Brendon Urie talks origins of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and more

June 14, 2018

If there’s one song in the scene that everyone knows, it’s Panic At The Disco‘s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” While everyone knows it, some might not know the origin of how the song came to be.

Brendon Urie recently sat down with Zane Lowe to chat about the origins of Panic! At The Disco’s 2005’s mega-hit song “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”

During the interview, Urie shared that the band wanted to get stray from the sound that was popular at the time, saying:

“We wanted to do something different. Listen we were trapped in a practice space in Vegas and every band around us sounded the same…We had to move completely away from it. So at that point, we were like ‘dude we don’t want to sound anything like this,’ and it kind of forced us in this direction to do something that we didn’t even know what it was going to sound like until the end of the product.”

Urie also shared how the song became the band’s first single:

“That was a very interesting time because within six months it went from knowing nothing [about the] music industry, going and making our first album, getting a call from management and label about we have to pick a song because the radio playing seven different songs, so we had to pick a single not really knowing what that was…So then we picked [“I Write Sins Not Tragedies,”] in the car.”

“We were on the to a show in our conversion van tugging this trailer behind us and we got that call. Immediately we’re just ‘yeah let’s do that song, let’s start a rock song with cello. It’s going to mess them up so bad. From that point on, the next year was just crazy.”

Watch the clip below:

In addition to giving Lowe an insight into the band’s biggest song, he also shared his approach to covering Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Of the cover, Urie shared that it came to be when Butch Walker gave him a file of stems from three Queen songs. Deciding to tackle “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Urie shared that he tried to have the same vibe of the original, saying:

“That song alone has over 123 parts. I spent the better part of a month running through all these stems trying to organize it…I made sure to make it as close as I could to the vibe of the original and then we just play on top and see what we can add to it.”

Watch the clip below:

Panic! At The Disco’s upcoming sixth studio album, Pray For The Wicked, is out Friday, June 22, via Fueled by Ramen/DCD2.

The band recently announced the second leg of their Pray For The Wicked Tour, which will see us praying for the wicked across North America well into 2019 with support from Two Feet.

Check out the full list of cities and dates below!

January 2019:
01/10 – Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center
01/12 – Laval, QC @ Place Bell
01/13 – Manchester, NH @ SNHU Arena
01/15 – Albany, NY @ Times Union Center
01/16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
01/18 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
01/19 – Providence, RI @ Dunkin’ Donuts Center
01/20 – Washington, D.C. @ Capital One Arena
01/22 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
01/23 – Charlottesville, VA @ John Paul Johns Arena
01/25 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
01/26 – Cincinnati, OH @ U.S. Bank Arena
01/27 – Milwaukee, WI @ Wisconsin Entertainment Center
01/29 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Van Andel Arena
01/30 – Cleveland, OH @ Quicken Loans Arena

February:
02/01 – Omaha, NE @ CenturyLink Center
02/02 – Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
02/04 – Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena
02/05 – Saint Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center
02/06 – Memphis, TN @ FedExForum
02/08 – Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center
02/09 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
02/12 – Albuquerque, NM @ Tingley Coliseum
02/14 – Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center
02/15 – Inglewood, CA @ The Forum
02/16 – San Diego, CA @ Valley View Casino Center
02/19 – Oakland, CA @ ORACLE Arena
02/20 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden1 Center

Brendon Urie’s on the cover of AP

Panic! At The Disco and Urie return to the cover of AP for the release of Pray For The Wicked. Get the latest issue right here, and check out the special edition “Heaven” and “Hell” covers and magazine bundle options over at the AP store: