Panic at the Disco: An interview with Ryan Ross

Wow, it's been a few weeks since I updated my blog. A few things have stood in my way: mainly, a load of freelance work, and a load of boxes (I'm moving, you see). So here's an article I wrote for The Brag (which will actually be in next week's mag, just don't tell the bosses, OK?) to coincide with the impending Panic at the Disco tour.

Panic at the Disco never played well with the other emo children. They were always a little more bookish; they had a propensity for Lewis Caroll imagery and a flagrant disregard for the laws of punctuation. But from the beginning they were corralled into that scene, thanks in part to a deal inked with Decaydance Records, the label owned by Fall Out Boy heartthrob Pete Wentz and home to many a kohl-lined rock band.

Their debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was released in late 2005, brimming with pop culture references from Douglas Copeland novels and Wes Anderson films. Its success – debuting at 13 on the US Billboard Charts – can be attributed in part to the band’s monstrous online fan base, heralding a new era of musician that rejected the old avenues of obtaining success (radio, press coverage, months of soul-crushing touring). They were young, beautiful; the girls swooned and the boys sung along. Brendon Urie’s elastic vocal melodies were simultaneously avant garde and commercial, undulating above boisterous, catchy pop rock. But their literary song titles and flair for flamboyant video clips attested to a yearning that stretched beyond the emo genre tag pinned on them.

By the time the band’s teenage twilight years were upon them, they’d ditched the superfluous exclamation mark in their moniker, along with original bass player Brent Wilson, replaced by the far-more creative Jon Walker. Guitarist and primary Panic songwriter Ryan Ross was working on the antithesis of Fever, a concept album largely devoid of guitar and drums. Struggling to find a climatic ending to his musical opus, Ross put his grandiose dreams to bed, and commenced work on songs that would eventually form their awkwardly-titled second record, Pretty. Odd.



If Panic at the Disco were hoping to move away from the smothering “emo” shadow, they’ve practically annihilated it with this record. Gorgeously layered with baroque arrangements, informed by the cerebral pop of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the psychedelic wonderings of The Beatles and early Who records, Pretty. Odd. is a drastic departure from Panic at the Disco’s emo-pop debut offering. Speaking to Ross via telephone from a hotel room in New York, the 21-year old tells me that the music of the Sixties was his main inspiration for the record. “I think I was just not really finding anything in modern music that was really exciting for me,” he offers. “I started listening to those bands and it just, ah, I felt like I could relate to it a lot more. It just sounded more real to me.”

It wasn’t just the sound that changed for Panic at the Disco. Pretty. Odd. is the band’s most collaborative affair to date. While Ross was the primary songwriter and lyricist on Fever, the addition of Walker to the lineup brought a person with whom he could bounce song ideas off, someone who would constantly challenge him as a guitarist. “We both push each other to make something up that the other guys will go, ‘Wow, that’s really good’ or whatever,” says Ross, describing the writing process. “It was kinda inspiring because he just wanted to do something better and better every song. Every song that we’d write we want it to be better than the last one. I think as long as we can keep that kind of competitiveness with each other, and together you know, just to do something better than we did before, it should be good for us.”

The result of their musical arm-wrestle is plainly obvious: Pretty. Odd. is a sumptuous record, full of beatific horns, St Peppers-esque string arrangements, rococo vocals and Panic at the Disco’s quirky lyrics and unexpected chord changes. ‘When the Day Met the Night’ is the album’s shining centrepiece, a brilliantly constructed pop song that fittingly marries a minor-key, darkened verse with a bright chorus, brimming with hope and joy. Elsewhere, ‘She’s A Handsome Woman’ could quite as easily be a Townshend and Daltrey composition. Put this diversity down to the collaborative nature of the songwriting, Ross says. But for his own instrument, Ross conjures the spirit of George Harrison on the harmonised guitar licks of lead single, ‘Nine In The Afternoon’. “Yeah, people have been telling me that,” he says sheepishly. “On this album, I approached the guitar a lot differently. I was actually trying to come up with lines and parts as opposed to just playing chords or whatever. I’m still just learning how to play the guitar. I don’t really know I’m doing.”

He laughs when I mention an article written by Blender Magazine, in which the guitarist was voted the twentieth worst lyricist of all time in a list populated by the likes of Jim Morrison, Paul Stanley and topped by Sting. “Yeah, I thought that was really amazing because first of all, I’d only written 11 songs and secondly, some of my favourite musicians were on that list,” he chuckles. “I mean, any list that I’m on with Paul McCartney is OK with me. If they’re going to be that bold and say he’s one of the worst lyricists of all time, I’ll gladly be on that list. I wonder if they’ll do another one, and maybe I’ll become the top after this record.”