| **"I Write Sins Not Tragedies"** is a song from the [[Panic! at the Disco]] debut album "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," released in 2005. | |
| ## Story behind the song | |
| - | The title of the song refers to Douglas Coupland's novel |
| + | The title of the song refers to Douglas Coupland's novel "Shampoo Planet." Its main character, Tyler Johnson, says: "I am writing a list of tragic character flaws on my dollar bills with a felt pen. I am thinking of the people in my universe and distilling for each of these people the one flaw in their character that will be their downfall — the flaw that will be their undoing. What I write are not sins; I write tragedies." <ref name="songfacts1">{{cite SongFacts.com|url="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=5867"|title="'I Write Sins Not Tragedies' by Panic! At the Disco"}}</ref> |
| - | Lead vocalist [[Brendon Urie]] |
| + | Lead vocalist [[Brendon Urie]] revealed how he joined the band, wrote the song and how Panic! At the Disco formed their famous outfit: |
| "I wrote this song six months after I had joined the band, as the guitar player ... temporarily. They needed me to play a couple of shows and I said 'of course,' not thinking it would go anywhere. <ref name="genius1">{{cite Genius.com|url="https://genius.com/8385713"|title="'I Write Sins Not Tragedies' by Panic! At the Disco"}}</ref> | |
| "Then we played a show at my church. We played two songs. We had to dress up. 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.'" <ref name="genius1"/> | |
| "The lyrics are about infidelity, the sins that I felt were being committed by my friends. A sin is something you commit and a tragedy is a person who has a sin committed against them. You can be powerless until you make your voice heard. <ref name="genius1"/> | |
| - | "At that time betrayal was huge. I had this friend, Eric |
| + | "At that time betrayal was huge. I had this friend, Eric — we were really good friends and he knew I was really into this girl and she and I had been talking for a while. I was smitten over this girl. And I was slow at making a move because I was just so nervous. Next thing I heard: they were f..king. And that just broke my heart." <ref name="genius1"/> |
| When asked about the inspiration for the line "Haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?!", Urie said: | |
| "When we wrote that [lyric], Ryan [Ross] wrote most of the lyrics on the first album. And that was about that time when his Dad walked in on him and his girlfriend and he said that to Ryan, like verbatim. He said, 'Haven't you ever heard of closing the goddamn door?' Then he shut it, and yeah that was where that came from." | |
| - | Brendon often jokes that he hates this song now when playing it live. But |
| + | Brendon often jokes that he hates this song now when playing it live. But he doesn't. In 2016, Urie told Billboard: |
| - | "I actually don't hate 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies,' it was just one of those things where you act a character and you play this fool and then it becomes something crazier. Obviously, my humor doesn't hit. I love playing the new songs, [but] at the same time, playing old stuff for me, when you play it live, it changes the meaning of the songs for me. So when I'm playing it back and I hear new fans and old fans singing old songs back to me, the songs just continue to grow." <ref name="genius1"/> |
| - | |
| - | One of the instruments used in this song is an accordion. Guitarist [[Ryan Ross]] loves the accordion sound and is a big fan of movie soundtracks that use it like Amelie and Nightmare Before Christmas. There's also a harpsichord, which plays the opening notes. <ref name="songfacts1"/> |
| + | "I actually don't hate 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies,' it was just one of those things where you act a character and you play this fool and then it becomes something crazier. Obviously, my humor doesn't hit. I love playing the new songs, at the same time, playing old stuff for me, when you play it live, it changes the meaning of the songs for me. So when I'm playing it back and I hear new fans and old fans singing old songs back to me, the songs just continue to grow." <ref name="genius1"/> |
| ## Music videos | |
| ### Official music video | |
| - | |
| + | "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" is the band's first song to have a music video. The music video was made by director Shane Drake, who also worked with Avril Lavigne, Trivium, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Angels & Airwaves, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and many others. The video was shot in December 2005. |
| - | The video was shot in December 2005. According to vocalist Brendon Urie, he and guitarist Ryan Ross suffered from the flu while filming the video clip. |
| + | According to Brendon Urie, he and Ryan Ross had the flu while filming. |
| + | |
| + | The video for the song takes place at an odd circus-themed wedding. It features artists of *Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque*. |
| The video starts as the bride, played by Jessie Preston, and groom, Daniel Isaac McGuffey, are about to be married. Her family dress and behave formally, but are revealed later to have fallen asleep and have eyes painted on their eyelids. Members of his family are lower-class entertainers and carnival folk, who interrupt the wedding. The ringmaster, played by vocalist Brendon Urie, acts as narrator and disrupts the events. After an argument between the two families, the bride runs out and is followed by one of her guests. The ringmaster drags the groom outside by his tie, where his fiancée is kissing the guest who followed her out of the church. The groom straightens up, looking shocked, and Urie and the groom bow to the camera. The ringmaster is revealed to be the groom's alter ego. | |
| This video won the award for Video of the Year during the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, beating Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Shakira and Red Hot Chili Peppers. This was the first occasion since 1989, that the winner of Video of the Year did not win anything else. |