In early 2007, Panic at the Disco began writing their follow up album but decided to rewrite the entire album from scratch in July 2007. While speaking to MTV, Ryan Ross explained that the album lacked a band set up and that it "sounded like a film score." He also explained that the new songs have "a more positive outlook to them." The band also began performing new songs during various festivals and gigs. Two of these songs are "Nine in the Afternoon" and "When the Day Met the Night".
Rob Mathes, who produced the record, described the album as “the most significant music project I have done in a while in that it is young and intense, adventurous and endlessly creative. Working with these young kids has made me look at music the way I did when I discovered early records by The Who and Brian Eno-period David Bowie when I was 16. For this project I am also filled with “gratitude”.The band previously planned to have Danny Elfman, who worked on the original Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, produce the album.On November 19 on the NBC drama Heroes a recorded portion of Panic's song "Nine in the Afternoon" was played during a scene where Claire Bennet is practicing for a pep rally.
On December 11, it was announced on Billboard.com that Panic's second album was set to be released on March 25, 2008. Later that day, a series of puzzles began to appear on the Panic at the Disco website. The first puzzle led to the answer of "You Don't Have to Worry" - Drummer Spencer Smith explained that it was a lyric from a song named "We're So Starving".
The video for "Nine in the Afternoon" was shot on the December 21 and 22, ahead of the release as a single in January 2008.
A second puzzle revealed samples from a song on the upcoming album with the third piece of the puzzle leading to a blog entry on MySpace which updated the progress of the album while releasing a rough version of the song "We're So Starving". The band also announced that they would be recording the strings and mixing the album at Abbey Road Studios.
On January 9, the exclamation point in the band's name was dropped, and a day later the band's homepage was changed to the logo for the Honda Civic Tour, which the band is headlining this year. They confirmed that the second album was titled Pretty. Odd. with a release date of March 25, 2008. They defended the decision to drop the exclamation point during an interview with MTV : "It was never part of the name to us. (...) When we started doing new promo stuff for this album, we just told everyone not to use it anymore."
A fresh puzzle appeared on the band's website on the January 16, various parts of the puzzle were released on to different websites. A week later, the completed puzzle appeared on the website revealing the album cover of Pretty. Odd.
On January 26, a new puzzle was added to the site, this led to the back cover of the album being revealed.
The single for "Nine in the Afternoon" was added to Amazon.com's digital music catalogue. Although the song will only be available for purchase on January 29, a 30 second preview of the final version was uploaded and later removed.
On January 28, "Nine in the Afternoon" was made available (in full) on the band's official MySpace page. iTunes made the Deluxe Edition and Standard Edition of the album available for pre-order on January 29, 2008.
The day after the video for the first single "Nine in the Afternoon" aired, the band shot a whole new video for the next single, entitled "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)".
On February 23, Panic at the Disco hosted a private event with fan club members at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City. The band held a Q&A session with the fans and those in attendance got to hear for the first time three new songs. The setlist included: "We're So Starving," "Nine in the Afternoon", "But It's Better If You Do", "She's a Handsome Woman", "That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)", "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and "Mad as Rabbits".
A poster for the event featured a Wal-Mart Soundcheck logo, which leads some people to believe the band will soon have a performance up on their website and possibly have Pretty. Odd. released in a Walmart packaging that comes with an exclusive DVD.
During their recent 2008 European Tour, Panic at the Disco performed songs from their new album, Pretty. Odd., including: "That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)", "Nine in the Afternoon", "She's a Handsome Woman", "Mad as Rabbits", and "We're So Starving".
On March 30, the album hit #2 in the UK Albums Chart.The album also debuted at #2 in the U.S., selling 139,000 copies in its first week.On April 8, the album debuted at #1 in Australia.
For the week of April 7 to April 12, 2008, Panic was the MTV Artist of the Week. They began the Honda Civic Tour April 10th of the same week at The Warfield in San Francisco, California.
In August, Panic at the Disco will embark on a world tour, with dates in Asia, Australia and New Zealand already announced. These will be the band's biggest shows overseas to date.
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