Music / A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

"I chime in: Haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?"

A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is the first studio album by Panic! at the Disco, released in 2005. It's structured like a stage play, with an 'introduction' and 'intermission,' although the songs don't follow anything resembling a coherent story, with a few exceptions of course, for example "But It's Better If You Do" and "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" is about a boy falling in love with a prostitute, trying to marry her, and ending up discovering his best man having sex with her a few meters away from him.

It's notable for having very long song titles, none of which appear in the songs themselves.

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Tracklist:

1. "Introduction" (0:36)
2. "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage" (2:55)
3. "London Beckoned Songs About Money Written by Machines" (3:23)
4. "Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks" (3:23)
5. "Camisado" (3:11)
6. "Time to Dance" (3:22)
7. "Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" (3:20)
8. "Intermission" (2:35)
9. "But It's Better If You Do" (3:25)
10. "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" (3:07)
11. "I Constantly Thank God For Esteban" (3:30)
12. "There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of It Yet" (3:16)
13. "Build God, Then We'll Talk" (3:40)

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Principal Members:

• Brendon Urie – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, piano
• Ryan Ross – lead guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, programming, organ, piano, accordion, backing vocals
• Spencer Smith – drums, percussion, glockenspiel, tambourine, shaker, cabasa
• Brent Wilson – bass guitar

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I chimed in with a "Haven't you tropers ever heard of closing the goddamn door?!":

• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Listen to "Build God Then We'll Talk", particularly Brendon's pronunciation of "caricature".
• Bookends:
  • The music video for "But It's Better If You Do" begins and ends in black-and-white.
  • "Camisado" starts and ends with a minimalist piano accompaniment and the lyrics "The I.V. and your hospital bed / This was no accident / This was a therapeutic chain of events."
• Break Up Song: "Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off".
• Concept Album: The album is mostly about various references and rebellion, and is also split into two halves; the first half is more traditional-sounding pop punk, while the second puts a unique baroque spin on the sound. The two halves are connected by the album's intermission, which starts with techno-sounding electronic beats before transitioning to a piano interlude.
• Concept Video: Nearly all of them, notably the videos for "But It's Better If You Do" where the boys are musicians in an illegal strip club, and "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", featuring a circus wedding filled with clowns in lingerie!
• Creepy Monotone: The verses of "Lying is the Most Fun..."
  "Then think of what you did/And how I hope to God he was worth it"
• Deliberately Monochrome: The black and white variation is used in the music video for the start and end of the video for "But It's Better If You Do".
• Fading into the Next Song: Occurs multiple times on A Fever You Can't Sweat Out:
  • "Introduction" → "The Only Difference...".
  • "But It's Better If You Do" → "I Write Sins Not Tragedies".
• Finger on Lips: For the video to "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", Brendon would cover his mouth for the words "whore" and "goddamn".
• Genre Mashup: "Trip hop-cabaret-dance punk" was how Brendon Urie described AFYCSO when asked.
• Long Title: "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage", "Lying is the Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off", "There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of It Yet".
• Lyrical Dissonance: Most of the album. "Camisado" is a notable example, being an upbeat dance song about a person who gets regularly hospitalized.
• Non-Appearing Title: Quite literally every song on the album.
• One-Word Title: "Introduction", "Camisado" and "Intermission".
• Shout-Out:
  • Many of the songs on A Fever You Can't Sweat Out are named after lines from Chuck Palahniuk novels. "Time to Dance", in particular, is one big long reference to Invisible Monsters.
    • If you haven't read Invisible Monsters, "Time to Dance" seems like a song about teen pregnancy, and some of the lines that reference the book seem to have little meaning in the scheme of the whole song (namely "hiding in estrogen and wearing aubergine dreams").
  • "Build God, Then We'll Talk" has a shout out to The Sound of Music.
  • "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" and "But It's Better If You Do" are references to the movie Closer — spoken in the same breath, no less.
  • "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage" comes from Palahniuk's Survivor (1999).
  • "London Beckoned Songs About Money Written by Machines" has a bridge which references lines from Palahnuik's Diary ("just for the record, the weather today..." is a reference to a line the main character often says), and the title references the Douglas Coupland novel Shampoo Planet ("Torrid tunage from London beckoned — songs about money written by machines.")
    • This one may be unintentional, but the title also references Pink Floyd three times; the band is English, and they have songs titled "Money" and "Welcome to the Machine".
    • "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" also refers to Shampoo Planet ("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.")
• Take That!:
  • "London Beckoned Songs About Money Written by Machines" is one aimed towards the then-fledgeling scene community (back when it was an offshoot of Emo). This, of course, was not caught on by the MySpace crowd.
  • "There's A Good Reason These Tables are Numbered..." can be interpreted as a Take That to the subject of the song.
• Uncommon Time: "Build God, Then We'll Talk" switches between 4/4 and 3/4 with reckless abandon.

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