Musical Style
Music critics named a number of different genres to describe Panic! at the Disco's music, including emo, pop punk, electro, vaudeville, and baroque pop. These labels were more of a reflection of the band's work on A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, as the stylistic shift on Pretty. Odd. made many of these claims insignificant.
Panic! at the Disco went on record many times saying that their second album would be completely different from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, as Rolling Stone wrote in an article: "The group cemented its next direction with their first single, called "Nine in the Afternoon". "It's influenced by the music our parents listened to: the Beach Boys, The Kinks, the Beatles", says Ross. "Our new songs are more like classic rock than modern rock. We got older and started listening to different music – and this seems like the natural thing to do right now." Pretty. Odd. has been described as being like " dropping the entire Beatles catalog into a blender, adding some modern alternative ice and the horn section from Sonia Dada, then churning out a new-millennium Liverpool smoothie." In his review of their live album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted, "...Pretty. Odd. suggests that they're becoming that rare thing in 2008: a pop-oriented rock band. They might not be doing this knowingly, but the results are entertaining all the same."
Since the release of Vices & Virtues, the band's musical sensibilities have returned to the theatrical pop rock of their debut, albeit more mature and restrained in the style of Pretty. Odd. Urie has gone on record several times claiming that this was not the band's intention, stating that Virtues is a rebirth for the band and indicative of a new identity following the departures of Ross and Walker.
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Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or style:
“That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die ...”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)