"The Ballad of Mona Lisa", written by lead singer
Brendon Urie, was one of the first tracks composed for the band's third album,
Vices & Virtues. As a song written before the band even began recording their second album,
Pretty. Odd., it proved to be an inspiration for the production of
Vices & Virtues. "A few of the ideas — like "The Ballad of Mona Lisa", specifically — was from an idea I had probably four years ago, before we even started touring on
Pretty. Odd., and it was just sitting in my laptop collecting figurative dust on my hard drive, not really doing much," said Urie. "That ended up being a really good intro to the whole process." The music has been described as a combination of buzzsaw riffs, punchy percussion and literate, multi-layered lyrics. The song's title is an allusion to
Mona Lisa, the famous
Renaissance-era oil painting by
Leonardo da Vinci. In a 2011 interview, Urie regarded the name and theme of the song as neither male nor female. “That whole thing with Mona Lisa was the idea that there is this character. For us, you look at the painting, and you can’t tell what this person is thinking. Not showing too much emotion, there’s this Mona Lisa smile masking what’s going on in that person’s head," he explained. "The song is about a battle in yourself […] an inner struggle in oneself. The duality in nature, where you see yourself as a bad person, and the good person trying to correct your bad habits. That’s what it was about. We thought that would be an easy way to describe how we were masking our own emotions and trying to figure out how we can solve the bad choices we make." ==Release==