Heart of Mine

In July 2009, guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker exited Panic! at the Disco citing musical differences and formed a new band, the Young Veins. This is the closing track from their debut album, Take a Vacation!.

The song was recorded on Ross' 23rd birthday and features a collection of guest vocalists, such as Mickey Madden from Maroon 5, Phantom Planet bassist and songsmith Alex Greenwald (who produced Take a Vacation!) and members of Chief and the Like, including Ross' girlfriend Elizabeth Berg. Ross recalled to MTV News the recording of the track: "Me and Jon [Walker] sang it facing each other, playing acoustic," he said." "We did it live, and then we sang another track over it, we had a bunch of my friends on my birthday come down and sing. You can actually hear - if you listen really close on the end of the track - somebody screams, 'Happy birthday, Ryan!' We wanted to have a bunch of people singing the refrain with us. So, it just worked out that it was on my birthday, and we were going to have a party at the studio anyway, and so we talked a bunch of people into singing on it for free. To be honest, I don't remember much. It was my 23rd birthday after all."

Ross told Artist Direct the story of the song: "I vividly remember writing the song. Jon and I were in Southeast Asia. I think we wrote the song in Singapore. It was really dangerous where we were at. We were pretty much holed up in our hotel because they told us it was too dangerous for us to go outside at night. So we'd just go to the hotel bar and play darts. One night, we came back to Jon's hotel room and we sat down and started writing a song. We hadn't been home in so long. It was about feeling really far away from home and truly disconnected from things-not being able to talk to your girlfriend and stuff like that. We wrote that song to each of our girlfriends at the time together. All of that stuff about the Philippines was happening while we were writing. It's crazy."