The Audacity of Panic! at the Disco’s Debut Album
Before TikTok, SoundCloud, or even YouTube existed, four gawky teenagers from suburban Las Vegas found success by posting their music to an unlikely platform: the Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz’s LiveJournal page. In the blur that followed Wentz’s listening to their demos and deciding to sign them, Panic! at the Disco became a bonafide pop-punk quartet before they had performed a single show. “There was a lot of pressure,” the lead guitarist and main lyricist, Ryan Ross, later told MTV News. “Pete had only heard, like, two to three songs, and all of a sudden we were expected to go and write a whole record.”
The debut album they released the following year, , vibrated with the same anxiety that accompanied their cyber Cinderella story. A lot hasbands such as Paramore and My Chemical Romance, who sublimated young heartbreak into screeching ballads and whimsical stage plays alike. But 15 years and a few band-member departures later, still holds up as an audacious and unlikely classic—a polarizing product of its time that has continued to resonate with young listeners well after the glory days of emo and pop-punk.
