"Time to Dance" by Panic! At The Disco from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

"Have some composure—where is your posture? Oh, no, no… You're pulling the trigger, pulling the trigger all wrong…"

One thing Panic! At The Disco's good at is making weird lyrics. From the opening ("Well, she's not bleeding on the ballroom floor just for the attention") and throughout, the words and catchy techo dance-style music capture the listeners' attention. The band loves word play ("When I say 'Shotgun!' you say 'Wedding!'—'Shotgun!' 'Wedding!' 'Shotgun!' 'Wedding!'").

The story comes from a scene in a novel, where evidently a girl is holding a shotgun to her fiancé in attempt to get out of the wedding, while blood spills from her and further destroys the tatters left of her wedding gown. (Or so I understand—I've not read the book.) The violence and abuse are more implied than stated, with the language uncharacteristically clean for Panic! "Time to Dance" may not necessarily be very applicable to your life, but it's thought-provoking, amusing, or a mix, depending on your personality.

Many people dislike techno since it's the same throughout, but Panic! well manages keeping a consistent subbeat while varying the music throughout and giving it a lot of depth. It's mostly electronic, but it's fun and memorable. Though if you don't like electronica, you'll have a hard time enjoying it.

I, like many people, was first drawn towards Panic! from Brenden Urie's voice when I heard the band's music at school. (Of course, I also somehow completely missed the blaspheming in the chorus of the song I heard, but still…) This song offers a linguistically clean means to enjoy the singing of Brenden Urie, if you so desire.

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Lyrics: 4/5
Music: 5/5
Vocal(s): 5/5
Overall: 9/10

"Miracle (radio mix)" by Cascada from Miracle

"I need a miracle; please let me be your girl!" "Gimme a chance to see that you are made for me."

That pretty much sums up the story of the song. The girl's convinced her "love is real" and "feelings pure," but the guy dumped her. Now she's begging for hm to take her back to give her a chance.

Her voice is decent. It's mostly consistent, but I get the impression that's more on accident than on purpose. (I honestly wish I knew what made me think that.) It just sounds very… relaxed. Considering the rapid beat of the music, that's a nice thing, but it doesn't make me think much of her voice.

Cascada made quite a few—eight—versions of this song. Tracking down which version is the one I've heard was a bit tricky, to say the least. From listening to portions of the other versions, I think this one is the best. It's enough of the same throughout to be good for dance with enough variation in it to please the ears if you don't mind techno music.

If you're looking for something to help you write that paper more quickly that doesn't necessarily sound irritating, this song can help. But if you're looking for some music just to listen to… you might want to look for something else.

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Lyrics: 3/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 3/5
Overall: 6/10

"Build God, Then We'll Talk" by Panic! at the Disco from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

"What a wonderful caricature of intimacy" sings Brenden Urie caustically, and that pretty much sums up what I've heard of the band: caustic, and not afraid to use coarse language to make their point. Knowing that about them, the title "Build God, Then We'll Talk" hardly sounds like it would be one of their cleaner songs.

If you're queasy or uncomfortable with some of the abuses happening in our society, you'll want to avoid this song. And the rest of this review, for that matter, since I quote the song and give the unpleasant story. (Panic! at the Disco is sometimes incorrectly classified as emo from the emotional element of their songs.)

Nonetheless, this song gets an incredibly disgusting image across without a word of coarse language. The song follows a seedy motel and one room's occupants over a night. A lawyer makes the most of a "virgin" soon to be working at his office, meeting her for "'Strictly business,' as he said to the Mrs." The girl later bumps into a cop who offers to ignore her drugs if she'll… indulge him, too.

Not a pleasant image, and it's certainly compounded by a colorful image produced by shifting a popular song from The Sound of Music. "(There are no…) raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses—it's sleeping with roaches and taking best guesses at the color of the sheets before all the stains." The point? If intimacy is supposed to be for love's sake, why is it happening like this?

Many people who hate the style of music (or lyrics) of Panic! at the Disco will agree that Brenden Urie has an appealing voice. They are very much a punk pop band, with a somewhat techno form of rock. A lot of it is beat, but that varies even within the song.

If you don't mind the genre or message, it's actually a surprisingly good song. But avoid the music video.

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Lyrics: 4/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 5/5
Overall: 8/10

"Everytime We Touch" by Cascada from Everytime We Toucch

Please "forgive me my weakness" for actually enjoying some techno. I don't mean the the completely repetitive dance music, but there is some techno that can be pretty if you can get accustomed to the extreme tempo.

"Everytime We Touch" doesn't remain completely static, making it above average for its genre. The rapid-beat movements shifts in the song while keeping the similar tone throughout that makes it danceable. The speedy tempo sets your pulse racing, an effect that's useful when you're trying to speed something up, like the writing of a blog post.

Can you spell "cliché" for the lyrics? A girl's very happy with her boyfriend and wants to stay with him. The song does nothing but speak of the emotions involved there, though Cascada does have a distinctly attractive voice as she sings "Everytime we touch, I get this feeling…" and so on and so forth.

The song is useful like all techno when you're trying to get something done quickly, but you'll probably only listen to it for pleasure every so often if you enjoy the style and aren't too terribly annoyed by the lyrics.

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Lyrics: 3/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 3/5
Overall: 6/10