Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie on being emo, feeling low and staying positive

Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie was bullied at school. Now he's playing to thousands on the main stage at Reading Festival.

He tells Newsbeat it was the bullying that spurred him on.

"It started from a place I was getting bullied a lot, I was constantly getting beat up," he says.

"One of the main reasons I was getting beat up is I joined a jazz band and I was a year younger than the drummer who was beating me up all the time.

"He took karate and he was just a total ass", he explains.

"He was just a total jerk so I would get picked on, bullied, made fun of and that just made me want to be a better drummer than him.

"It worked because I made drummer and he got second chair. I took the bullying and I took the negativity and I decided to flip it.

"I didn't want to sit in the sadness and I hated how it made me feel. I didn't want to be that person all the time, it made me miserable. I realised at a young age that I can only allow so much feeling from someone else to make me feel inferior.

"You can only affect me so much. If I don't agree with it, I don't care to hear it."

He twists his rings as he explains how touched he is that fans share their tough times with him.

"Whenever I'm at a meet and greet I get notes passed to me like I'm in class and it's very cute. A lot of them do come from a serious point of view, people sharing things that are so personal and so serious.

"The fact that they feel comfortable sharing that with me makes me very happy and makes me feel like I can affect a change in people who may or may not look up to me. I think it's very important to have a voice."

He hopes his music can inspire fans to create their own art.

"I want them to feel that you can create something too," he says.

"You don't necessarily have to be musical to sing. You can open up your mouth and be a poet. Constantly I'm on social media sharing what our fans have done. They've drawn stuff, they've sang our songs, they've created their own songs and that's just the coolest thing ever."

You can watch full sets and videos from more than 40 acts at bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds.

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