The forgotten truth about Brendon Urie
In a world where Matty Healy gets a voice, we mustn’t rest on our laurels and forget about all those wonderfully relentless, beautifully enraging figures that came before him. The early 2000s, whilst home to birthing some of the most iconic figures – Britney, Beyoncé, you name it – also provided a breeding ground for a selection of the most narcissistic, deeply problematic voices of a generation. Enter Brendon Urie.
Most of us remember the unforgettable scenes, the unmatched (not always for a good reason) music, and the fan culture made possible by internet behemoths like MySpace. But we also remember the overly homophobic, sexual assault-enabling, racist, and ableist environments often perpetuated by some of our most beloved stars. Prepare to cast your mind back, for we’re about to embark on a journey through the rise and fall of Panic at the Disco’s very own frontman.
Panic at the Disco found themselves in the throes of the pinstriped jeans and black eyeliner-fuelled aesthetics as early as 2005 with their debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Earning their place as a part of the holy ’emo’ trifecta with My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, Panic became largely popular among teens for their emotional expressive gateways and credited among critics for their experimentalism with genre-blurring.
In the 2000s, Urie, along with band member Ryan Ross, became icons of the moment with the former’s charisma and vocal talent and the latter’s mastery as a guitar player and lyricist. The truth is, they were great. Urie was great. Their vaudevillian-inspired theatricality was every emo’s dream, and above all, the music hit.
The early stuff still does, in fact, not much else satisfied the ears and soul as much as the energetic rhythm of ‘Build God, Then We’ll Talk’ or ‘The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage’. There are a few exceptions later on, like ‘This Is Gospel’, ‘Miss Jackson’, ‘The Ballad Of Mona Lisa’, and most of Death of a Bachelor, but, for the most part, Panic at the Disco lived and died during those tumultuous early years.
As did Urie’s dignity. The appeal of Urie is obvious; take a guy with a great voice and universally accepted beauty, and they can do no wrong. People loved him because of his looks and talent, and that’s never a bad thing, so long as said looks and talent don’t make people overlook underlying insidiousness in the form of prejudice, whether conscious or not.
Unfortunately, that’s the case with Urie. The once widely admired, vocally angelic staple of teen millennial emo culture has become something, well, not quite that. For a member of the queer community and a pioneer of musically transgressive art, becoming something of a fraud in each of those spaces is a huge disappointment.
Looking back, even his most progressive contributions to the industry aren’t exactly all they appear to be. In ‘Girls/Girls/Boys’, the lyrics seem to champion bisexuality, and many have even celebrated this after the fact, calling the song a ‘bi anthem’. However, that’s not exactly the case because, although he’s singing about girls loving boys and girls, it’s actually all done in a sexually objectifying, rather biphobic way.
In an interview, Urie discussed the inspiration behind the lyrics: “Maybe not bisexual, but they have the term ‘barsexual’ where girls would kiss in bars and have a few too many. And that, for whatever reason, was just a sexy idea – so yeah. It came out of that idea.” Cool.
Lyrics aside, some of the first instances of Urie’s problematic behaviour happened whilst being on tour with the band. Video footage has been widely circulated of Urie at an early Panic concert saying to a sea of underage fans: “If I see you after the show, I’m gonna fuck you. I don’t care if you want it. I more care if you don’t want it. Because then I really want it.”
Now, this has been talked about time and time again – old news, right? Not really. Even if everybody in that room had been over the age of 18, you can’t deny the creepy undertones of such a ‘threat’ and, to be honest, even though it happened a long time ago, it doesn’t take away from the fact that we, as a culture, made this kind of behaviour OK.
At another concert, Urie said: “I wish I was born Black, so I could wear the clothes I wear without getting made fun of.” This isn’t the only time Urie has made racist comments, and it certainly wasn’t the last. During some of his vines, he mimed the N-word, and perhaps more famously, he compared Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out as transgender to Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black.
Oh, Vine. The streaming platform that allowed Urie to make one of his biggest online presence comebacks. But wait, what’s that? Classic, inherent misogyny making its way through the comedic quips of Urie while his wife does something as simple as getting him a beer? What about the time he directly and deliberately poked fun at people boarding economy on a flight, calling them ‘no class’? And then there’s the time he repeated a transphobic slur in an interview. And the time he made ableist and fatphobic remarks too. And this is all without mentioning the long list of sexual allegations made against him by former fans – in 2009, 2011, and 2015, Urie was accused of inappropriately touching or sexually harassing people.
The Twitter hashtag #BrendonUrieSpeakUp trended on the site in 2020 as a way of attempting to coax Urie into addressing these rumours and apologising for his previous behaviour. But, aside from half-assed ‘sorry-not-sorry’ kind of responses, Urie has yet to take full responsibility.
Many fans may see all of these instances and scoff, wishing that people could “take a joke” or realise that it was a long time ago and just “the way it was” back then or that Urie has since apologised for his behaviour, or even that none of these things actually happened. But accountability where accountability is due, if we forget about these issues, then it just makes it easier for others to follow in the same footsteps.
Therein lies a dark side of the music industry where people can exist in such spaces and perpetuate deeply harmful language without seeing any detriment to their success as iconic figures.
This isn’t about the holes in cancel culture. This is about repercussions.
Why we continuously keep giving these people a free pass is baffling. Matty Healy can do no wrong either – but why? When he tried to speak out against homophobia recently, he used one of the worst ableist slurs while doing so.
Yet these men still have largely influential platforms.
