Oh, well imagine, a beloved album from your youth turning 20.
Such is the reality facing millennials as Panic! at the Disco‘s 2005 debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, hits the two-decade milestone on Saturday. Hopefully they’re not freaking out — after all, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
Panic! at the Disco was discovered by Fall Out Boy‘s Pete Wentz, who signed them to his label, then known as Decaydance Records, before they even played a live show.
A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out was released on Sept. 27, 2005, alongside the lead single “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage,” which, if nothing else, proved Panic! could carry on Fall Out Boy’s tradition of long, pithy song titles.
However, it wasn’t until the release of the follow-up single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” that Panic! at the Disco truly blew up. The song introduced the world to frontman Brendon Urie‘s theatrical vocal delivery and the band’s baroque sound, making them faces of what would be defined in the 2000s as emo alongside Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.
Panic! followed A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out with the experimental Pretty. Odd. in 2008, which divided fans. Over the years, the band’s lineup and sound would continue to change — they even dropped the exclamation point from their name at one point — and by 2015, Urie was the only band member remaining.
Urie released three Panic! albums essentially as a solo project before ending the band in 2023. Panic! will reform at the 2025 When We Were Young festival in October to perform A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out in full.
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