A Tumblr post reviewing a recent Panic! at the Disco concert, which has amassed over 15,000 notes, alleges that “It was just awful… It was like watching an elderly dog. We were like, he needs to be put down for his own good.” Panic! at the Disco— once an emo-rock four-piece— has become the pop-oriented solo endeavor of its single remaining member, Brendon Urie. Fan favor of Urie—the singular mind behind the current iteration of the group— appears to be low. One Tumblr user, in a post that has amassed over 40,000 notes, describes modern Panic! at the Disco as sounding like a “rejected Imagine Dragons guitar track with a thousand horns added on top.” Another post, which has over 15,000 notes, reads, “We should’ve killed Brendon Urie in 2013 when he called Fiona Apple a bitch.” A final Tumblr post, with 3,000 notes, simply reads, “Brendon Urie is a domestic terrorist.”
So, how did we get here?
In the words of MTV writer James Montgomery, “The history of Panic! at the Disco is a complicated one, filled with firings and departures…”. To be more precise, vocalist Brendon Urie slowly became the sole creative contributor to Panic! at the Disco. But beyond mere sonic shake-ups, the dicey circumstances under which each member vanished from Panic! form a clear and rather unflattering pattern.
To understand what happened to Panic! at the Disco, we must return to the very beginning of these alterations— that of Brent Wilson’s removal from the band.
One might wonder why a story so incredibly niche is even remotely relevant, especially sixteen years later. But what happened to Wilson—or, at the very least, many similar aspects of what occurred—would repeat itself again and again, the band cannibalizing itself until only one member was left standing. The curious case of Brent Wilson, in all its obscurity, serves as the first instance of this cannibalization. Thus, by understanding Brent Wilson, we can better understand how and why things went so wrong with the band. So, let’s begin.
“She’s an incredible scene partner, you know, she’s always down to play, always down for one more take, always brings great energy. Yeah, and she was the first castmate I met, you know, all those years ago in some crappy little room in Soho.
-Reid Scott on Anna Chlumsky
if i had a nickel for every time a white man whose last name started with m and was six letters long started running one of my favourite shows in the fifth season and introduced vile misogyny against my favourite female character, a woman named amy, i would only have two nickels (which isn’t a lot) but it’s a weirdly specific thing to happen twice