"We were just tired, so we were like, 'Let's go live together in a cabin and take psychedelics', because that'll help, I guess." How The Beatles inspired one of emo's breakout bands to completely reinvent themselves

Ryan Ross didn't really start getting into The Beatles until he was already in Panic! At The Disco.

Of course, he was aware of them. It's impossible not to be, isn't it? But it was only during the making of the band's first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, that he really sat down and burrowed deep into their discography. All of a sudden, a whole new world was uncovered, one that made a whole lot of sense to him.

"I was trying to find something on the Internet, a new band, just trying to find something that excites me, and I just wasn’t finding anything good as far as new music goes," he told Rolling Stone. So, I was listening to the Beatles, and it was just like, ‘Whoa, my God.’ It’s about how many kinds of songs they’d write, the scope of everything they did and that they just didn’t put themselves in some kind of specific place. They just did whatever they wanted.”

It was interesting for Ryan to be coming at creativity from such an angle, when, in terms of everything else that was happening around the alternative scene, Panic! sounded unlike anyone else. Between the poetic pop-punk of Fall Out Boy, the powerful melodies of Paramore, and the world-building extravagance of My Chemical Romance, they remained an intriguing outlier, despite often being lumped under the same emo banner as their aforementioned peers. Not that it frustrated the band, but more a case of there being an expectation of what they should be because of it.

But in sitting down and combing through Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, for the first time in 2007, sandwiched between a bit of The Beach Boys and The Who, unlocked a sentiment that Ryan knew would change the way he thought about Panic!.

"Those bands had a lot to do with giving us the go-ahead in a way: telling us about not holding yourself back and just writing the song that you’re starting to write and not saying, ‘Oh, well we’re this band, so we have only these kinds of songs.”

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In a way, that sentiment had already started to leak into the way that the band thought as the touring cycle for Fever came to a close. Growing increasingly tired of playing the same songs every night and looking for something completely different, they actually crafted an album that never saw the light of day. It was called Cricket & Clover, written and recorded in the beautiful surroundings of Mount Charleston, a 40-minute drive from their Las Vegas homestead. Described as a doomed love story, musically it ended up feeling more like a movie soundtrack, with hardly any guitars or drums, ultimately veering way too far from the band's purpose in the first place.

It also seems that just being in such an isolated place wasn't the only reason things started to get weird.

"Oh, we were just on mushrooms the whole time," vocalist Brendon Urie told Paper in 2018. "We were trying to do this whole thing, and it didn't work out at all. Spencer and Ryan had never drank, never done drugs, so this was like their college experience. I think we were doing it to cope with each other, too, because we had lived with each other basically every day for like three years. We were just tired, so we were like, let's go live together in a cabin and take psychedelics, because that'll help, I guess."

"We were working on something that seemed like a good idea in theory, but then when it came down to writing it, we were stretching ourselves too thin," Ryan told FaceCulture closer to the time. The project was eventually scrapped and became the stuff of folklore.

And so a new session was started, which would eventually turn into Pretty. Odd, a record more in tune with the timeless than the fairytale, but one that on the surface still felt like a significant shift in focus from where the band had been previously. But the experiences set in motion by Cricket & Clover still lingered heavily.

Where, in the past, Ryan had taken on most of the lyrical work for the band, Nine In The Afternoon, the first song written, marked the moment when all four members stuck their oars in. What came of that was a track that spoke to what the last few years had felt like, but rather than focusing on the frustrations, the lens was pointed towards the good that had come out of touring the world and sharing their art.

"I think the overall goal was to make something a little more uplifting and positive than the last record," bassist Jon Walker told The Aquarian. "That’s one thing we realised: We were all in a pretty good place coming off of tour, and we didn’t want to write more songs about dwelling on your girlfriend cheating on you."

Though there is whimsy within the wonderment that came from revelling in the good, there is also a sense of hallucination that sticks to the track, too. Even the title, named after asking what time it was whilst in their no-windowed studio, and the intriguingly backwards response that came after eight hours of work, has a sense of delirium to it. That's mainly because the writing session took place during one of the hottest months of the year. Matched with a backwards sleep schedule and the lingering effects of truffle tasting, it all added up to a head-mangling, hedonistic view of things.

"We spent a lot of time looking at the stars and enjoying and experiencing the weather, so I think that had a very direct influence on us," Brendon told The Boston Globe. "I’m sure if the weather was really horrible, [the new album] might’ve sounded different. It definitely needed to be what it was for us to write those songs."

When Nine In the Afternoon was unveiled to the world as the first taste of Pretty. Odd., with a video brimming with animal masks, marching bands, and the physical manifestations of all your most vibrant cheese dreams, the reaction was one of confusion as much as curiosity. More than anything, people were more concerned with the fact that a band that had played such a huge part, intentionally or not, of developing a particularly successful strand of the emo and alternative scene would turn their back so dramatically on what they had previously thrived within.

For Ryan, it was a case of feeling like what they had been lumped into was already on its way out.

"I think that whole scene is about to be completely dead," he told the Illinois Entertainer. "I think kids are gonna look for real rock ‘n’ roll again, because everything’s gotten so saturated with bullshit that I think people are hopefully gonna start seeing through all that.”

He even felt like being saddled with the emo label "Was always weird for us", and that it simply came from being "Guilty by association" thanks to their home on Decaydance, Pete Wentz's imprint within Fueled By Ramen.

"We weren’t really fitting into anything at all," he continues. "We weren’t really that, and we weren’t really this, so it was bad and good, in a way. Because feeling like that allowed us to keep doing whatever it was that we wanted without trying to adhere to any certain kind of scene."

This period would be the last time the band would make music as a quartet. 2011's Vices & Virtues was just Brendon and drummer Spencer Smith, with only Brendon eventually remaining from 2013 onwards, steadily becoming a bigger and bigger star. And, much like with any ambitious experiment that a band chooses to put out into the world, the public consensus on Pretty. Odd has shifted in the years that have followed, more of an appreciation and understanding of what they were trying to do, blossoming.

Though as a whole, the record, and Nine In The Afternoon in particular, show what it means to put yourself first, even if the rest of the world won't understand why. The whole purpose of life is to find happiness and hang onto it, and in 2008, that's exactly what Panic! At The Disco tried to do.

I guess people would expect from the first album’s success that we would have some pressure, or whatnot, or more of an expectation," Brendon told PopMatters. "We just kind of threw that out the window and really focused on what made us happy. That’s always been the goal of this band. We want to do something that we’re happy with, and as long as that happens, we’re ok."