Reflecting on Panic! At The Disco’s 19-year-long career

I first came across Panic! At The Disco at some point in January of 2016. I was beginning to listen to a completely different type of music—in the space of a month I went from listening to The Vamps and Union J to listening to Arctic Monkeys, Green Day, and a few weeks later on, I came across Panic! At The Disco. It was in the run-up to their fifth album, Death of a Bachelor, and I assume one of the singles from the album came up on my Spotify. Regardless of what song it was, I was hooked. In the space of a week, I’d gone from vaguely having heard the name to having listened to their entire discography, including unreleased songs (I stand by the fact the Vices and Virtues deluxe tracks and unreleased songs are some of the strongest songs in their discography). Discovering Panic! then led me to listen to Ryan Ross (Panic!’s former songwriter and guitarist)’s solo music, as well as all acts even loosely related to Panic!, whether that be The Young Veins, The Brobecks, and a few years later, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me.

In 2016, Panic! At The Disco was my music taste, alongside, of course, other Tumblr-emo-associated bands, including My Chemical Romance, Twenty One Pilots, Fall Out Boy, and so on. But I never stopped listening to Panic!. Even when they released their awful 2018 album Pray For the Wicked and their somehow-even-worse 2022 album Viva Las Vengeance, I never stopped. In fact, the release of these dreadful albums just made me revisit their older music more often than I had been doing. 

Their older stuff is in fact excellent

So when I saw the news that Brendon Urie, now the sole remaining member of Panic!, was going to stop making music I was, to put it lightly, crushed. This was something I’d feared for years. The reception of their latest two albums was tepid at best, and I myself gave Viva Las Vengeance a tad-too-generous two-star rating. What’s more, his ongoing Viva Las Vengeance Tour has not sold out most of its dates. A part of me knew his time in the music industry was going to come to an end at some point, but like any bad piece of news, it still feels like a blow.

Perhaps this is for the best though. I’ve spent the past few years feeling like I had to defend being a fan of Panic! At The Disco. “But their older stuff is good”, I’d reason. And I wasn’t wrong, their older stuff is in fact excellent. But they haven’t been good since 2016 and showed no signs of improving. (Incidentally, I also used the “but their older stuff is good” excuse to justify my spending £60 on concert tickets to see him this March. This was before I knew his setlist would include Viva Las Vengeance in its entirety, front to back, as if some kind of sick joke). 

Brendon Urie simply ran out of ideas and creativity

But while they are no longer what they used to be, Panic! At the Disco have some undeniably great pieces in their discography. Their 2005 album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out is bizarre, surreal, and carnivalesque. Its 39-minute tracklist is a whirlwind of pop-punk and emo extravaganza and features some of the band’s best lyricism (written of course, by Ryan Ross, who left the band in 2009). Pretty Odd. and Vices and Virtues are the two other albums featuring Ross, who many fans credit with the group’s best music. Pretty Odd. is a luxurious, 1960s-inspired, psychedelics-infused trip through nature. Vices and Virtues, on the other hand, contains some of Urie’s best vocals and is a decadent art-deco pop exposé. 2013’s Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die is Urie’s first solo project, and it is here where the hallmarks of so-called ‘New Panic!’ begin to show. Urie explores his fascination with Las Vegas as a city and touches upon sexuality, debauchery, and death and what comes after it. The same themes are carried into 2016’s Death of a Bachelor, Pray for the Wicked, and, you guessed it, Viva Las Vengeance. It’s hard not to feel that after the departure of his bandmates, Brendon Urie simply ran out of ideas and creativity.

Artists often face the choice between stopping while they are still good, or continuing until they are good no more, neither of which is a particularly appealing choice. Panic! certainly chose the latter, and perhaps I’d even argue he should have stopped making music (or even taken an extended break) two albums ago. But I cannot shake this feeling of sadness and even slight disappointment at the news. Regardless or not of whether Panic! At the Disco is still around and making music, their first five albums will always be there to be listened to. Perhaps this news is a sign that we should do just that.