Panic! at the Disco Contemplate the Cool Factor

November 30th, 2006 | filed in: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, Interviews, Spencer

It’s very cool to not like our band,” confesses Spencer Smith, drummer for loved-by-the-kids-but-loathed-by-the-critics Las Vegas quartet Panic! at the Disco.

He’s got a point. PitchforkMedia.com, the online barometer for all things hipster cool, has called the band a “steaming pile of garbage,” while All Music Guide goes a little easier, opting to describe them as “formulaic” and “interchangeable,” among other choice adjectives. And there’s no need to mention the online trolls who scour message boards and Wikipedia entries for a chance to question the band members’ sexuality. It’s the kind of thing that might grate on some people, but Smith insists Panic! have learned to ignore it.

“There’s a lot of people that say, ‘This band shouldn’t be popular; they sound just like Fall Out Boy and every other band,’” says Smith, “and I guarantee you [those people haven't] listened to our record to make a comment like that. I really do think that if you listen to our CD, every single track… it would be difficult to compare us to all the other bands that are in that music scene.”

That scene — whether you dub it mall punk, emo, or any of a number of other passively dismissive terms — consists largely of four-guys-with-guitars groups, singing endlessly about their crazy ex-girlfriends. While Panic! have shared labels and tours with a number of acts that fit the mold, their own music features a wider range of lyrics and a much larger assortment of instruments. It’s a little baffling to them, then, that they’ve been lumped in with that crowd since the release of their debut single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”

“The funny thing is, the beginning of that song starts out with cello and vibraphone — that’s it,” Smith explains. “There’s no guitar, no drums… I don’t really know very many other bands that are being played on MTV and are considered rock bands that have that kind of thing going on. So it is really kind of odd when people throw us in with all these other bands that really are nothing more than just guitar, bass and drums.”

A lot of the criticism comes down to perceptions of credibility. In the eyes of a lot of music fans, if you haven’t paid your dues, your music can’t be entirely sincere. Panic! rose from high-school-band status to ubiquity in less than a year, and while the musical elite say the songs are all that matter, overnight successes are often greeted with more skepticism than tour-van veterans.

“We know how fortunate we are with our situation,” says Smith, “and that it’s not a normal thing for bands to all of a sudden go from where we were to where we are now in such a short period of time. But if for the past four years we were touring in a van and then we made this record, would that make the songs sound any different or be any more credible?”

In the last year-and-a-half, Panic! have gone from obscurity to international tours and MTV omnipresence, mass adulation and critical backlash — even band-member litigation (original bassist Brent Wilson got the boot and is talking about taking legal action for his share of the band’s profits). The idea they’re not putting in their dues is getting harder to swallow; they may prize their fans over their reviews, but Smith suspects the press will change its tune eventually.

“I feel like a lot of magazines seem to go in the direction the people go in, after a while,” he says. “When a band’s not new anymore, there’s not that thing there to dislike them for. So if the songs are good, and people in the general public like it, then more and more you see critics kind of saying, ‘This band is good.’ I really feel like having the fans there, but maybe not every critic in America saying they like our band, is definitely the better option.”

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