Twenty One Pilots: Inside the Biggest New Band of the Past Year
When Twenty One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph scrolls through his phone, there are hundreds of names in the contacts he doesn’t quite recognize: kids from the band’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio, who were the earliest fans of his two-man group, from back in the days when Joseph used to drive door-to-door hand-delivering tickets for club shows. When that grew too time-consuming, he and drummer Josh Dun would have fans meet them at a table outside the Chick-Fil-A in the Polaris mall’s food court. On show days, Joseph’s mom would stand outside the club and try to hawk tickets to passing Ohio State students. “She’d be like, ‘Come see my son play music,'” recalls Joseph, who’s 27 but could pass for a teenager, with a puppyish, Joseph Gordon-Levitt vibe that turns into something stranger and more intense onstage.
That was just four years ago. The duo’s grassroots approach has, to their surprise, propelled them way, way beyond central Ohio. They are easily the biggest group to break out in the past year: In mid-January, Twenty One Pilots had a Top 10 single (“Stressed Out”) and the country’s Number Three album, lodged between Justin Bieber and One Direction. Weeks ago, they announced a 58-date arena tour, including two nearly sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden.
They’re signed to the punk-leaning label Fueled by Ramen — launching pad for Fall Out Boy and Paramore — but Twenty One Pilots are one of the hardest-to-categorize hit acts in years, mixing angsty lyrics, Macklemore-style rhymes, Ben Folds–like piano pop, 311-ish reggae beats, hard-rock energy and the occasional ukulele ballad. Onstage, Joseph plays bass, piano and uke when he’s not stalking around in smeared makeup and a bondage mask. Dun, a chilled-out former skater with an easy grin and gauges in his ears, helps them sound like a band, triggering prerecorded backing tracks as he plays. It’s a seemingly odd combination that makes total sense to their teen fan base. “There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it,” says Joseph. “People would tell me all the time, ‘You can’t be all things to everyone.’ I would say, ‘I’m not trying to be! I’m being what I want to be for myself.'”
Their current hit, the rap-rock throwback “Stressed Out,” is about the harsh end of adolescence (“Used to dream of outer space, but now they’re laughing at our face/Saying, ‘Wake up, you need to make money'”). And backstage at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the week before Christmas, Joseph is doing his best to live like a kid again, gleefully flying down the quiet halls on his brand-new hoverboard, past uniformed NBC pages and frowning security guards. “How do I go forward?” he asks. “I just push my wiener out? I guess it just reads the ween!”
As showtime approaches, Joseph begins to transform, slathering black grease paint all over his neck and arms and trading his T-shirt and jeans for a stylish long black coat and dark pants. He stands up from the couch and begins pacing back and forth. “This makeup forces me to recognize what I’m trying to say on this stage with this song,” he says. “I’m anxious to get up there and get this over with.”