Panic At The Disco
With their top hats, fashionable fringes and lyrical verbosity, Panic At The Disco! arrived with a bang at the peak of The Great Emo Explosion of 2005-6. Not only were they the first act signed to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz’s Fuelled By Ramen label, they also managed to make the expression ‘I'd chime in with a ‘Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?!’” into one of the catchiest choruses of the year (from their tune ‘I Write Sins, Not Tragedies’).
The album it came from, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, hit #13 on the US Charts and sold more than two million copies. Not bad for a band who originally started in Vegas as a Blink 182 cover band.
But then, just like yesterday’s thickly applied eyeliner, the emo dream dried up and the band junked an album of new material to pursue a new Beatles-inspired pop path for second album Pretty Odd. More alarmingly, they even dropped the exclamation point after their name.
Not surprisingly, all this upheaval took its toll and in 2009, guitarist/songwriter Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker left the band, leaving PATD to release their third album Vices and Virtues this year as a two-piece. Thankfully, for them their return to their old sound has been welcomed by the critics.