"      There are many routes to musical success. One of the most recent reminders of that fact comes from Panic! At the Disco, the Las Vegas-based Platinum rockers who found their own way to becoming one of the musical success stories of 2006.

      Their fast-pass to the industry's big leagues serves as inspiration for young bands everywhere that the doors to that brass ring still can be open to those, with talent and the right timing, who know how to knock on them creatively.

      "We got our start in kind of a weird way," admits songwriter/guitarist Ryan Ross. "Most bands start playing shows before they record a full-length album, but we recorded our album before we went out on tour and have been going nonstop now for almost a year. It's not a normal thing, but when you think about it, not much has been ‘normal' with how things have gone for us." That's a rock and roll understatement!

      To recap: It was late in 2004 when the teens, forming a band in high school and covering Blink-182 songs, recorded two of the only three songs they had written, "Time to Dance" and "Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks," on a laptop. They posted them on the blog of Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy vocalist and head of Decaydance Records, a label he started in partnership with the independent Fueled By Ramen Records.

      Wentz was knocked out by what he heard, but was convinced Decaydance would not be able to compete with all the offers he thought Panic! must be receiving (but weren't). When he did sign them, he told the band, which had not yet performed live, he wanted to release a record by the end of the year. They began writing material, using Ross' lyrics as their foundation.

      The resulting debut CD, A Fever You Can't Sweat, went Platinum, yielded two Top Ten singles and remains on the Billboard charts almost a year after its fall 2005 release. They opened for Fall Out Boy on the Nintendo Fusion Tour. Panic! also found acceptance overseas with hit albums in the U.K. and Australia and a sold-out U.K. headlining tour.

      "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" was the No. 1 video on MTV and one of the top viewed on YouTube. MTV's TRL program embraced their second video, "But Its Better If We Do."

      Panic! At the Disco received five 2006 MTV Video Music Award nominations, including Video of the Year, which it won. "The band didn't start out with the intention of getting on MTV, but any recognition in general is flattering and means a lot to us," said bassist Jon Walker. "Winning the MTV Video Music Award was something we had never imagined happening to us, and it's still pretty surreal. It was our fans who made that happen. But we couldn't be any happier that MTV supports us and enjoys what we do."

      The surreal aspect of it all isn't lost on Ross. "It is kind of weird because our record has been doing well, and people are recognizing our music, but we are still learning and working on being a band and practicing and perfecting our live show," he says.

      Initially Panic! was being regularly compared to the Killers and Fall Out Boy. Now that people are familiar with Panic! and the CD, they don't make the comparison as often, Ross says. "When they did, it was a little annoying, but we can't really do anything about it. Generally speaking, people need to label things. It's just how it is. I'd hope people see us as our own band by now."

      The group's music is just a natural outgrowth of what they know, adds Walker. The songs on the record essentially were written chronologically, he explains. "So each song sounds a bit different—and even a bit more mature—as the record goes on." He and lead singer Brendon Urie collaborate on the music.

      Ross says a lot of the rock-oriented material in the songs, in terms of their approach to composition, is inspired from such bands as Third Eye Blind, the Counting Crows and Queen. "The electronic stuff just kind of came from dance music in general. We didn't have something specific that we tried to write parts like. We just focused on more the idea of club music, using electronic instrumentation," he explains.

      The second half of the album has a lot more "real instruments," like brass and strings, he says, and has a much more orchestral feel. That came from listening to a lot of movie scores, such as those by Danny Elfman, Ross says.

      He believes there are parts on the record that sound like a musical. "There were a ton of things we were listening to that influenced us when we were writing the record, and we tried to include it all," he says.

      In approaching A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, Ross says the band wanted to make a record with different elements on it, "not just a bunch of songs that all sounded the same." "During the writing process, it seemed like we began to sound pretty different from the first set of songs we had written," he adds.

      The first half is more electronic and dance-based, while the second half has what he calls more of an old-fashioned sound. "The instrumentation is a little more eclectic and Vaudevillian-sounding with cello, accordion, trumpet, organ and a bunch of other instruments. It ended up working really well with two halves that sound different, yet still work together as a whole album," Ross says. Reviewers seem to agree.

      Walker says that Panic! does not take such good news for granted. "There are so many amazing bands out there that aren't getting heard, and for every good band there are 5,000 awful bands, so it just makes it hard for good bands to be discovered," he says.

      Individuality is a powerful motivator for Panic! At the Disco. "Seeing people do their own things really inspires us to do the same," Walker says. A lot of bands can really get sucked into the music industry in a negative way, he notes. "Luckily, we work with a lot of great people, and as a band we are extremely involved with every decision made with the band. We all have heard rumors of the industry not being what you expected, but it's been pretty great to us."

      Ross predicts there will be a new record out in 2007. "We definitely plan on exploring different influences and trying new things on the next record," he says. "We have lots of ideas and inspirations, and we're excited to start working on it."