Panic! at the Disco Was a Perfect Machine (Until It Wasn’t)

So I guess this is just a bandom newsletter now.

Happy death of P!ATD to those who celebrate!

Panic! at the Disco, for those who aren’t aware, was the band originally formed by guitarist Ryan Ross, drummer Spencer Smith and bassist Brent Wilson (Brendon Urie, vocalist and blight, was added to the band very shortly after the formation) in 2004. They were the golden boys of Decaydance, the label and emo heartthrob factory of Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz who discovered them, and skyrocketed to success in 2005 with the release of their debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. You know, “Haven’t you people ever heard of / Closing a goddamn door?” The band persisted in some shape or form for six more albums and nineteen years, before dissolving in early 2023, leaving behind it a trail of rolled up dollar bills and corpses of bassists. I’m speaking metaphorically, but there’s a creeping sense that my dry attempts at snide humor do not fit here, because it could’ve very easily been literal. 

For a casual observer of the emo-sphere it might be difficult to comprehend why vast numbers of fans (just check the comments under the announcement) are celebrating the demise of the band once considered part of the Emo Trinity. The short version is: Those nineteen years have been rough. The running joke you might’ve heard is that at the point it finally broke, P!ATD has become a kind of ship of Theseus, with Urie being the only original member in the band left. The band went through multiple tumultuous member changes¹, each one leaving the fanbase more confused and jaded. The vibes were, as they say, deteriorating, reaching incredibly high speeds once we crossed into the 2010s. While critical reception of P!ATD’s new albums stayed alright, audiences were sick of their new sound (that tweet is liked by their former bassist, lol). It was so bad at least 4000 people agree Brendon Urie is a domestic terrorist (once again, lol). Some shows were apparently so disastrous, people witnessing the chaos second-hand for free got more out of it than people who paid money to see the band perform. Not to mention the mounting allegations against Urie and his longtime bodyguard, Zack Hall.

Naturally, hindsight is 20/20, but people have been crying (for) the end of Panic! at the Disco for a long, long time. Ever since Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker left in 2009, in fact. Point your finger in any random direction and you would find a reason good enough for why P!ATD should’ve died. But what I’m interested in is dissecting on why it didn’t for so long - from silly psychological theories to musical premonition to insane(ly profitable) business practices.

Vocalist Brain

This is the silliest and most inconsequential reason among all, but I wanted to mention it anyway so the gruelling tale of P!ATD never repeats itself. A lot of people have what I’m diagnosing as ‘Vocalist Brain’. Vocalist Brain is an affliction that hits casual band fans and the press the hardest, but even a lot of hardcore fans have it to some degree or another. Symptoms include crediting the vocalist of the band for most of the work, assigning them to be the frontperson, and generally focusing on them to the detriment of the rest of the band. Not much was learned even after Hayley Williams had to come on stage with her famous ‘Paramore is a band’ shirt on. Psychologically it kind of makes sense, since the vocalist is quite literally the voice of the band, so we personify the band as them.

This is my theory on why Brendon Urie was able to get away with his crimes against humanity for so long. People (me included!), consciously or not, credited him for his bandmates’ accomplishments and this allowed him to live off borrowed good will for far longer than he should’ve. This is most clear to me in the case of Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die, P!ATD’s fourth studio album - Urie got to play the part of the hot suave hedonist bachelor, while Dallon Weekes, who was in large part responsible for the sound and lyrics, was simply ‘world’s okayest bassist’. More on that later.

As I said, there are more substantial arguments ahead, so let’s move switfly along.

Right Place, Right Time

While P!ATD under Urie gathered plenty of bad reputation about how generic and overproduced their sound has become, I’m going to give him credit where credit is due: He had his finger on the pulse for a long time.

2011’s Vices & Virtues was an elegant transition from their sophomore release, Pretty. Odd. (Ryan Ross’ last credited contribution to the band), which was full to the brim of drama, romanticism, and nostalgia. Vices was autumn to Pretty. Odd.’s spring, it was moodier and tried to lean on their debut album’s success rather than Pretty. Odd.’s experimentation and ultimately mixed result. Notably, Vices is also kind of steam punk-ish in the widest possible sense of the term, which worked out perfectly in the end: 2011-2012 was, unfortunately for all of us, the time of electroswing and Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch. This is obviously anecdotal, but ask the right people and you’ll learn the devastating effect these three things combined can have on a person.

2013’s Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die was, well, released in 2013: The year of Arctic Monkeys’ AM and Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time, baby! Brooding in dirty motel rooms, smoking cigarettes and doing cocaine (at the same time, preferably), and wooing tragic one-night stands in casinos was in demand and TWTLTRTD provided. From Miss Jackson to Far Too Young to Die, P!ATD was feeding the grungy misanthropic fantasy of the underbelly of Vegas to teens who weren’t even allowed to drink yet, one synth note at a time. I’m very fond of this album, it was my point of discovery of the band, but also it’s genuinely very well-made. I can and I will give most of the credit for that to at-the-time bassist Dallon Weekes. He did fully write some of the songs (only for Urie to allegedly do unspeakable things to them) and you can hear the echoes of TWTLTRTD in his new project, I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME. In any case, TWTLTRTD came out in just the perfect moment for what it was.

2016’s Death of a Bachelor was where the cracks began to show. It did, however, strangely compliment the hysterical nature of that year. I and other sweet summer children found the cult-themed roll-out of the album genuinely fun and engaging. Everybody thought the theme of the stereotypical bachelor trading his reckless life for domestic bliss and the Frank Sinatra influence were sweet. Amongst ballads to his wife and genuinely touching reflections on his past friendships, Urie continued singing odes to “Champagne, cocaine, gasoline / And most things in between” with his chest a little fuller. This strange mix of earnestness, bitterness and utter drunken hedonism communicated the hubris and agitation of a world on the precipice to nose-dive into seemingly the worst decade ever. 2016 continued to march forward despite everybody’s pleas and by the end of it P!ATD once again hit a timely bullseye with the album’s closer Impossible Year.

I’m not going to talk about Pray for the Wicked or Viva Las Vengeance because that’s where P!ATD’s ability to be in with the kids eventually ran out. (Except I’m gonna say one thing: It should be La, not Las. I get that it’s a play on ‘Viva Las Vegas’, but oh my god it’s still embarrassing.) With the success of songs like Vegas Lights, Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time, and Victorious, Urie seemed to think that he found his winning formula in singing about drugs, parties, and his ego over a mind-melting blend of horns and electronics. He then proceeded to unleash the blight of High Hopes unto the unsuspecting public and, well, you know how that went. What became very obvious is that what propelled P!ATD musically was the contributions of, in my opinion, far more talented past members and just being in the right place at the right time.

Output over input

If you’re reading along without clicking every link and are not that familiar with P!ATD, you might be wondering: What the fuck is going with their bassists, I already mentioned at least three. You’ll be delighted to know the curse of the revolving door somehow hit all their members except Urie. What is fascinating, though, is how the band continued to operate through this cycle.

I’m not going to unpack it in detail (Someone already has, see footnote 1), but here goes a brief rundown. In 2006, the original bassist Brent Wilson left or was pushed out of the band, depending on who you believe. Wilson would insinuate he was kicked out to avoid paying him a fair share. In 2009, Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left the band. In texts allegedly written by Ross, he bluntly puts he “Thought [he] was more than a dollar sign” to his ex-label head Pete Wentz. In 2013, the last original member besides Urie, Spencer Smith left the band. Both Smith and Urie would cite Smith’s addiction issues, but eyebrows can be raised over the fact he was removed during an already ongoing P!ATD tour. In 2017, Dallon Weekes left the band. Both Weekes and his wife alleged that his pay was horrible and he had to maintain a second job to support his family.

I’m highlighting the issue of money here instead of, say, the morally dubious decision to keep the band’s name after its creators leave or the preventable injuries ex-members endured, for a reason. It’s because if I channel my most callous and materialistic side, that’s an ingeniously profitable way to run a band. I will now proceed to use my power of free speech to interpret the Theseus ship curse of P!ATD in the most unfavorable way possible.

The distribution of funds was questionable in P!ATD from the start. As I mentioned before, Wilson alleged he was paid disproportionately less than his bandmates. They responded by claiming his contribution to the music was minimal, leaving the implication open that if he was underpaid, he deserved it. This was the start of a vicious cycle, as seemingly someone realized that touring members of bands can be paid significantly less than de facto ones. Jon Walker would become a touring bassist until it was time to write and sell another record, only then being officially promoted. Ryan Ross would decide to leave P!ATD due to creative differences and took Walker along with him. Ross seemingly expected the band would either dissolve with his departure, or that he could at least continue his career on the same label. But why would someone agree to fund two splinters of the same band when only one of them has two wildly successful records and the already easily recognizable branding? Ross would not re-sign with Decaydance and his new band struggled to gain recognition and ultimately disbanded, while P!ATD continued to grow. Dallon Weekes would become a touring bassist until it was time to write and sell another record, only then being officially promoted. Spencer Smith’s public confession that he was a struggling alcoholic was some very bad publicity to have on the outset of a tour, he was let go.

P!ATD would cycle through band members like socks, exploit their talent, and submit them to an unforgiving lifestyle where they would be paid as little as they could get away with, release and touring schedules sat above creative agreement, and drugs and alcohol became the only coping mechanisms. When they eventually burn out - fuck ‘em, plenty o’ fish. Replacing them with someone temporary would be cheaper, nah, more profitable, than taking a hiatus, supporting your addicted/underpaid/mentally volatile friend and missing out on another album or touring check. I am interpreting this as pessimistically as possible in order to make a point. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a labor violation.

Whether this is an intentional super-villain master plan or an extremely unfortunate coincidence, this uniquely late capitalist pattern lined the pockets of Decaydance and especially Urie for a long time. Being formed later and technically, accounting for hiatuses, operating longer than the other two corners of the Emo Trinity, this pattern allowed P!ATD to be incredibly prolific, thus being able to rival these rock giants. An incredibly cynical part of me almost marvels at the ingenuity of this scheme and wonders how much longer it could’ve gone on before public dissatisfaction reached critical mass. It’s genuinely like if the company Meta was a band, except this time with all the homoeroticism of The Social Network along with the delusional boss, coping with drugs, and still-persisting products.

Conclusion

All of this to say, while I’m glad to see P!ATD’s corpse finally laid to rest, in a weird way I admire for how long Urie and label execs made it work. It persisted for almost two decades and not without good reason, the alright-to-great music and cunning business decisions propelling the band along even when it was running on fumes. If you asked around ten years ago, most people would not yet find a substantially bad thing to say about P!ATD. And after all those years the fall off the pedestal happened like that cheesy John Green quote, slowly, then all at once.

There are more reasons that I could’ve discussed of why P!ATD continued its Frankensteinian existence, despite itself and all of us. Big one being Urie’s slow and strategic embrace of publicly supporting LGBT and feminist values, thus throwing a bone to a representation-starved and slash-crazy audience. Another one, briefly touched on, is the undying support of Pete Wentz and all his associates, blowing some wind under P!ATD’s wings every time it’s about to crash and burn. But like, P!ATD under Urie is genuinely a cognitohazard and I would like to be able to listen to TWTLTRTD or even Death of a Bachelor without cringing some time again. So I’ll leave it at that.

Even if I’m not too fond of him, I hope Brendon Urie has a great time being a dad. Parenthood is an enlightening experience, or so I’ve heard. In fact, I hope he stays gone, focused on his kid. Not least because by how it’s looking right now he’ll be torn apart if he tries to release music ever again, under P!ATD’s name or not. I hope Pete Wentz never tries to play god and make emo One Direction happen ever again.

And I hope Ryan Ross and Dallon Weekes are having a good day.

1. This essay (along with this one) is an absolutely fantastic resource on P!ATD history. When I don’t cite some obscure fact about them, you can pretty safely assume I sourced it from there.