Panic! At The Last Disco

Panic! at the Disco is finally as old as Brendon Urie was when the band began, and he has announced an end to this 18-year-long state of emergency. Though, like the novel coronavirus, this plague will cast a shadow far longer than the government’s inept response admits.

What will Panic’s legacy be? Probably the Pete Buttigieg dance, with a dash of head-shaking at Urie being a sex-pest. He’s the most ascended theater-kid since Lin Manual Miranda, and all future drama students will suffer for it. This is what happens when you let prettyboys be annoying without consequence.

The odyssey from sudden scene-savants to grocery store showtunes is long and colorful and rather sad. Not a sympathetic sad, either.

It began with Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz cosigning A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, an album of steampunk-meets-synthesizer singalongs, then a premature stab at Sgt. Pepper with Pretty, Odd. These first two albums were primarily driven and written by Ryan Ross whose creative partnership with Urie spawned Frerard-levels of fanfic. If, to this day, you can’t see a gallon of milk without shuddering, you may be entitled to compensation.

My favorite work of theirs is the very first song on their very first album, though it’s not today’s primary subject. “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage”, centers Urie’s breathless delivery of lyrics as overwrought as the title. It’s bridge breaks down into synth and snapping bass guitar. The chorus shouts,

It was prophecy, self-fulfilling, maybe. The lineup changes over their subsequent three albums left Urie as the sole member of the group. His acumen for alienating all his collaborators is truly unmatched. Somewhere along the way, he lost any sense of self-awareness.

In 2013 as Fall Out Boy returned from hiatus, and My Chemical Romance bowed out, Panic! decided to drop the exclamation mark. This lasted all of thirty seconds because there was no point; an ineffectual rebrand to try and match the fact that Panic! no longer made the music for which they were once revered amidst the so-called Emo Trinity. (We can all admit now that their slot in that trio is better served by Paramore.) Though the change didn’t stick, this was still an inflection point for the band. Gone were the retro-rock influences and smarmy hooks stuffed with Palaniuk. From here on out it was Pop with a capital P and nothing but Brendon.

Tucked in at the tail end of 2013’s Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die, whose cover art is somehow more embarrassing than that title, is the last Panic! song.

“Collar Full” does not bring back ““The Good Old Days”” of Panic! It’s straightforward, clean cut, with lyrics you can sing along to after a single listen. There’s no twist, no overkill.

The title line shows sparks of that Ryan Ross wordplay: “I’ve got a collar full of chemistry from your company.” A bit of lipstick on the collar, or a some residue of shared drugs. Company as companionship and corporation. In the second verse the line is replaced with the simpler, “You’ve got a pocketful of reasons why you’re here tonight.” Could be pills, could be condoms? “What has it in its pocketses?” doesn’t quite inspire the same knowing smile.

Yet that drum pad sounds so much like the dancehall din that broke through on the bridge of “The Only Difference…" The guitar takes the backseat, until the end of the second chorus. It’s just a quick flair, barely a measure. If anything the ratio has been inverted. Where the synth was once served with a smirk, now it’s the distorted guitar adding ornamentation. Shaken up? Just a little.

It’s the last Panic! song that feels genuinely fun. Everything hereafter feels like court-ordered enjoyment. At a show in 2018, flanked by pyrotechnics, and a nameless backing band, Urie told the crowd, “You fuckers better be having a good time.” And sure I was, but I’m not scrambling for tickets to this farewell tour.

Between a performer and their audience there is a great deal of trust. If the performer jumps, literally or figuratively, the crowd will catch them. If they tip the mic toward the stands, you better know all the words. It goes both ways of course. If you’ve sworn to listen, and they’ve sworn to shake it up, they better keep that promise. The problem was never that Panic! changed; it’s that they stopped changing.

In her seminal novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko writes that “things which don't shift and grow are dead things.”

Hilarious that it took me a year to realize I could embed Spotify links directly.

If you didn’t get the gallon of milk reference earlier, and are really interested in scarring yourself, you can scroll past this following image for the cliff notes. It’s ridiculous and bad, and you will not thank me.

In one infamous fanfic Urie and Ross enjoy a milk enema together. Both real life humans are aware of this fic. Sorry you had to learn this, but I did warn you.