Panic! at the Disco to Disband After 19 Years

Brendon Urie

Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Panic! at the Disco will disband after their upcoming European tour, founding member Brendon Urie announced January 24. The upcoming breakup, after a 19-year run, will be between Urie and, well, Urie — by 2016, the front man was the only official member of the band left standing. “Growing up in Vegas I could’ve never imagined where this life would take me,” Urie said in a statement posted to Instagram. “Sometimes a journey must end for a new one to begin.” The new journey is fatherhood, according to the bandmate. “We’ve been trying to keep it to ourselves, though some of you may have heard.. Sarah and I are expecting a baby very soon!” he wrote. “The prospect of being a father and getting to watch my wife become a mother is both humbling and exciting. I look forward to this next adventure.”

Panic formed in 2004 when the first crop of members were still in high school. Urie, together with drummer Spencer Smith and guitarist and songwriter Ryan Ross, released their debut album, Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, in 2005, which spawned the instant classic “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and other songs with sentence-long titles (e.g., this banger: “Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”). A year after their second record, Pretty. Odd., dropped in 2008, Ross and bassist Jon Walker departed the band, leaving Urie, Smith, and Dallon Weekes to helm the band’s next projects, Vices and Virtues (2011) and Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! (2013). Urie ended up releasing Death of a Bachelor on his own in 2016, marking his first solo project for the band, while his next album, Pray for the Wicked (2018), spawned unsuccessful presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign song “High Hopes.” Last year’s Viva Las Vengeance is Panic’s last studio album.

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