we were writing for the second album we locked ourselves away in a cabin for about three months. We had this idea to do like a musical. The music ended up being way too ambitious and we were all fighting so much. This was kind of the beginning of the end. We were trying to do this whole thing and it didn’t work out at all. Spencer and Ryan had never drank, never done drugs, so this was like their college experience. So we were all raging so hard for that whole album. I think we were doing it to cope with each other too because we had lived with each other basically every day for like three years. We were just tired so we were like let’s go live together in a cabin and take psychedelics, because that’ll help I guess.” - Brendon Urie

sadly the album was never released and we may never hear the recordings from that time. However it's not all bad. one track was leaked, The nearly witches demo version (from before brendon reworked it for Vices and virtues to be a love song for his wife). It's really good, and I'll always prefer these lyrics over brendon's version even though i like that one too.
"and as the stars watched me descend, i cracked the family tree and, chopped off all of the branches"
those damn teases ryan and jon constantly hint that they have the demos but "they" wont let them release them.. JUST DO IT YOU DUMB TWINKS!!!

Vices & Virtues

Plays: Always

Vices & Virtues is Panic at the discos's 3rd album and 1st post-split album. While ryan wrote some of the lyrics, the majority of this was created after he and jon left. But despite the fact that i'm a proud ryan fangirl, this is actually the panic album I listen too most often. It's not the most interesting, the most lyrically complex, and it doesn't have the coolest aesthetics or attention to detail. But the songs on here are undeniably catchy and creative and the instrumentation and production is the best it's been by this point. As much as i love afycso, there's a reason i usually listen to the live versions (and it's that the production is... a bit rough on the ears. nails for breakfast is probably the worst offender.) Nearly Witches, Always, and The Calendar are some of my favorite songs ever and this is the only one of their albums I always listen to all the way through without skipping. I don't dislike any of the songs. The best part is this is their most drama free era, so unlike the rest of their discography, I don't get emo ptsd flashbacks when I listen to it! All that being said....... afycso and p.o. will always be the most important albums in my heart.

The Young Veins

Plays: Lie To The Truth

"and I'm not in panic at the disco anymore. and the young veins didn't work out. and climate change is a serious problem. " - jon walker, 2012
The Young Veins was jon and ryan's new project after leaving PATD. What a cruel world we live in that they only released one album...
after ending things with spencer and brendon on rough terms and being cast aside by pete and their old label, they released an album heavily inspired by the music of the 60s and 70s, while their aesthetics fully transitioned into a 2010s hipster style. (and ryan grew his hair out and got a perm! cute! ^^) A lot of the songs on it were already written and were intended for a Panic record. Listening to this and V&V side by side, it's no surprise the band had to break up, as sad as it is.
this project was kind of doomed from the start, due to ryan's slipping mental health, poor reputation with patd fans due to gossip and various scandals (coke plate photo anyone?), lack of support from their former associates (pete didnt even mention the album when it came out.. heartbreaking...) (sorry if I come off as biased against pete but I really hate him ngl.) and the fact that there wasn't much hype for this style of music, especially among PATD's fans. 'Take A Vacation' was released at the same time as V&V, but not to quite as much hype.. It seemed like ryan and jon were trying to compete with panic, as the release dates were so close, and despite the fact that brendon and spencer promoted TAV on their site, jon and ryan would insult and mock them in interviews during this era. Jon has of course made up for this since by becoming their #1 fan.
So things weren't looking good. As quickly as they formed, the young veins dissapeared. (sorry, "went on hiatus.") I don't know the circumstances of the end of their band, but like I said, it's not like there are no clues. Ryan would reflect on this time in a 2019 podcast, saying he needed a serious ego check and shouldn't have expected everything he did to magically work out. It seems like he wasn't used to a project not instantly taking off, and didn't have the commitment to see it through what could have been a temporary rough patch. I wish things went better for him, but it honestly seems like he didn't really want to be famous and leaving the public eye was a good thing for him. Instantly becoming world famous and rich at age 19 without ever having the chance to mature normally or living in the real world, with no family to support you along the way, would do crazy things to anyone's mental state tbh.
Anyway, as for the actual music, I really, really love it. Even though Ryan's singing is a bit strained and being the lead clearly challenged him, I'll always love his fragile but beautiful voice and the unique style of this album. And the songs where jon sings are great too! There's even a feature from mywife Z berg B^D (LISTEN TO THE LIKE!!!) They obviously succeeded in capturing that 60s rock sound, though its somewhat derivative and not on the same level of creativity as Pretty. Odd. I love the melancholy, subdued music accompanying ryan's depressing self reflecive lyrics. My fav songs from it are dangerous blues, the other girl, defiance, young veins (die tonight), and lie to the truth. What I find funny is that at least half the tracks are about ryan cheating on his girlfriend, but somehow fans still came up with a whole conspiracy about how they're all about his secret relationship with brendon. I truly admire their commitment.