This past Valentine’s Day, I was lucky enough to score tickets to see my favorite band of all time: Panic! at the Disco. So not only was it special in the sense that I was going to see Brendon Urie in the flesh but also that it was going to be my first ever concert. Now, to clarify, when I say first ever concert, I’m excluding UCI-sponsored music events and the 88Rising music festival, Head in the Clouds, that I attended this past summer. I guess it would be more accurate to call it my first stadium concert. Which to me, is what I think of when I think of the word ‘concert’. All I knew, was that if I was going to be blowing my rainy-day money on a concert ticket, it would 100% have to be for Panic!
Panic! at the Disco has had a special place in my heart for a while now. Although the band has been around for about 15 years, I was pretty late on the band wagon. I started listening to their music back in 2013 when I was a freshman in high school. I was simply minding my own business, chilling on the bus with my best friend, when the next thing I knew she was tapping me on the shoulder to listen to a song: “This is Gospel” by Panic! at the Disco.
At the time, I had heard of the band before (I would have been living under a rock if I hadn’t heard their classic hit “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” before), but I never gotten into their other songs. As a basic fourteen-year-old girl, all I listened to was as mix of Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, so Panic’s emo/alternative vibes didn’t really appeal to me. But that album, “Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!,” jet-set me down a path of alternative rock music. Who needed “Dark Horse” when I had “Miss Jackson”? Ever since that day, Panic! at the Disco has been a staple in my music library.
After officially declaring my love for their music, I realized I should probably go back and listen to their first few albums. It wouldn’t feel right calling myself a fan if I was missing out on the music of their formative years. So, I decided to figuratively go back in time and give their emo days a chance. While in the beginning, listening to their early songs reaffirmed my distaste for that era of Panic!, after some time, however, they began to grow on me. I would have missed out on amazing songs like “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” and “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is the Press Coverage”. I mean come on! With titles like that how can they not be good?
So fast forward to the present, here I am, obsessed with all their music. The moment I heard their Pray for the Wicked Tour was coming to Anaheim, I knew I had to snap up some tickets. So yes, I bought them four months before the concert. I had to be better safe than sorry.
The concert was in a word: incredible. There is really no way I can thoroughly convey what an unforgettable experience it was to see them perform live. From a flying piano to the stadium lighting up in rainbow for their LGBTQ anthem “Girls/Girls/Boys,” I left the Honda Center happily deaf and smiling from ear-to-ear.