Panic! at the Disco

It is always said of Panic! at the Disco that it was a chameleonic band, one that changed its skin from album to album without asking permission. That is true, but the description leaves out the fact that explains the changes: the author of the lyrics and of the concept of the first two albums was Ryan Ross, the guitarist, and he left on 6 July 2009. Everything that came afterwards — the stadium pop, the brass, "High Hopes" — is a consequence of that departure, not a whim of wardrobe. It was a band of four teenagers from Las Vegas that arrived with the pop-punk blink-182 had already installed on the radio and with the fresh example of the conceptual rock Green Day had returned to the conversation in 2004, and it ended up being, from April 2015 on, the project of a single person. Even the exclamation mark in the name tells that story: it left and came back depending on who was in the band.

Las Vegas, four teenagers and an overloaded debut

Panic! at the Disco formed in 2004 in Summerlin, a suburb of Las Vegas, with Ryan Ross on guitar, Spencer Smith on drums, Brent Wilson on bass and Brendon Urie on vocals and second guitar. The division of labour matters: Ross was the main songwriter and the one who wrote the lyrics, and the outlook that defines the first two albums — the overloaded vocabulary, the mile-long titles, the taste for vaudeville — is his. Urie was the singer, and a singer with an enormous range, but the script was signed by someone else.

The debut, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, came out on 27 September 2005 and sounded like nothing else from its cohort: drum machines and accordions alongside pop-punk guitars, tempo changes, an album split into two halves, one electronic and the other cabaret. Out of it came "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", which reached no. 7 on the US Hot 100, with a circus wedding video that MTV repeated to exhaustion. The band played live with dancers, curtains and make-up: before they were twenty they had already decided that the spectacle was part of the work.

The coexistence did not last long. Brent Wilson was fired on 17 May 2006, in the middle of the album's explosion, and Jon Walker replaced him. He was the first founding member to leave, and nobody read it as a sign.

Pretty. Odd. and the name without the exclamation mark

The second album, Pretty. Odd., from March 2008, is the one cited as proof of the mutation: a luminous turn towards sixties pop, with trumpets, strings and an obvious debt to the Beatles, which bewildered half the audience the first record had won. What is almost never said is whose turn that was. It was Ross's album, who was pulling towards a retro rock and wrote nearly all the material. What the usual story presents as the band's second skin was, in fact, the first skin of its author.

That album is also the group's only major release issued as Panic at the Disco, without the exclamation mark. They dropped it during the recording and the reason is nothing epic: Ross was annoyed at having to write it every time. The name went without the mark from 2008 until the middle of 2009.

July 2009

On 6 July 2009, Ryan Ross and Jon Walker announced they were leaving. The stated reason was a creative divergence that by then was public: Ross wanted to continue with the retro rock of Pretty. Odd. and founded The Young Veins with Walker, while Urie and Smith wanted a more polished and bigger pop. With Ross went the lyricist and the man responsible for the concept of the two albums that existed up to that point. The band kept the name; the new repertoire would have to be written by someone else.

A few days later, the exclamation mark came back to the name, and it was seen for the first time on the single "New Perspective". It is too good a coincidence not to note it down: the mark returned just as the only person it annoyed to write it walked out. On bass came Dallon Weekes, who had been playing live since 2009, was an official member between 2010 and 2015 and formalised his departure on 27 December 2017.

The only official member

Spencer Smith, the founding drummer, left the tour in August 2013 and explained why in a text published on the band's site: he had spent years with an addiction to painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs — Vicodin and Xanax — and to alcohol, and had entered rehab. He kept appearing as a member for a while longer, but his official exit came in April 2015. He was the third of the four founders to go.

From April 2015 on, then, Panic! at the Disco was one single official member, Brendon Urie, with a live backing band and the albums recorded largely by him. It was not something that happened "over time": it has a date. And that is where the arithmetic becomes interesting, because the project's most commercial period is also the one with the shortest payroll: Pray for the Wicked, from 2018, produced "High Hopes", which reached no. 4 on the Hot 100 and is the highest single in their entire discography, above the no. 7 of "I Write Sins Not Tragedies". The pop of brass and giant choruses that some fans of the first album detested was, in numbers, the most successful thing signed with this name.

The ending has a date and a place. On 24 January 2023, Urie announced on Instagram that the band would finish at the end of the tour under way, so that he could devote himself to his family: his wife, Sarah Orzechowski, was expecting their first child. The last concert was on 10 March 2023 at the AO Arena in Manchester, the close of the Viva Las Vengeance Tour, nineteen years after that beginning in Summerlin. There was no hiatus and no reunion announced: it was shut.

What to remember

Panic! at the Disco is a good exercise in what a band's name means. The first two albums are the work of a group with a clear lyricist and an aesthetic of its own, and they remain the most singular thing it produced: a debut that put cabaret and drum machines into the pop-punk of 2005, and a second album of sixties pop that nobody in that scene would have dared to make. What came afterwards is something else, with its own merits and its own audience — an effective stadium pop, sung by one of the best voices in the genre — and understanding it as the work of a different author does justice to both.

There remains, in passing, a detail that says more than several biographies: the exclamation mark that disappeared and came back in step with who was in the room. And there remains the account by Spencer Smith, who in 2013 preferred to tell in the first person what he had spent years hiding, when almost nobody in that scene did it. If that sounds close to home, in Chile there is SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol, 1412, free and confidential. Saying it out loud was, in his case, the beginning of the rest.

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Sources

Panic! at the Disco was an American group formed in 2004 in Summerlin, Las Vegas, Nevada, by Ryan Ross (guitar and main songwriter), Spencer Smith (drums), Brent Wilson (bass) and Brendon Urie (vocals and guitar). Ross was the author of the lyrics and of the concept of the first two albums. Their debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out", was released on 27 September 2005 and included "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", which reached no. 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Brent Wilson was fired on 17 May 2006 and replaced by Jon Walker. The second album, "Pretty. Odd.", was released in March 2008 and was the group's only major release credited as Panic at the Disco, without an exclamation mark; the mark was removed during its recording because Ryan Ross found it annoying to write, and it was absent from the name between 2008 and the middle of 2009. Ross and Walker left the band on 6 July 2009 over creative differences; Ross founded The Young Veins together with Walker. The exclamation mark was restored a few days later and appeared for the first time on the single "New Perspective". Dallon Weekes accompanied the band live from 2009, was an official member between 2010 and 2015 and formalised his departure on 27 December 2017. Spencer Smith left the tour in August 2013 and publicly revealed a years-long addiction to painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs (Vicodin and Xanax) and to alcohol, as well as his admission to rehab; his official exit took place in April 2015, from which point Brendon Urie was the project's only official member. "High Hopes", from the album "Pray for the Wicked" (2018), reached no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the highest-charting single in the group's history. On 24 January 2023 Urie announced on Instagram the end of Panic! at the Disco at the conclusion of the tour under way, in order to devote himself to his family; his wife, Sarah Orzechowski, was expecting their first child. The last concert took place on 10 March 2023 at the AO Arena in Manchester, England, as the close of the Viva Las Vengeance Tour, nineteen years after the group was formed. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Billboard, Rolling Stone and other coverage.