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Ryan Ross only really became fascinated with The Beatles when he was already in Panic! At The Disco. Of course, he was familiar with them. It was impossible not to be, right? But it wasn't until he was working on the band's first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out , he really sat down and dove deep into their discography. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up before him, one that made perfect sense to him. "I was trying to find something online, a new band, just trying to find something that interested me, and I just wasn't finding anything good in terms of new music," he told Rolling Stone. "So I listened to The Beatles, and it was just, 'Wow, my God.' It was just how many different songs they wrote, the scope of everything they did, and how they didn't limit themselves to any particular framework. They just did whatever they wanted.".
Ryan was interested in looking at their work from this perspective, because compared to everything else happening in the alternative scene, Panic! sounded unlike everyone else. Between the poetic pop-punk of Fall Out Boy, the powerful melodies of Paramore, and the extravagant world-building of My Chemical Romance, they remained an intriguing exception, despite often being lumped into the same emo band as their aforementioned peers. It wasn't that this upset the band, but rather that it created certain expectations about what they should be. But, after sitting down and analyzing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album , first released in 2007, which blends elements of The Beach Boys and The Who, evoked a feeling in Ryan that he knew would change the way he looked at Panic!. "Those bands helped us a lot by giving us a push: they taught us to let go of ourselves and just write the songs that we start writing, rather than saying, 'Oh, well, we're this band, so we only have these kinds of songs.'".
In a way, this feeling had already begun to permeate the band's thinking as the touring cycle in support of the album began. Fever was coming to an end. Increasingly tired of performing the same songs every night and looking for something completely new, they created an album that never saw the light of day. It was called Cricket & Clover, was written and recorded in the picturesque surroundings of Mount Charleston, a 40-minute drive from their home in Las Vegas. Described as a doomed love story, musically it felt more like a movie soundtrack, with barely any guitars or drums, ultimately straying too far from the band's original intent. It seems being in such an isolated location wasn't the only reason things started to get weird. "Oh, we were on mushrooms the whole time," vocalist Brendon Urie told Paper in 2018. « We tried to do all this, and it didn't work. Spencer and Ryan had never drunk, never done drugs, so it was like a college experience for them. I think we also did it to cope with each other, because we lived together practically every day for about three years. We were just tired, so we decided: let's go live together in a cabin and take psychedelics, that might help. "We were working on something that seemed like a good idea in theory, but when it came to writing, we overextended ourselves," Ryan told FaceCulture closer to that time. The project was eventually canceled and became part of folklore. And so a new session began, which eventually turned into Pretty. Strange. , but the album is more in tune with timeless motifs than fairy tales, although at first glance it still feels like a significant shift in the band's creative direction compared to their previous works. However, the impressions from Cricket & Clover still have a strong influence on them.
Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco performs live in Los Angeles in 2008 | Photo: Chris Polk/FilmMagic
While Ryan used to handle most of the work on the band's lyrics, «Nine In The Afternoon, the first song written , marked a moment when all four members put their collective energy into it. The result was a composition that reflected how they'd been feeling for the past few years, but rather than focusing on frustrations, it focused on the positives that came from touring the world and sharing their creativity. "I think the overall goal was to make something more uplifting and positive than the last album," bassist John Walker told The Aquarian. "One thing we realized was that after the tour, we were all doing pretty well, and we didn't want to write more songs about how we were feeling about our girlfriend cheating on us." While the track has a playfulness and a joyful elation, it also has a hallucinatory feel. Even the title, coined after asking the time in their windowless studio, and the intriguingly absurd answer they received after eight hours of work, are imbued with a sense of delirium. This is largely due to the fact that the songwriting took place during one of the hottest months of the year. Combined with irregular sleep patterns and the lingering effects of truffle tasting, it all combined to create a stunning, hedonistic outlook. "We spent a lot of time looking at the stars, enjoying the weather, so I think that had a very direct influence on us," Brandon told The Boston Globe. "I'm sure if the weather had been truly terrible, [the new album] might have sounded different. We definitely needed the weather to be exactly as it was to write these songs.".
When album Nine in the Afternoon was presented to the world as the first example Pretty. Odd. , with a video full of animal masks, marching bands, and physical embodiments of all your wildest cheese fantasies, the reaction was more puzzled than curious. What bothered people most was that a band that played a huge role, intentionally or not, in the development of a particularly successful branch of the emo and alternative scene had so abruptly turned its back on the very framework within which it had once thrived. For Ryan, it felt like the very framework they were once associated with was already fading. "I think that whole scene is about to completely die," he told the Illinois Entertainer. "I think kids are going to be looking for real rock 'n' roll again, because everything is so saturated with nonsense that I hope people will start to see through it." He even felt labeled as "emo," which "always felt weird to us," and that it was simply because they were considered "guilty by association" thanks to their label, Decaydance, Pete Wentz's imprint within Fueled By Ramen. "We didn't really fit in anywhere," he continues. "We weren't this, we weren't that, so it was both bad and good. Because that feeling allowed us to continue doing whatever we wanted without trying to adhere to any particular scene.".
Panic! At The Disco with their Pretty. Odd tour banner. | Photo: Rick Friedman/Corbis
This period was the last time the band played music as a quartet. Vices & Virtues album In 2011, it consisted of just Brandon and drummer Spencer Smith, and since 2013, Brandon has remained in the band, gradually becoming a bigger and bigger star. And, as with any ambitious experiment a band decides to present to the world, public opinion has been skewed. Pretty. Odd has changed over the years, there's more understanding and appreciation of what they were trying to do. Overall, the album, and Nine in the Afternoon In particular, they demonstrate what it means to put yourself first, even if the rest of the world doesn't understand why. The meaning of life is to find happiness and hold on to it, and in 2008, that's exactly what Panic! "At The Disco was trying to do what we wanted. I think people expected that after the success of the first album, there would be some kind of pressure or something or whatever," Brandon told PopMatters. "We just let that go and focused on what makes us happy. That's always been the goal of our band. We want to do what we love, and as long as that happens, we're happy.".