Panic! At the Disco

Panic! At The Disco is an American rock/punk rock/alternative rock/baroque pop band. Their members now consist of their led vocalist Bredon Urie and lead guitarist Kenneth Harris. Spencer Smith, Ryan Ross, Jon Walker and Dallon Weekes who were the drummer, guitarist/keyboarder, bass player and bass/songwriter respectively are members who have since left the band.

1. Say Amen (Saturday Night)

The order of this set of songs is strange in the fact that the first song in this trilogy was released last and the release of the music videos spans years.

The music video for Say Amen starts with a news broadcast of a key being stolen and these men who are welding weapons are creeping through this house. This man steps out of the shower with the stolen devil’s key around his neck. Then processed to beat and kill all of these other men using a combination of mundane things around the house from ties to a guitar hooked up to an amp and things that are less so such as dynamite. This looks much like a scene straight out of a action movie. Then he answers the door and lets in a woman and who he starts to kiss but she ends up beating him up and taking the key from him.

The lyrics speak about someone who is aware of their own failings, that know that they are wicked and that they could be a better person but they still make excuses and carry on doing what they have been doing and they would regret it or ‘repent.’ I also get the feeling that they may just not have grown up, as it says ‘all the people I know aren’t who they used to be’ which happens when people mature and leads me to believe that he has not.

2. This Is Gospel

At the end of Say Amen you here a beating, almost like a heartbeat and see him in his dirty white shirt laid across the floor of his apartment. This is Gospel starts with the same heartbeat sound with the singer laying down wearing a dirty white shirt.

The music video is of a made being poked and prodded by doctors, checking his vitals and then they seem to be prepping him for surgery. When suddenly he starts to struggle against them screaming out his lyrics as they try to push him back onto the table. The finally sedate him and he drifts off only to be dressed by people and placed in a box and you realise that he had died on the surgery table and was being buried. Then it cut to scenes of him drowning in the box, him struggling again ropes, him struggling against the doctors, maybe symbolising his struggle to live or die when finally, the rope loosens, and he runs off into the light.

The very first words of this song are ‘this is gospel for the fallen ones’. By ‘fallen ones’ I instantly think about those that his died and this is reaffirmed by the next line which says, ‘locked away in permanent slumber’. So, I suspect from the lyrics that this song is about people who cannot let the ones they love go as it says in the chorus, ‘if you love me let me go’.

3. Emperor's New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes starts not only with the ending scene of This Is Gospel but also the end of the song completes with the ending lyrics and of him fighting and then freeing himself form the ropes and runs off into the light.

The video shows the singer standing in a white space that is shrouded in white smoke, he is clean and looks happy or at peace when before the lights dim and he falls into the darkness and lands in the dirt surrounded by skeletons where he gradually, unwillingly at first, starts to change into a demon.

I find it hard to understand it lyrically as there is so many ways that you can interoperate this song. Personally, without the context of the video and just looking at it lyrically, I feel that it might be a change. The first line says, ‘welcome to the end of eras’, as if saying that somethings over now, then processed in the same verse to say ‘dress me up and watch me die’ symbolising he, or his old self, has died. Before ending the verse with ‘you just might see a ghost tonight’ as if saying he will return. Then going by the lines chorus of ‘I’m taking back the crown’, ‘I’m so close I can taste it’ and ‘I see what’s mine and take it’ I feel he is almost at his goal of this elusive ‘crown’.

Overall Story

Each song is very good, they all have the same feel and sound very similar. In these three songs they stick to their genre, never straying far from their alternative rock feel. This however does pull the narrative together better and create a darker outlook.

The overall narrative tells a story about a man, who may have been a thief, who owns a special key that had been stolen for a museum. He is a cool and dangerous and this is shown when people come in and attack him. However, after a betrayal he ends up seriously hurt and being taken to the hospital, however he dies and ends up in hell where he starts to turn into a demon or even the devil himself before he unlocks a door to an unknown place. It leaves questions about the next series of events and leaves it open for, not only imagination, but also potentially a further continuation in the future.