It’s precisely the specificity of the musical world he creates that gives his songs such deep-rooted resonance.įor the 24 percent of America that identifies as evangelical, “religious” music isn’t just popular, but a cultural mandate. Breaking down the walls of the insular “evangelical” world he comes from, Joseph has always told a story that’s unequivocally his. Twenty One Pilots have utilized that creative control to break one of the biggest boundaries in modern American music: the boundary between the spiritual and the secular. In a cultural atmosphere where it takes an average of 4.53 authors to make a hit song, frontman Tyler Joseph remains one of a rare few artists to write all of his own music, and is responsible for half of 2016’s hot 100 hits written by a single author. That’s the surface-level Twenty One Pilots - but their bland-pop image doesn’t tell the full story. Styled as indecisive harbingers of an innocuous millennialism, there’s supposedly no genre they won’t fold into their made-for-Spotify brand of “schizoid pop.” Culturally, they’re set up as successors to fellow middle-America sweethearts like Taylor Swift, their honeymoon period inevitably destined for inoffensive mediocrity. At the peak of their fame, after a goofy-grinned Grammys acceptance speech about their “Moms” and “following your dreams,” they seemed to have earned their place in culture as the ultimate crowd pleasers. They weave in and out of alternative rap and Americana ukulele with risk-averse charm, flashing their small town smiles on queue for songs about student loans and treehouse homes. In the mainstream music world, Twenty One Pilots are famous for being chameleons. By Courtesy of Brad Heaton / Twenty One Pilots

21 pilots ride lyrcs