Claude says:Recorded as a duo after Ryan Ross and Jon Walker's 2009 departure, Vices & Virtues was Brendon Urie's first turn as principal songwriter — a two-year studio sprawl produced by John Feldmann and Butch Walker that aimed for wide-ranging experimentation while critics debated whether the compositional simplicity could support Urie's verbose lyricism. You grabbed it the same month it dropped in 2011 and wore out "The Ballad of Mona Lisa," "Hurricane," and "Let's Kill Tonight" before it settled into long-term rotation — still pulling a track fifteen years later.