Interview with Brendon Urie: Hallelujah Music Video
By Corinne Bagish - 7/7/15
Stand up and sing hallelujah (hallelujah!) for Panic! at the Disco’s brand new music video. The pop-punkers’ “Hallelujah” video is a dialogue between an impassioned preacher and a confessing sinner — and a nod to the Monument Valley puzzle game.
“When I’m sitting in my confessional, basically, I’m playing two different characters,” frontman Brendon Urie told Mashable. “I’m playing the sinner, and I’m playing the priest. As the priest, I’m trying to convince myself that it’s all okay, that I’ll absolve you of your sins and try to comfort you, and the sinner just isn’t having it. In the sinner’s mind, there’s this puzzle going on — I’m chasing this girl through this story that I’ve woven for myself and I can’t seem to break the puzzle. I’m trying to defeat it in order to have some kind of catharsis.”
Panic! at the Disco debuted the song, the band’s first new music in nearly two years, in April, and the audio on YouTube has amassed over 4 million views so far.
“Hallelujah” marked a fresh start for Panic! at the Disco in more ways than one. Beyond the gap in fresh material, drummer Spencer Smith announced his departure from the band in April, just prior to the song’s release. Smith was the last remaining original P!ATD member, although Urie has been there from nearly the beginning — before the band even settled on its name and certainly before the band had mainstream reach. (Urie joined as a replacement guitar player.)
“Right after we had the talk about what [Smith] wanted to do, and after he had released his statement to the fans, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m jumping back in. I still want to make this [upcoming] album as soon as possible.’ And he was 100% behind that. But he didn’t have anything to do with this album coming out, so it really is a departure,” Urie explained.
Urie, who is editing demos in preparation to hit the studio, is hoping to release the album in late October. “I want to have live players in the studio — horns and strings, a live band. It’s gonna be a huge example of how powerful some of this stuff can be with that effect behind it,” he said.
Although it’s a sort of rebirth for Panic!, the theme of religion — and sin — is reoccurring: think 2005’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” which very much put them on the map, and 2013’s “This is Gospel.”
“Religion was a huge part of my life,” Urie said. “I was raised in the Mormon faith, and I can’t really deny too much of it. I spent, shit, more than half of my life in church, and it was kind of a no-brainer to want to sing about accepting responsibility for stuff I’ve done in the past. It’s really kind of touching on that religious connotation. I don’t affiliate with any religion specifically, but I do like to think that when I’m creating music, it’s a very spiritual thing. So I do want to kind of create this idea that you don’t need religion — you need whatever makes you happy.”
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