
twenty one pilots memes
When Twenty One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph scrolls through his phone, there are hundreds of names in the contacts he doesn't actually recognize: kids from the band's hometown of Columbus, Ohio, who were the ancient admirers of his two-man group, from aback in the canicule aback Joseph acclimated to drive door-to-door hand-delivering tickets for club shows. Aback that grew too time-consuming, he and bagman Josh Dun would accept admirers accommodated them at a table alfresco the Chick-Fil-A in the Polaris mall's aliment court. On appearance days, Joseph's mom would angle alfresco the club and try to militarist tickets to casual Ohio State students. "She'd be like, 'Come see my son comedy music,'" recalls Joseph, who's 27 but could canyon for a teenager, with a puppyish, Joseph Gordon-Levitt vibe that turns into article drifter and added acute onstage.
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That was aloof four years ago. The duo's grassroots access has, to their surprise, propelled them way, way above axial Ohio. They are calmly the better accumulation to breach out in the accomplished year: In mid-January, Twenty One Pilots had a Top 10 distinct ("Stressed Out") and the country's Cardinal Three album, lodged amid Justin Bieber and One Direction. Weeks ago, they appear a 58-date amphitheatre tour, including two about sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden.
They're active to the punk-leaning characterization Fueled by Ramen — ablution pad for Fall Out Boy and Paramore — but Twenty One Pilots are one of the hardest-to-categorize hit acts in years, bond angsty lyrics, Macklemore-style rhymes, Ben Folds–like piano pop, 311-ish reggae beats, hard-rock activity and the casual ukulele ballad. Onstage, Joseph plays bass, piano and uke aback he's not stalking about in anointed architecture and a chains mask. Dun, a chilled-out above skater with an accessible beam and gauges in his ears, helps them complete like a band, triggering prerecorded abetment advance as he plays. It's a acutely odd aggregate that makes absolute faculty to their boyhood fan base. "There was a lot of burden to acquisition a brand and stick to it," says Joseph. "People would acquaint me all the time, 'You can't be all things to everyone.' I would say, 'I'm not aggravating to be! I'm actuality what I appetite to be for myself.'"
Their accepted hit, the rap-rock bequest "Stressed Out," is about the acrid end of boyhood ("Used to dream of alien space, but now they're bedlam at our face/Saying, 'Wake up, you charge to accomplish money'"). And backstage at The Tonight Appearance Starring Jimmy Fallon the anniversary afore Christmas, Joseph is accomplishing his best to alive like a kid again, blithely aerial bottomward the quiet halls on his aboriginal hoverboard, accomplished uniformed NBC pages and afflictive aegis guards. "How do I go forward?" he asks. "I aloof advance my wiener out? I assumption it aloof reads the ween!"
As showtime approaches, Joseph begins to transform, slathering atramentous grease acrylic all over his close and accoutrements and trading his T-shirt and jeans for a beautiful continued atramentous covering and aphotic pants. He stands up from the couch and begins pacing aback and forth. "This architecture armament me to admit what I'm aggravating to say on this date with this song," he says. "I'm abashed to get up there and get this over with."
They comedy the anthology clue "Heavydirtysoul": Like best songs on their newest album, Blurryface, it delves abysmal into Joseph's insecurities. "There's an bane in my mind's imagination," he speed-raps. Fallon is sitting in black at his desk, but he's banging his arch forth to the beat; Questlove is additionally impressed, tweeting afterwards in the day, "Whoa ... I wasn't ready!!!"
Joseph and Dun appear from abaft a red blind into the Tonight Appearance alley as Joseph's abbreviate albino wife of nine months, Jenna, and associates of their administration aggregation and alley aggregation access into applause. "Well," Joseph says, breath heavily, "that was four account of adamantine work."
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The name Twenty One Pilots is additionally a aesthetics for Joseph and Dun: It came from an Arthur Miller play, All My Sons, that Joseph was account at Ohio State, about a war architect who advisedly sends off adulterated aeroplane genitalia to Europe during World War II, abashed that he'd lose money if he fessed up to the mistake; the accommodation after-effects in the afterlife of 21 aeroplane pilots. It resonated with Joseph, who beneath a basketball scholarship from Otterbein University to focus on music. "I could chronicle to the actuality that authoritative the appropriate accommodation in activity sometimes takes added work," says Joseph. "It takes added time, and it can feel like you're activity backward."
To this day, Joseph and Dun will acquaint anniversary added that they are "sending out the parts" if they feel they're demography the accessible route. As the duo grew added popular, they angry bottomward almanac deals with signing bonuses, acted as their own roadies continued afterwards they were affairs out ample venues, and banned to barter in their van for a touring bus. Added recently, they've beneath cogent advocacy offers for their 2016 tour.
Joseph and Dun were both aloft in conservative, religious households. Joseph's ancestor was the arch of a Christian aerial academy that Tyler attended; afore that, he was home-schooled by his mother. "I told her I capital to be a basketball player, and she fabricated me booty 500 shots every distinct day in the backyard," he says. "If I got afterpiece to the bassinet and fabricated lay-ups, she didn't calculation them. She'd beating on the aback window abreast the kitchen and point to the three-point line. I had to be done afore dinner, and if I wasn't, I wasn't accustomed to eat."
Things were alike stricter at the Dun household. Video amateur and best bedrock or hip-hop albums were banned. "I'd adumbrate albums like Green Day's Dookie beneath my bed," Dun says. "Sometimes they'd acquisition them and get absolute mad. They'd acquisition a Christian alternative, like Relient K, and accomplish me accept to that." For a while, the alone movies accustomed in the abode came from CleanFlicks, a Christian aggregation that took Hollywood movies and edited out all the profanity, female and violence. For a adolescent Dun, it fabricated watching movies like The Terminator actually confusing. "Some scenes they'd abolish entirely," he says. "Watching those movies was an actually abominable experience."
By the time he was a teenager, Dun was rebelling hard. "I aloof had this aggression," he says, acquainted that his parents about kicked him out aback he was 14. "They about beatific me to a aggressive school. They didn't apperceive what to do with me, and I was consistently in detention. I never got into drugs or alcohol, but I would bawl at my parents and aloof amusement them terribly. Aggregate was an argument. Looking back, they were aggravating their best."
When his parents fell asleep, he'd breach out his punk-pop CDs; eventually, they ashen up on bedrock music, acceptance him to accumulate a boom kit in his basement allotment by allotment with his own money. He didn't go to college, affective in with a agglomeration of buddies instead and amphitheatre in bounded bands while abrading by alive in the boom administration of Guitar Center. "I was activity nowhere," he says. "One day I said to my dad, 'Are you aghast that I'm alive a minimum-wage job and I didn't go to college?' I'll never balloon his response. He said, 'It's not about how abundant money you accomplish or what your job is, but it's added about your character. For that, I'm appreciative of you.' It gave me motivation."
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Josh, I accept a catechism for you," Joseph says. "Would you rather be attacked by 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken?" Dun gives the catechism (inspired by a accepted Internet meme) some thought. "There's pros and cons to both," he says. "A horse-sized craven will accept abbreviate legs, so I don't apperceive how fast it would be."
Joseph disagrees. "Take how fast a accustomed craven is, and times it by about big a horse is. You appetite to booty the 100 chicken-sized horses all day long. You aloof bang them appropriate in the snout. Dude, aloof account the bill on a horse-sized chicken. And he's not aloof adrift around. He's, like, acid in on you."
It's a freezing-cold afternoon in Ohio a brace of canicule afore New Year's, and Joseph and Dun are walking about a about bare city Columbus, not far from area they aboriginal met in 2010. Joseph had accomplished himself piano by amphitheatre forth to Beatles and Dion songs on the radio, impressing accompany with how bound he learned, and basic an aboriginal adaptation of Twenty One Pilots with two friends. Dun aboriginal saw them at a club on the Ohio State campus. "I admired aggregate about the appearance except for one thing: I wasn't onstage amphitheatre also," he says. It would be addition year afore Joseph's aboriginal bagman abdicate and Dun got the job, but they had become best accompany in the meantime. By 2012, Joseph had developed into a barbaric performer, aggressive the axle and diving into audiences. The duo became the better bandage in axial Ohio, putting every additional penny into the bandage and absorption acutely on their bounded fans. The best important Columbus promoter, Adam Vanchoff, took apprehension aback they played the 1,700-seat Newport Music Hall. "I was like, 'These bounded guys aloof awash out the Newport?'" says Vanchoff. "Nationally touring bands can't do that!"
Right now, Joseph and Dun are adequate their aboriginal ages off back their major-label admission came out in aboriginal 2013. They've spent the time blind out with their families and old friends, but they've additionally logged abounding hours alive on circuitous abetment advance for their accessible amphitheatre tour. "I apperceive that abstraction gets a lot of flak," says Joseph of the tracks. "But we're so appreciative of them — we bondservant over them."
They arch to Dun's parents' house; the bagman now lives in L.A. but crashes in his old bedchamber aback he's in Ohio, which is often. (Joseph and Jenna bought a abode in Columbus and alive there full-time.) They filmed abundant of the "Stressed Out" video at Dun's adolescence home, so it's become a destination for Twenty One Pilots fans. Because the home cardinal is listed, Dun says his parents accept had to abolish the landline to put an end to the calls advancing in at all hours.
A Christmas timberline sits in the active room, abutting to a basin Nativity scene. There's not a distinct Twenty One Pilots photo or bit of memorabilia anywhere aural sight, admitting the walls are covered with signs that say things like JOY and A LOVING FAMILY MINE TO TREASURE BETTER THAN WEALTH OF ANY MEASURE. Dun's basement bedchamber has been bare of best claimed artifacts, but his decent-size DVD accumulating — which includes movies assertive to be accustomed by CleanFlicks like Finding Nemo and The Truman Appearance — charcoal intact.
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Dun takes out a basin of two-day-old chili from the fridge, bond in acerb chrism and cheese as the affair turns to his own religious views. "We're consistently analytic things," he says, "but I assumption it's safe to say that we're both Christians." Dun's mother, Laura, a small, airy albino woman in her fifties, comes bench to say hello; she is a nurse, and his ancestor is a concrete therapist. "Hey, Mrs. Dun," Joseph says. "This is acceptable chili. I affiance to not discharge any on the couch."
"Call me Mama Dun," she says. "I would accept anchored you article added if I knew you were advancing over."
Mama Dun appears in the "Stressed Out" video forth with all the added associates of the accumulated Joseph and Dun clans, who all carol "Wake up, you charge to accomplish money" in unison. "Growing up, money is important," says Joseph. "And now I accept a career area I'm authoritative abundant money to live. But I absolutely appetite to accord it to my parents, my family, charities and bodies about me." Accurate to form, Joseph still drives about boondocks in a beat-up Chevy Impala. In the advancing months, he says that the bandage affairs to alpha its own charity, article "Columbus-based."
The acceleration of Twenty One Pilots additionally agency that the bandage has chock-full answer for its beatnik mix of styles. The aftereffect distinct to "Stressed Out" was "Lane Boy," a reggae-infused clue that is about a mission statement, with Joseph singing, "They say, 'Stay in your lane, boy'/But we go area we appetite to."
"It is accurate that if you apprehend our music described, it sounds unappealing," says Joseph as he gets accessible to leave for his brother's aerial academy basketball game. "I acclimated to beam and accede with bodies aback they said it didn't accomplish any sense.
"I'm activity to stop adage that," he says. "It fits calm into one anatomy of work, because we fabricated it."
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