Top 13 Favorite Albums of 2013 #9 - Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die by Panic! At The Disco
As soon as the first single of this record, “Miss Jackson,” dropped, I was almost 100% positive that the new Panic! At the Disco album was probably going to make quite a lot of people angry. Well, I was right. When Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die went up for streaming on YouTube, haters flocked with accusations of selling out. The album certainly diverges from the records that built their fame back in their early beginnings, but there is something that so many people forget when their favorite band comes out with a new album: bands are made of people and people CHANGE. Panic! At the Disco is not the same band they were in 2005. Yes, Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die has very different feel and even I’ll admit to being taken aback when I first heard it. However, the album kind of lives up to its name because it was just too interesting in its strange, nostalgic, and electronic atmosphere for me to stop listening. This record feels like the way I imagine Las Vegas was like back in the 80’s, but with a contemporary twist. Songs like “Girls/Girls/Boys” definitely borrow the funky groove of late 80’s pop and R&B with infectious bass lines and strong melodies made for the dance floor. Coupled with Urie’s natural theatrical tendencies, they combine flash and drama with an almost impish and deviant sensuality for a fresh new Panic! sound.
A friend of mine summed up the beauty of this album quite well when she and I discussed it in our campus Starbucks that we spend way too much time at, saying “I like when a band grows up with me.” My slight jealously at her eloquence aside, she nailed it perfectly. Panic! is giving fans the chance to grow up with them and share in all the craziness of getting older that everyone goes through. For fans like my friend and I who spent their middle school and high school days doing bad karaoke to “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” Brendon Urie and company feel like old buddies and this record is the sweet reunion that comes years after the final graduation party. It’s an honor that Urie, Smith, and Weeks are willing to continue to let fans into their lives and Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die, is an homage to how far they’ve come since the beginning. To anyone with their knickers still in a twist over how different this album sounds, keep in mind that Panic! At the Disco began back when they were still in high school. Would YOU want to be the same person you were back then? Probably not…
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