Lithium Magazine Interview

[afeveryoucantsweatout]

Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie (lead vocals, multi-instrumentalist) and Spencer Smith (percussionist) sat at a table of their downtown Toronto hotel, poised to do back-to-back interviews in promotion of their newly released album “Vice & Virtues.” As their third studio album, it’s the first as a core duo after the separation of former band members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker. For this release, the band has also regained the exclamation point in their name, which they had dropped on their second record, “Pretty. Odd.”

I had the pleasure of chatting with the boys as we delved a bit deeper into this upcoming release for the band.

Brittany Morgan: Your latest album, “Vices & Virtues”, is your first album working as a duo. Do you feel your music and style has changed, and how so?

Brendon Urie: Yeah, I do. I feel like that’s something we always strive for whenever we approach a record and we’re coming up to the recording and writing process, especially. We always want to write in ways we never have before or use influences that are foreign, and the new inspirations are always fun. But yeah, we always strive to create something new every time we approach a record.

Brittany: Where did the title for your record come from, and what’s the meaning behind the name “Vices & Virtues?”

Spencer Smith: Well, we didn’t have the title at the beginning- it wasn’t a concept from the beginning. But I think at a certain point as we were approaching the end of the record we were trying to figure out what……. we had gone through a lot of changes, even within the year and a half of writing and recording, so trying to figure out something that would seem cohesive between all the songs and going through the lyrics and looking at those, it seemed like something that was prevalent in a lot of the songs…..things that we’d been going through and just dealing with different vices or virtues. It seemed like it was the one thing that brought all the songs together and was a line through almost the whole record, so we just acted like it was some big concept from the beginning.

Brendon: (laughs) It’s usually how it goes.

Spencer: It really wasn’t, yeah.

Brittany: You worked with John Feldmann and Butch Walker on this album. What did they bring to the process to help you create this sound?

Brendon: They’re both so great. They’re both amazing producers. It’s weird the idea of producing an album, because you think, “What are they gonna do? What do they really do?” And that was something we were a little nervous about: “Are they gonna try to dictate what we’re trying to do? We want these to be our songs”. And luckily they were on the exact same page. They said. “Yeah, these are your songs, you have to write them. We’re gonna help you record them, but essentially you have to write everything. We’re not gonna write stuff for you guys”. And that was just like a breath of relief. They’re both different working with them, John Feldman is amazing, super talented, and at that point, in the beginning of recording, we were not lazy but just had a different work ethic. We weren’t waking up at the crack of dawn to write all these songs until two in the morning and John Feldman was. He’s up for 20 hours a day, and then sleeps for a few hours. But he’s just go, go, go, and that really got us in that mentality, got us out of the little funk and just started working a lot harder. And Butch Walker is amazing, too. Working in his studio is awesome; he makes it a really good time. He has the best instruments and toys I’ve ever seen in the studio, it’s awesome. And yeah, they both just made it a lot of fun to work with because they didn’t compromise any of our ideas, which is important to us.

Brittany: How do you write songs? What is your process like?

Brendon: It’s different a lot of the time, sometimes you’ll have a piece of music that flows nicely and you just go back to it, like there’s a melody being played on the guitar or something, and you go back and go, “Oh, that could be a vocal melody,” you know, you think about things that way. But sometimes you’ll have lyrics that you’ve written or a melody in mind that you’re singing, and then you’ll base the music around that idea. So that happened both ways on this record, and that was fun to do. In the writing process we love just exploring new ways of writing you know, we don’t just like to go, “Alright, here’s another song, here’s this chord, going in the chorus,” because then that just feels mundane a lot of times.

Brittany: So a lot of experimenting?

Brendon: Yeah, definitely a lot of experimenting.

Brittany: Can you mention one of your favourite songs on the record and the meaning behind that song?

Brendon: Yeah, I think the last song we wrote is my favourite right now. It’s called “Ready to Go”, and that one was the last song written for the record. The mentality behind it was we had been in the studio, or working on this record for a year and a half and just wanted to get on tour. We had been in our own headspace for such a long time that, it’s very different from tour - just having that idea of: “We’re ready, we just want to get out there. We have to start touring; we just gotta get it going”. And just wanting to jump right on it, so that was just the exciting bit.

Brittany: Your single, “The Ballad of Mona Lisa” - who came up with the video treatment for that song, and what was the inspiration behind that?

Spencer: We worked with Shane Drake and he had done three videos for us - two off the first record and one for the second record. And so, we usually just sit down and we’ll have ideas and he’ll have ideas and we just sort of start talking about it and it just becomes this collaborative thing. For that video we wanted to do something that paid homage to some of the videos we’d done in the past. Just as something that, even though this is our third record it sort of feels like a fresh start. So we have a couple scenes at the very beginning that kind of look like a set from the first video. Beyond that though, it’s just sort of this interesting story of - it doesn’t really have to do necessarily with the song, but it just seemed visually like something that went with it. It’s an Irish wake, and we’re the band playing this thing, and Brendon is the double character of the guy whose died and the guy who’s now coming back to avenge his death.

Brittany: Yeah, it definitely seemed a really interesting plot line.

Spencer: Yeah, it was fun to shoot, and it was something that just was an interesting story that felt like it went with the vibe of the song.

Brittany: On that same note, you said that it went back to the first video, and it seems there’s this medieval, Baroque-inspired theme. So I was wondering where did this intrigue come from and what inspired that [admiration] for that lifestyle?

Brendon: I think for as long as we’ve been a band, since the first record even, we’ve just had this enthusiasm about romantic periods in history. Whether it be Elizabethan, Victorian, or turn of the century apothecary-type romanticism. All that stuff, the fashion, the thought that guys especially would put into their clothes and into presentation, that whole romantic thing is just really inspiring. There’s a lot of cool deco, art deco, or whatever it’s called, but we just like that (laughs).

Brittany: Did you maybe watch a lot of movies like that, or study history?

Brendon: Maybe that’s what it is; the musicals that we grew up watching or something.

Brittany: You said that you came from Las Vegas, not a huge music scene, and you were discovered by Pete Wentz over the internet. So I was wondering if you think the internet is still beneficial for bands or if at this point if it’s kind of like a needle in a haystack because there’s so many.

Brendon: I think it could go both ways.

Spencer: I think it’s still really beneficial. I mean, I feel like it’s still the most unique tool, especially for bands that aren’t established because you don’t necessarily have to have a person at a radio station or at a TV station saying that you’ve passed their test to get on the station. And there’s still certain music sites that you can go to that are gonna filter that stuff out for you. And I think there is now such a huge mass of music and that’s why you have to have your own little method of filtering out all the bands. But I still think it’s a tool that to get played around the world. Twenty years ago, you had to be a massive artist. You would have to be like the Rolling Stones to get played in South Africa, but nowadays…. we were getting emails from places like that before we were even putting our first record out. So I think that’s just such a unique way of doing things that it’s definitely not gonna fade away.

Brittany: Do you think that’s what let you have your own unique sound at that time when Las Vegas was not quite your style?

Brendon: (laughs) Yeah, wanting to break out of that place was kind of our influence on the first record. We were in this practice space where all the bands on every side of us were like these metal bands. And so every time we would try to practice we were like, “Ok guys, let’s work on that harmony”, and it’s just like (making metal band noise) “What the hell is going on right now!”’ So hearing all the same stuff every night you just want to break out of that frustration, so that was a huge influence.

Brittany: Can you remember one of the most memorable moments of your career and how that humbling feeling made you realize, “I’m living my dream and this is what I want to do. This is exactly it!”

Spencer: I think the biggest thing that wasn’t actually a goal, but when we won- there’s the MTV awards and we won for the best video, and I think we were up against Christina Aguilera and all these huge pop artists. I remember when we won, you could tell that people were kind of like, “Who is this?” And I think our video probably cost like a tenth, if that, of what the other videos cost that were up for the same award. And that wasn’t something that really validated anything, but I feel like that was a weird, surreal moment of being like, “Okay, this is so far beyond what we ever thought would happen even a year ago”.

Brendon: No one knew

Spencer: Yeah, and I think it was just sort of a really surreal thing, having to go up there and make a speech, so it just seemed very odd.

Brittany: Stuttering?

Spencer: Kind of, we didn’t know what to say.

Brendon: (laughs) Yeah, like who do we thank?

Spencer: We didn’t plan anything because we didn’t think we were gonna win.

Brendon: And good thing we didn’t because that guy came up and grabbed the mic and was like, “Hey, I’m so and so, go to my website. Alright here you go”, (as he passed the mic back) It was really weird, we got stormed, so that was cool.

Brittany: The most unexpected moments.

Spencer: Yeah, that was cool.

Brendon: But it was funny though, too. I went back a month after we had won and I watched it because my parents had TVO’d it obviously, and I went back and watched the scene - the shot where Christina Aguilera is sitting there with her husband at the time and she just kind of nudges him and is like, “‘Who the f*ck is that?” That was awesome. (laughs).

Brittany: With the split and the separation, do you think that has really proved just how much you love your band and your music, and that’s really testified that?

Brendon: I hope so, yeah, I hope that comes across anytime we’ve worked on music, because that is something we feel really strongly about.

Brittany: But I mean to you, yourself, has it pushed you in realizing, “This is my dream, and I’m doing it at any cost!”

Brendon: Yeah, we kinda knew that from the beginning. Spencer and I have been on the same page musically. But yeah, with the direction we wanted the album to go we knew - we love this band and we would do anything for it. We just want to keep doing this, so that is the main goal is to just keep going as long as we can.

Brittany: How would you sum up the band Panic! At the Disco? What makes it really interesting, special and noteworthy as a band?

Brendon: Well, I think Spencer is a pretty special guy.

Spencer: (laughs)

Brendon: So that’s special.

Brittany: Just being together with your best friend?

Brendon: Yeah, it is nice, you know?

Brittany: Has there been any specific turning point in your life as a musician on the road, something that’s happened that has changed how you perceive the music industry or life in general?

Spencer: Well, I think just remembering when I was 16, a couple years before we got signed, just being in my room and idolizing all these bands - studying these bands and wanting to know everything about them and listening to their records over and over and over. And then a few years later, meeting the fans or talking to the fans if it’s a meet and greet or after the show or whatever, and just seeing that you may be that person to somebody in the audience. That’s pretty insane, it’s a special thing.

Brittany: Yeah, humbling.

Both: Yeah

Brittany: Alright, thank you.

Brendon: Thank you!

Spencer: Yeah, no problem.

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