10 Perfect Rock Albums That No One Saw Coming

10. Pretty Odd - Panic at the Disco

Even by the standards of the emo genre, the arrival of Panic at the Disco was the moment where things started to get a little bit ridiculous. We already had the snide sounds of Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance channeling the more adolescent angst with eyeliner, but the theatrical side of a song like I Write Sins Not Tragedies was almost too much to take in all at once. Just when everyone figured we'd be in for another theatrical production though, Pretty Odd became...one of the most aptly named follow ups in the world of emo.

Taking influences from classic rock bands like Crosby Stills and Nash and the Beatles, Panic's follow up to their blockbuster debut had a lot more organic sounds going for it, making songs that wouldn't feel that out of place almost 30 years before. With guitarist Ryan Ross taking the reins a lot more on this record, you can hear the band aiming for something that was more along the lines of folk rock, like the harmonies on a song like Northern Downpour or the straight up acoustic jams from Brendon Urie on a song like Folkin Around,

While the experiment may have worked in the long run, it wasn't something that anyone in the band was interested in revisiting either, with Ryan leaving the group once the tour wrapped and Panic getting back on track on their next album Vices and Virtues. Then again, the idea of one of the biggest emo bands in the world going a lot more rustic still works a lot better than some modern bands could do on their best day.