Remember when Panic! at the Disco covered “This Is Halloween”?

In 2006, P!atD were featured on a special soundtrack reissue for The Nightmare Before Christmas. They were one of several musical acts given this privilege, along with Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, and a few others. The soundtrack was officially released on October 24, 2006, just in time for Halloween and Panic’s Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour.

Interestingly, this is also how the boys met music producer Rob Mathes, who would later work with them on Pretty. Odd. and all subsequent albums up to and including Pray For the Wicked, in addition to The Young Veins’ Take A Vacation!.

~Mod C

Here are some more pictures from our Halloween photo shoot!

Anyone who’s familiar with our daily content on @underappreciated-at-the-disco will understand that we felt morally obligated to take a bunch of silly, “inexplicable” pictures. :D

We had so much fun with these costumes. The three of us have been joking about doing this for about 8 years now, so it was a long time in the making. We hope you all enjoy these pictures as much as we do!

And HAPPY HALLOWEEN! <3

~Mods C, M, and B

WHO WORE IT BETTER?

(We did not intentionally mimic these photos or edit ours in any way, we swear!!)

~Mods C, M, and B

Another day, another inexplicable Panic at the Disco photo shoot. Whoops! We meant to say…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN from the “Vest” Band in the World!

Mod C as Ryan Ross Mod M as Jon Walker Mod B as Spencer Smith Brendon Bearie as himself

Love, Mods C, M, and B

All About “It’s Almost Halloween” (Masterpost)

Ever since Panic at the Disco dropped their iconic Halloween anthem in the fall of 2008, fans have been burning with questions: Why did they decide to do a Halloween song? Why did they dress up as monsters? Who are the people at the Halloween party? Who directed the music video?

It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, there are answers to all of these questions and more, lurking just out of sight of the mainstream fandom. But with some digging, they inevitably reveal themselves.

PART 1: The Song

I think we can all agree that only Panic at the Disco would write an ominous-sounding surf rock jam about hooking up with a stranger, thinly disguised as a Halloween song. Even the rather offbeat idea of a “Halloween song” in the first place is perfectly aligned with Panic’s spooky, mysterious, costumey image.

The boys of P!atD would seemingly agree with this statement, as confirmed in a recent Rocksound interview with Spencer Smith:

A Halloween song does make perfect sense for the band’s aesthetic (which is also undoubtedly why they had previously covered “This Is Halloween” in 2006).

According to the same interview with Spencer, there were a few more reasons why the band wrote “It’s Almost Halloween”:

But when did they write it?

The answer lies in the now-defunct Tumblr account of Ryan Ross and Jon Walker: weresoblogging.com. The blog may be long gone, but someone thankfully stored most of it in the Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine, where it can still be read and accessed today.

Sometime between October 9 and October 22 of 2008, either Ryan or Jon made a mysterious post with only two words:

So while we cannot pinpoint the date definitively, the song was definitely written in early-to-mid October.

The whole process of writing and recording the song was rather hurried and a bit slapdash, as the boys were trying to do everything while on tour, even, as Spencer mentions, using bathrooms as their recording studio at times.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take them very long to write, record, film, and release the whole thing. As Spencer said, the process of recording to shooting the video only took “a week to 10 days.”

Speaking of the video…

PART 2: The Video

The video for “Its Almost Halloween” is Iconic and one of Panic’s best music videos. Its quirky, upbeat, and feels like a funny home video—which is kind of what it is.

Not a lot about the production of the video is known, in general. The director of the video is absent from the Wikipedia page, and there are no other credits for those who worked on the video outside of the band.

However, with a little bit of sleuthing with our old friend, the Wayback Machine, we can see that the boys did it all: the camera work, costumes, choreography, everything, entirely by themselves.

This was posted before Halloween on weresoblogging:

So, the boys did it all themselves, but how? Let’s start with the basics, such as: where did they film the video?

According to the recent Spencer interview, the forested parts of the video were filmed in Defiance, Missouri:

Interestingly enough, this was also where Jon and Ryan wrote The Young Veins song “Defiance”, after they were inspired by seeing the name of the song printed on a bridge. This shows the artistic mindset that Ryan and Jon were in during this time that eventually turned into the jangly, 60′s-ish, surf-rock sound of The Young Veins.

(You can also tell this was around the same time as the “It”s Almost Halloween” video because of Spencer’s silly mustache.)

The other location that was featured in the video, the costume party, was filmed in the band’s dressing room, which was suitably decorated. The people in those scenes were actually the other bands they were on tour with and their friends:

As for the decorations, they were actually provided by fans! Jon and Ryan put out an S.O.S. on their Tumblr looking for people to bring Halloween decorations and stuff to their October 19th concert in St. Louis, MO. Here is the actual post;

At this point, they only needed costumes and choreography.

Speaking of costumes, where did the costumes come from and how did they pick them? Well, again, Spencer has an answer:

Curiously, it appears that three of the four specific monsters may not have been completely random, as they reference a recurring nightmare from Ryan’s childhood:

This revelation, only a month or so after “It’s Almost Halloween” (which he later references in the same article), makes the choice of costumes for Ryan’s three bandmates much more intriguing.

Now, how about those sickening dance moves?

When we first began writing this article in early October 2018, it was completely unknown as to who choreographed the video—although we were going to speculate that Brendon (who had the most dance experience and seemed the most at ease in the video) probably had the biggest influence.

Then, Spencer’s interview was released, which clarified things somewhat and made our jobs ten times easier overall.

The finished video went live on the internet just in time for Halloween, and was of course plugged on weresoblogging:

PART 3: The Show

On the night of October 31, 2008, Panic at the Disco ascended the stage in Fairfax, VA dressed in their costumes from the video and surprised all the fans by replacing “We’re So Starving” and “Nine in the Afternoon” in their setlist with “It’s Almost Halloween”.

The process of recording “It’s Almost Halloween”, filming the video, and performing it live was apparently a surreal experience for Ryan:

The show must not have left a lasting impact on Spencer, however, because he interestingly forgot that they ever performed “It’s Almost Halloween” live (as we pointed out in a previous post): 

Funnily enough, a certain Mr. Jon Walker also noticed this discrepancy and helpfully, but bluntly, pointed it out to Spencer:

And Spencer himself has since issued a retraction:

So, that is all settled!

PART 4: Looking Back

“It’s Almost Halloween” is now 10 years old, and its still as fresh and beloved by the fandom as it was when it first came out. Ryan and Brendon haven’t said anything recently about the song, but Jon and Spencer have spoken about it. This is what Spencer has had to say :

Jon hasn’t said much, as he’s been in the recording studio, but he’s been retweeting fan covers of the song and even made this tweet calling for the song to be put on Spotify:

“It’s Almost Halloween” is an absolute gem of a song and video, and both gleam beautifully in all of their hokey, spoopy glory. We Mods can say, with all honesty that it is one of our favorite songs in the entirety of the Panic! oeuvre.

~Mods C and M

In case you missed it, here’s the part of Ryan Ross’s new interview with CrankThatFrank about his friendship with Jon Walker, Jon’s music, and the lost demos of Cricket and Clover!

~Mods C, M, and B