Songfacts®:

• The Emperor's New Clothes is a children's fable written in 1835 by Hans Christian Andersen. In the tale, two weavers hoodwink the Emperor into wearing a new suit of clothes supposedly magnificent, but invisible to underlings. In fact they do not exist at all. When the Emperor parades naked down the street, his subjects pretend to marvel at his clothes until an innocent child points out that he is unclothed.
• In this song, Brendon Urie, unlike the emperor, is aware of his foolishness yet still wants the glory. The Panic frontman explained to Kerrang! "It's actually is a lot about that Hans Christian Andersen story. The Emperor's New Clothes, but instead of being the dumbfounded, gullible emperor, I actually know what's going down, and I just choose to be naked. There is a lot of that arrogance behind it, and that was a song that I felt I hadn't written in the past."
• Asked by Kerrang how much this song represents the mindset of Death Of A Bachelor, Urie replied: "I wanted a song that says, 'This is mine. I do what I do because I feel that it's my right. I own this, and I've earned it, and I deserve every bit that I put into this work."
  
  He added: "It's about my life as a producer, songwriter and as band leader. I'm taking back the crown."
• The song is 100 percent autobiographical. Brendon Urie gradually pared down the band until it was just him for the Death Of A Bachelor album. He explained to Genius: "Over the past ten years I've been this one person, as I saw myself in Panic! At The Disco. But now I am Panic! At The Disco, and that's what I wanted to come across. Now it's all changed, and I'm taking it back."
  
  "I feel like I've deserved this for a long time," he added. "I've sat on the sidelines for a while. Now is my chance, so I'm going to step up and take what's mine."
• Urie recalled the recording of the track: "I spent a lot of time stacking my own vocals. I stacked myself multiple times - 38 times, I think. I stacked myself doing different voices, so the bridge has this operatic evil feel. And it's all over the place - a little Queen, but a little darker, like if the devil recorded an answering machine message and you gave it to Skrillex, then remixed the recording, slowed it down and chopped it up."
• Urie and Panic! producer Jake Sinclair wrote this with the songwriters Lolo, Sam Hollander and Dan Wilson. In a Songfacts interview with Hollander, he explained how it came together. "Brendon had written a chorus, and I got a call to mess around with some verse ideas," he said. "What I love about that is it's obviously dripping in theatricality - it's just so over-the-top. When I heard what Brendon wrote in that chorus, it felt like this was an introduction to a brand new era of the band, so I was just trying to summon some imagery in those verses to play off of that and fuel the fire."
  
  Hollander went on to write more songs with Urie for Panic! including "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" and "High Hopes."