Girls / Girls / Boys

"Girls / Girls / Boys" is a song by American rock band Panic! at the Disco. It was released as the third single from their fourth studio album, Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!, on October 8, 2013. The music video for the song, directed by DJay Brawner, was also released on the day after. It peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart.

Writing and composition

The song was co-written by Dallon Weekes and Brendon Urie.^[3][4] The lyrics have been described as "racy",^[5][4] as the song depicts a love triangle complicated by differing sexual orientations,^[6] and is also derived from Urie's previous experiences with homosexuality and bisexuality.^[7]

The bass line of "Girls / Girls / Boys" is performed by Weekes,^[8] who was compared to Duran Duran bassist, John Taylor.^[9]

In an interview with Bass Player in December 2013, Weekes commented on the song's bass line.

"I wrote that on my own, and nobody really wanted to use it for the album. I was actually going to give it to a friend of mine in the band Neon Trees to use. But as we moved on with the writing, I tried to figure out what it was that I liked so much about the song, and I realized it was the bass line. So I took that from it, and we ended up writing a totally different song around it."^[8]

Music video

The music video for "Girls / Girls / Boys" was directed by DJay Brawner and released the day after the single.^[10] The video was compared to the music video of D'Angelo's, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)",^[5] which Urie cited as an inspiration to the video.^[4] The video uses the same black background as Untitled, and is also done in a single shot, pulling back to show a nude male, and stopping just before showing the pubic region. ^[11] A director's cut of the music video was released on July 28, 2014. The version has similarities from the original, except it includes two females kissing each other and heavily touching Urie near the end of the video.^[12][13]

Chart performance

References