Panic! at the Disco’s 2006 breakout hit, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” was a huge moment for the Las Vegas band, catapulting them from obscure Pete Wentz cosigns to emo-pop stars. The song reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and eventually went 4x Platinum. While it was amongst 2006’s biggest hits, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” wasn’t recorded with session musicians or expensive equipment. In fact, middle school band students play much of the song’s instrumentation.
In a 2016 interview with Zach Sang, Panic!’s frontman Brendon Urie revealed that the group recorded middle schoolers to play both trumpet and cello on the song, recording individual notes and using them to craft the track:
We had $10,000 to do the first album, we had like no money… At that point, we couldn’t even get an extra $200 to pay someone in to come and play trumpet. We had to pay a sixth grader to come in and play trumpet and we recorded each note separately. So if you listen to ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies,’ first single off first album, we recorded a girl who was, you know, 13, 14 years old, playing cello one note at a time. And we just took them and sampled them basically, played it like an MPC. So we actually did that like, by hand. It was really crazy.
“I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” along with the band’s debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, stood out for the extensive use of string and brass instruments. Back then, Panic! was often pegged as a revival of the 1960s-born baroque pop movement.
In a verified annotation on Genius, Urie explained that the song drew inspiration from his strict Mormon upbringing:
According to Urie, even the band’s early flamboyant dress style came about because of his Mormonism. “We played a show at my church. We played two songs. We had to dress up,” Urie explained to Genius. “I told them, ‘Listen, there is a dress code and a curfew. So we only get to play two songs and you have to wear a nice shirt, slacks, tie.’ After that, we were like, ‘Hey, we should dress up like this all the time.'”
Revisit to the song above and catch up on all the lyrics to Panic! At the Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” on Genius now.
