By Sean Moeller

How about a few guilty pleasures to start, to set the frame and lock in the dimensions?

Okay, so there is that James Blunt song. I shan’t even utter its name, for if we do, it shall haunt us all like an unpleasantly whiny wolf mother or a ghost of the Civil War in unrest. Oh, but we love it. We love the way he cries with that mouth and looks out upon us like the waterworks are just about to be triggered. He’s the wily ability of a four-year-old who just broke a vase in the sitting room and knows that hell’s coming. He can hear the heavy footsteps thudding from around the corner. There’s US magazine for some, or the entertainment newsmagazine Extra for those more involved with the running status of Katie Holmes’ bun in the oven and just what kind of hunkiness we are looking at in the next James Bond.

There is the first season of “Superfriends,” with Aquaman and Wonder Woman really sticking it to the Scarecrow, Lex Luther and all those super creeps. We can throw Scooby-Doo in there too, because even though watching it now drains us of any knowledge that we may have pulled out of life that day, it seems okay. We’ll just get some more of that knowledge stuff again tomorrow. Right now, I’m waiting to see Fred rip that mask off of that swamp monster so we can finally get to the bottom of who’s been stealing all that jewelry out of that spooky museum. I think Pamela Anderson counts as a guilty pleasure too because she sucks, but we still like her a lot just the same. Don’t we guys and Courtney Love?

Now for a small and unscientific sampling of things that you should never, EVER feel guilty about enjoying, on your time or the boss’: Master Shake, Frylock, Meatwad, The Cosby Show, Frappuccinos, Chicken McNuggets, covering your hands with Elmer’s glue, letting it dry and then peeling it off like skin fragments, Cheers, really old Playboys where the beauties still had remarkably drastic tan lines around their naughty places, Dukes of Hazzard, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, the professional wrestlers from the old WWF (shit boy, those were the days!), The Carpenters, old westerns, Hall & Oates, The Oregon Trail computer game, crossword puzzles and—newly added to this list – Panic! At The Disco.

It will be tough, sometimes, to justify your reverence for these Las Vegas pop-punkers with black, eyeliner ellipses bracketing their eyes and dapper, pretty-boy clothing to your friends who remain cooped into a defiant bubble of indie rock (give me, give me Black Mountain or give me nothing), but you must be strong and find a way. Otherwise, you’ll be hiding them from view just like you do Miss March 1974.

These four dudes were still doing study halls and gym class when Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz (suddenly an even more popular heartthrob when full-frontal nude pictures of him leaked onto the Internet three weeks ago) discovered them and signed them to a record contract before they’d even played a show. Grabbing opening slots on major arena tours with FOB and The Academy Is…, Panic! soared right into the lives of thousands of kids who latched onto its heavily decorated songs…oh, who are we kidding…tiny, musical novellas of teenage soap operatic dilemmas. And its own dilemmas, the ones that were going to spitfire right back into its own face like a backdraft of accusation claiming the band hadn’t earned what was befalling it. So quick to be ascended to the peak and so quick was Panic! looked at with skepticism by hipsters that it even wrote songs about the oncoming backlash before it happened, like on “London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines” on “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” with Brendon Urie singing, “We’re just a wet dream for the webzines…Just for the record/The weather today/Is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of a.) Indifference or, b.) Disinterest in what the critics say.”

“It was pretty much hype. It’s pretty much just been luck,” Urie said in a phone interview from Utah. ”(Wentz) came and watched us practice and signed us (to Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen). It happened really face, but we’re not just some shitty band. We have something to offer, but everybody was saying, ‘This band’s not going to be any good.’ We knew what was going to happen. We knew what was to come. (“London Beckoned”) was one of the first songs we wrote for the record. It’s pretty crazy, man, but everything seems to still be going uphill. The kids have been really supportive.”

Treating lyrics as if they are more than just what sounds good in a hook is what pries them far away from the shoulders of anyone else trying to do similar things and affect similar people. Dick jokes are out. Immediately fetching fables of infidelity and shotgun weddings, told with wisdom and a sort of naïveté that has to accompany lads just removed from high school, are in. Also in, a vaudevillian piano knocks as in “But It’s Better If We Do,” a number about lapdances and daiquiris with a chorus that you’d sell your mother out to the cops just to get closer to.

“I think lyrics are a big deal,” Urie said of the words that guitarist Ryan Ross pens for Panic! “We’re pretty tired of lighthearted, soft lyrics. You can listen to so many things that when you take away the melodies and just listen to the lyrics, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, these suck.’ Ryan tries to put more emotion into his lyrics. I’m definitely always excited to hear what he comes up with. (“I Write Sins Not Tragedies” – a story that amounts to a groom overhearing damaging information regarding his bride-to-be’s faithfulness) was based around what Ryan was going through at the time. It was a whole bunch of things and he wanted to exaggerate on them. We’re all pretty young. None of know anything about weddings. It’s kind of a tall tale sort of thing.

“At the shows, everyone knows all the words to every song. They sing them back and I don’t know if a lot of these younger fans know what they’re saying.”