brendonuriemi

Watch Brendon Urie hit impossibly high notes, tell the story of his first meeting Pete Wentz

The second part of our Conversation with Panic! At The Disco at the Musician’s Institute kicks off with early discovery of Panic! At The Disco during the days of MySpace and Purevolume.

“We had a couple demos on Purevolume, and we emailed a link to someone that we thought, you know, ‘can this person get it to Pete from Fall Out Boy?’” Urie explains. He continues to tell the story of the fateful message they sent along with their music to Wentz. “We were just like, 'Dude, listen to our songs and we’ll show you why we’re better than your band,'” Urie says.

After only five months of being a band, Urie talks about how they found themselves out to dinner with Pete Wentz at Del Taco when Wentz said he wanted to sign them.

The conversation turns to labelmates, of which the first of Wentz’s label Decaydance were Gym Class Heroes and The Academy Is… “It felt like a summer camp where everybody knew each other. It felt like family,” Urie says.

APTV's Ryan J. Downey asks Urie about how he is affected by the emphasis on perfection with today’s vocalists. “I take the human error and imperfections over pitch perfect auto tune any day,” Urie confesses, explaining how one’s vocals make them unique versus “sounding like a robot.”

When the topic shifts to how Urie takes care of his voice, the story travels to his early days working at a smoothie shop and singing “custom-to-order songs” for his customers.

Watch the video to hear Urie talk about singing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody at the APMA’s, singing while running on his My Little Pony treadmill, Frank Sinatra and hitting possibly the highest note ever. – Sarah Force

This series is brought to you by Musicians Institute