Signed to Decaydance Records

Ross and Urie sent a demo to Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz via a LiveJournal account. Wentz, who was in Los Angeles at the time with the rest of Fall Out Boy working on the band’s major-label debut, From Under the Cork Tree , drove to Las Vegas to meet with the young, unsigned band. Upon hearing “two to three” songs during band practice, Wentz was impressed and immediately wanted the band to sign to his Fueled by Ramen imprint label Decaydance Records , which made the band the first on the new label. Around December 2004, the group signed to the label. As news broke that Wentz had signed Panic! (who had yet to perform a single live show), fans on the Internet began to bash the group. “Almost right away we knew what was going to happen,” Ross explained in a 2006 interview. “We had two songs online and people were already making assumptions on what kind of band we were and what we were going to sound like.”