Panic! At the Disco will be releasing their fifth studio album, Death of a Bachelor, everywhere tomorrow, but even though they’re quite far out from those initial debut album jitters, frontman and songwriter Brendon Urie admits to feeling incredibly anxious in the lead up to the record’s official release.
“I’m always really anxious up leading up to the release of the album,” he admits during a recent chat before New Year’s. “Honestly, lately, I’ve just been playing a lot of shows; we’ve been touring, playing a bunch of little holiday shows and for me, I like to fill my time with that. I like to perform a few of the new songs just to get a feel for how it’s going to be and then once the New Year hits and the album is out, then it becomes an entirely new monster and [to] be fully responsible for everything that happens – it’s going to be so fun. I feel as excited as I did on the first album, you know? It’s so cool.”
The last time we’d spoken was ahead of the band’s 2013 album, Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!, and much of the conversation had revolved around the translation of the recorded material to the live stage; as the passionate Panic! fans will attest, the band’s live shows have remained a huge entity in themselves, regardless of the direction the music has headed in over the years. When it’s come to Death of a Bachelor, Urie remains adamant about the quality of their live shows being as important as ever when it comes to presenting this new material to more fans.
“I’m really looking forward to tours in Spring and Summer,” he says. “That’s where I’m putting my creativity towards. I’m trying to come up with ideas for tour production-wise, performance-wise – really wanting to just enthrall people; I want to create an environment where you walk into the venue and you totally disappear to this world. That is something that is so important to me, where we get to control 100% of what happens; I just want people to have the best time ever and believe in live music because that’s where it all started for me.”
“I remember seeing bands live and being like, ‘This is what I want do. That is exactly what I want do.’ I want people to have that same kind of passion when they come to a show. For them to think, ‘This is what I want do. I want be a part of this world.’ That’s so important, because it really does uplift and where a lot of things don’t, live music uplifts – it’s really great.”
Death of a Bachelor, the first Panic! record in two years, saw Urie write and record everything himself, while working with Jake Sinclair and CJ Baran on production. It’s the first release since the departure of original drummer Spencer Smith, leaving Urie as the only founding member of the official band line up. On tackling these elements of the album’s creation solo, Urie approached the whole process with excitement and a reinvigorated work ethic, of sorts.
“It’s all me.” he says. “I wrote everything, I recorded everything and all the instruments. I mean, that’s kind of my dream. When I was a kid that’s all I wanted to do – that’s all I did with my demos. I recorded a drum line then I recorded bass over that, then I recorded guitar then I recorded vocals over that. It was on a four track recorder and that was exactly how I wanted to do this album so it was kind of a throwback to how I taught myself how to write music; using that format to push myself in the songwriting process and being able to record in that regard, that was so much fun. I have so much fun jumping from instrument to instrument and that is one of the highlights, being able to do that and just being alone in the creative process. I feel so grateful to be able to do that.”
On how he was able to overcome bumps or moments of creative block during the process, considering it was such a solitary effort in this way, Urie explains that it’s all still a learning process, but one that he’s soaking up with each challenge.
“Oddly enough, it was actually easier,” he laughs, commenting on the process of writing and recording on his own. “I don’t even know how that’s even possible because it doesn’t even make any sense, right? It’s better to delegate, which is good; I still have second opinions, I have friends that I show songs and I say, ‘Hey, how would you do this?’ and then they give me their opinion, which is great. For the most part, for me being able to have the songs in my head and put them down exactly how I want to has taken me years to learn that and I still own that process too.”
“I’m still progressing towards being able to do it 100% on my own and now, being able to do this album on my own, it’s so cool – it’s such a big step for me. I’m still being able to do what I love and [I] get to talk to people and get their opinions about it and get a second objective point of view. That keeps it real because I don’t want to fully rely on it. I want to celebrate this with crowds of people and [see] how it feels to be in a live show and being able to interact with people and see how they feel about it, so there has to be other people involved.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewcJvT2bt1Q
In previous interviews and press, Urie has noted influences from Sinatra to Beyoncé coming through on the new album, reflective of his own personal music tastes and perhaps even reflective of the changing nature of pop music in today’s climate. No longer are bands like Panic! At the Disco simply relegated to the playlists of 15 year old angsty teenagers, but their embrace of some well-written pop melodies and R&B-flecked beats has led to a wider appreciation of a fusion of genres by the younger demographics the music is hitting hardest.
“I think right now is a very exciting time, especially in pop,” Urie agrees. “Pop is kind of taking its turn where hip-hop is taking over, but hip-hop isn’t what you think hip-hop is. When you say hip-hop, I’m thinking of A Tribe Called Quest, that goes back to my childhood, 90’s and shit, but it’s nothing like that [now]. You listen to The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar and Drake – it sounds so different from one another, but it’s so exciting because for me as a songwriter, I listen to that stuff and I think, ‘Wow, they are doing something totally different. They don’t give a fuck, they have no rules’. They go into the studio being like, ‘Eh, whatever works,’ and I love that.”
“I think rock hit a certain point where it was like, ‘Oh, we gotta do this thing. If you don’t have this, it’s not rock n’ roll,’ and hip-hop is not like that. It’s like, ‘Oh, now this is hip-hop,’ again and we’re changing the genre every decade. It’s so cool and I love that, being able to use that as a catalyst of creativity is such a huge thing for me, so I’m grateful for artists like Kendrick, The Weeknd and Drake, all these people who used the best of their ability to create something new in a genre that is so founded in something historic and it’s got so much credibility. I love that, it makes it more exciting and it gives me more of a chance to do whatever I want, which is awesome.”
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Death of a Bachelor by Panic! At the Disco is out in Australia tomorrow, January 15th, through Warner Music Australia.
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