Twenty One Pilots

At the 2017 Grammy Awards, two guys walked up on stage to collect their prize with no trousers on, in their underwear, in front of the entire industry. It wasn't a drunken stunt or an empty provocation. It was a promise being kept. Years earlier, when they were nobody, Tyler Joseph was at home watching the Grammys in his underwear with a friend, and he said: if we ever win one of those, let's go up and collect it just like this, exactly as we are right now. When the day came, they kept their word. That scene —humble, absurd and true to a promise— is Twenty One Pilots in a nutshell.

The name comes from a moral obligation

Let's start with the name, because it's no accident. Twenty One Pilots comes from "All My Sons", a play by Arthur Miller that Tyler Joseph read at school. In the play, a man ships defective aircraft parts during the war so as not to lose money, and because of him twenty-one pilots die. It's a story about responsibility: about what we owe one another, about the price of looking the other way. Naming your band after that, in your early twenties, says something about the kind of musician you wanted to be: one who asks what things weigh, not one hunting for a name that sounds good.

A band that respects no box

Twenty One Pilots are two people: Tyler Joseph, who sings, raps and plays keyboards, ukulele and bass, and Josh Dun on drums. Two people making the noise of ten. And their trademark is total freedom of genre: within a single song they can move from rap to pop, from reggae to rock, from sweet ukulele to a desperate scream. They respect no boundary of style, and that refusal to be pigeonholed is exactly what made them enormous. They made music that sounded like nothing else because it sounded like everything.

"Blurryface", in 2015, turned them into a phenomenon. "Stressed Out", "Ride" and, the following year, "Heathens": songs that played all over the world and that, underneath the hook, talked about things stadium pop didn't usually touch.

Singing about anguish when nobody else was

And that's where their real greatness lies. Twenty One Pilots put anxiety, doubt and inner darkness at the centre of their music, at a time when mainstream pop preferred parties and sparkle. They gave a name to what millions of teenagers felt and couldn't say: the pressure, the fear, the sense of not measuring up. And that's why they built one of the most devoted fan communities in modern music, people who don't just listen to them, they need them.

They turned vulnerability into an anthem chanted by entire stadiums. They made saying "I'm not okay" into something twenty thousand people could shout together, and in that collective shout the anguish became, for a while, a little lighter. Few bands of their generation did so much good for so many young people.

What to remember

Twenty One Pilots are two people from Columbus, Ohio, who named their band after a play about moral responsibility, who never respected a single boundary of genre, and who sang about anxiety and darkness when pop was looking the other way. They kept a promise by collecting a Grammy in their underwear, and they built a legion of fans who feel less alone because of their music.

Remember it this way: they are the band that turned teenage anguish into a collective song, and that never forgot where it came from. So much so that it climbed to the very top exactly as it was when it was nobody: in its underwear, keeping its word.

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Sources

Twenty One Pilots, American duo from Columbus, Ohio, made up of Tyler Joseph (vocals, keyboards, ukulele, bass) and Josh Dun (drums). The name comes from Arthur Miller's play "All My Sons" (1947), which Tyler Joseph read in high school: a character ships defective aircraft parts during the war, causing the death of twenty-one pilots, in a reflection on moral responsibility. Their album "Blurryface" (2015) included "Stressed Out", "Ride" and "Tear in My Heart"; "Heathens" (2016) featured in the film "Suicide Squad". At the 59th Grammy Awards (February 2017) they won best pop duo or group performance for "Stressed Out", and collected it in their underwear, keeping a promise Tyler Joseph had made years earlier while watching the ceremony in his underwear. The band is known for its blend of genres, for addressing mental health, anxiety and depression, and for a notably devoted fan base. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, American Songwriter, Grammy.com, Time, NME and other coverage.