"Panic" is a song by the English rock band the Smiths, released in 1986 and written by singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr.

The first recording to feature new member Craig Gannon, "Panic" bemoans the state of contemporary pop music, exhorting listeners to "burn down the disco" and "hang the DJ" in retaliation.

[4] The affair led to debate about the song's meaning, including more recent speculation that it is in fact about Jimmy Savile and his then-veiled sexual abuse.

[8] A story circulated as the basis for the song holds that Marr and Morrissey were listening to BBC Radio 1 when a news report announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"[10] "The anecdote might well be true," writes Tony Fletcher in A Light That Never Goes Out, his biography of the Smiths, but he states that "I'm Your Man" had been off the UK pop charts for several months by the time of the Chernobyl disaster and that "Morrissey hardly needed further provocation to attack Wright, whose highly ranked afternoon show treated all popular music as secondary to his madcap party format".

(The antagonism was apparently mutual; former Smiths manager Scott Piering says that at a 1985 meeting, Wright and his producer both made clear that they disliked the band's music.

[2] John Luerssen calls it a "commentary on the tepid state of pop music in 1986" and a "chiming guitar song," based around a rotation between the G major and E minor chords.

[15] "Panic" was voted Single of the Year by the annual NME readers poll, and also ("somewhat incongruously", noted Goddard) ranked sixth in the Best Dance Record category.

Paolo Hewitt in the NME wrote, "If Morrissey wants to have a go at Radio 1 and Steve Wright, then fine [but] when he starts using words like disco and DJ, with all the attendant imagery that brings up for what is a predominantly white audience, he is being imprecise and offensive".

Fletcher says that the lack of any explicit indication the song was about radio meant "Panic" "could be construed as reviving the racist and homophobic 'Disco Sucks' campaign of late 1970s America".

"For British Smiths fans," he writes, ... the 'disco' of 'Panic' was generally presumed to mean the longstanding city-centre meet market, which suggested exclusivity by demanding patrons wear a tie, or at least to 'dress smart,' but where drinks were overpriced, fights routine, and both the disc jockeys and the commercial Top 40 music that they played was almost embarrassingly disconnected from the neighbouring streets.

Then again, when the Smiths performed 'Panic' to nearly 15,000 white American college kids, outdoors in the suburbs of Massachusetts, such reference points, vaguely stated in the first place, were easy to misconstrue.

An image of a young Richard Bradford, known for his lead role as private eye McGill in the 1960s British TV adventure series Man in a Suitcase, features on the sleeve cover.