A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out is Panic! At The Disco’s first album. Released in 2005, shortly after the band members graduated from high school, the album solidified Panic’s name in pop-punk history. The album, which peaked at number thirteen on the Billboard 200, was very popular among emo and alternative communities at the time, and it is still popular to this very day.
Panic got their start after sending demos to Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz. Shortly afterwards, they were signed to Wentz’s Record label, Fueled by Ramen. Band members Ryan Ross, Brendon Urie, and Spencer Smith traveled from their hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, to College Town, Maryland, to record the album.
The entire album was written by Ross, the band’s lead guitarist. He was only seventeen at the time he started writing the album, and he would leave the band a few years later due to creative differences. It goes into some surprisingly deep topics and is skillfully written, considering Ross was so young when he wrote it.
The album has a very theatrical theme. The tour they went on to commemorate the release of the album, Nothing Rhymes with Circus, is proof of that. There are two parts to the album, and the first half was written and produced in their hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada. The second half they produced in Maryland, where they traveled to write the album. The first part incorporates more electronic components, while the second part incorporates more classic accordion and organ sounds.
The song “Time to Dance” is actually based on a Chuck Palahniuk novel, titled Invisible Monsters. It’s about a model who becomes “hideous” after an accident, and she then has to reinvent herself. This story is best exemplified by the lyrics “She didn’t choose this role, but she’ll play it and make it sincere.” Panic actually takes a lot of inspiration from Palanhuik, with the title of another song, “The Only Difference Between Matyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage” being a quote from his book Survivor. The song employs different electronic pop components to really give the song its dancey feel. The guitar riffs are extremely fun to listen to as well.
“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off…but it’s better if you do” is a quote from Natalie Portman in the movie “Closer”. “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” and “But It’s Better If You Do” are both song titles from the album as well.
“Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” is a very sensual song about someone cheating on their significant other. Arguably, the best part of the instrumentals is the bass.
You may have noticed that these song titles are very long…maybe even obnoxiously long. Panic, at the time, thought this was funny, so they decided to make their song titles incredibly wordy. They also looked up to Fall Out Boy, as Pete Wentz had discovered them, and many of Fall Out Boy’s songs have long titles, including “I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and all I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me” and “Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Title of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued”.
One (reasonable) complaint that many listeners have with this album is the lack of enunciation. When first listening to the songs, a lot of the lyrics are squished into a really tiny timeframe. One example of this is the song “Camisado”, where Urie sings, “This is the scent of dead skin, of dead skin on a linoleum floor,” and he does so in a pretty high-pitched voice. The listener can’t quite discern what he’s saying and has to resort to looking at the lyrics.
The title of the song, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”, is also taken from a novel, this one titled Shampoo Planet, written by Douglas Copeland. It was arguably the album’s biggest hit, charting at #7 on the US Billboard Top 100. The music video is incredibly iconic as it is, and it won the VMA for Best Video of all time in 2011. The songs are also incredibly catchy. When you hear the first few plucked cello notes that stay throughout the song, it will make you wanna get up out of your seat and act as if you’re a ringmaster, like Urie in the music video.
The band recently released a live version of this album on Spotify, as well as an official recording from 2006, after they performed the album in its entirety for the first time in eighteen years at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Prior to this, enthusiasts such as myself had to resort to watching a low-quality YouTube video of the performance.
Titled Panic! At The Disco – Live in Denver, this theatrical performance is a favorite of fans. Personally, I’ve been going a little crazy over this release, as covers of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and The Smashing Pumpkin’s “Tonight, Tonight have never been available on streaming before now. This was also, in my humble opinion, Brendon Urie’s vocal peak.
Ultimatley, this album was ahead of its time, as nothing at the time, and nothing today, really compares. It was especially impressive considering that the members were fresh out of high school when writing and producing the album. Give it a listen when you get the chance!
