twenty one pilots

my 11 year old son and my wife love this group. so i hear them a lot. sometimes from the other room i will think hey this is like a super-catchy and poppy eminem song. why didn't eminem think of that? if you watch live footage you will notice that everyone in the crowd knows every word to every song. a recipe for success. biggest thing from ohio since.........?

Drew Carey?

I still have a subscription to Alternative Press even though I haven't written for them for a couple of years now. AP has been on these guys since the beginning, unsurprisingly.

the band themselves seem like real dickheads

-started seeing this name a lot on twitter, saw that they were headlining the local arena
-looked up videos, ok so they're like two white dudes with neck tattoos who rap and do pop edm, and also kinda sing like Sting? and the Youtube comments are weirdly uniformly rapturous?
-bring out a second drumset on a platform to be held up by the audience = gross
-um yeah ok
-searched ilx this morning to see if anyone had mentioned them, nothing.
-saw this thread

they're good + they remind me of the cool 90's 'alternative' radio i used to listen to without really sounding quite like it

they won a Kerrang! award AND a Teen Choice award this year...

building...

"By November 2015, the album sold 500,000 copies worldwide.[40] The following month, it was announced the album's US sales was over 505,000 copies.[41] By January 2016, the album had sold 592,000 copies in the US.[42] Two months later, the album's US sales had risen to 753,000 copies.[43] By the end of March, the album's US sales stood at 792,000.[44] By mid-June, the album had sold 924,000 copies,[45] and over 1 million by late July.[46] The album has since been certified gold in Canada[47] and platinum in the US."

they suck but the basic materials they work with could be good.

i like this fake dresden dolls song ok:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nky4me4NP70

i think literally the only band shirts i've seen on tweens/teens in the past year have been for these guys.

yeah, huge with tween/teen crowd. makes sense. dude raps but they are xian and their raps are vaguely inspirational/anthemic/not scary + cute + pop. and "now" enough for 2016.

plus radio loves pop rap that they can play. they are on the crappy radio around here a lot.

this is the sort of band that have angles from which i could get into them, particularly the parts that are v indebted to early-'00s mall emo and/or fun. unfortunately: the rapping is terrrrrrible

but they are xian

ohhhh this all makes so much more sense now

the rapping is good enough for kids though. it's fun for kids. like eminem without being all sour and bitter and mean. kinda like sublime was good enough reggae or whatever for kids.

i like when people build something for mass appeal. it's not easy! i have no idea what their earlier stuff sounds like.

This is one super-huge rock phenomenon that, so far, I just do not get at all. Maybe I need to stop thinking of them as rock or something?

i mean i get it being good enough for the kids and that's awesome! but i'd also would rather like this music than hate it lol

the really big one "stressed out" is as dour and unmoving as a late period chili peppers song

um, not that my wife is a kid. i do like that her and cyrus dig the same group.

yeah, i think of them more as pop than rock.

artists like twenty one pilots:

http://www.mtv.com/artists/twenty-one-pilots/related-artists/?filter=similar

(most of whom i have never heard.)

this was the first song i heard by them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktBMxkLUIwY

ugh so much of this is upsetting. also can't stand "left side brain" lyrics, thanks train!!!!!!!!

xpost

wow what a spectrum

Jason Cohen1 month ago
These guys remind me of a rap version of ColdPlay! Awesome :-D

Heathens is fun enough my kids love it to death, stressed out is bad, ride is worse millennial whooooooop

they sound like something that would have been welcome on alternative radio in '98 or '99 to me

yeah theres some modern 311 vibes there for sure

I mostly remember 98-99 as a nadir for alternative radio?

exactly

oh yeah god "ride" is so fuckin hateful

this is the one that reminded me of sublime. but 311 works too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw-0pbY9JeU

ride x-post

200 million views. stressed out is almost up to 700 million views.

it's v sublime

oh but i've never heard "heathens" before. this is fine! maybe they just need to calm down and do moody shit?

sublime is a good comp. i was thinking they could have been like an early opener on family values. crazy town without the nu metal or something.

the nu-metal was just replaced with edm.

this song is still like...compellingly awful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92XVwY54h5k

Me and my 11-year-old son both like these dudes

lol i think i earnestly like "tear in my heart" now which is my own fault. catch me in this thread in september 2017 screaming "twenty one pilots are the truth"

post-crabcore

lmao i would expect nothing less xp

SERIOUS earworms that's all i know. cuz i get the pleasure of hearing them so much. their hooks in my head for days.

that resigned "yeh" after "wake up you need to make money" kinda gets me

searched ilx this morning to see if anyone had mentioned them, nothing.

You must have not been looking in the old "WORST SONGS" threads from like 2013 onwards.

We should all be glad that at least Fake Shark Real Zombie never really became a huge sensation.

feels inevitable in hindsight that a band that's the mid point of 00s mall emo and youtube eminem ukulele covers would make it this big

Turns out I accidentally saw these guys live at a festival two years ago because I confused the stage where the artist I actually wanted to be was. I don't find them awful but they make me feel old... I honestly don't understand how these guys became the 'rock' band of 2015/2016, the songs are catchy and all but is that all there is?

I actually wanted to *see

i think i have heard "Ride" 1,000 times already. didn't know rock was this big in 2016. KIIS FM plays it like every hour.

"I've been thinking too much"

this isn't rock tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sO-Y1Zbft4

they're good now

Solid mainstream band I think

relistening to trench today, even better than i remembered, probably better than i characterized it upthread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_9Kf0D5BTs

aiight maybe i've done the full heel turn, i love this song

"bandito" is so good, i nearly forgot

also i will halfheartedly defend most of blurryface at this point. i... like "ride" now?

here let me ruin vampire weekend for you *slowly turns up volume dial on twenty one pilots "ride"*

most 21 pilots superfans would tell you that blurryface is a mainstream concession and vessel is the real shit but i find vessel real juvenile still. some of the hooks are wonderful ("ode to sleep") but many of the almost-good songs are still like rube goldberg machines of bad decisions. what's worse than the rapping? nearly every time this band breaks out the ukulele

of course, trench is >>>>>>>>>>

even the uke tracks work

"shy away" is underwhelming, just feels like part of that small wave of major label pop rock bands who tried to sound like the strokes (neon trees etc.)

it's not bad but kinda forgettable and uninteresting which is the last thing this band should be. even when they've been horrible they were at least interestingly horrible making the worst musical decisions possible etc.

on the plus side: no rapping!

idk it’s a really well-written song imo. everything a hook

been stuck in my head for a week

I will rep for blurryface. Great songs, great visual aesthetic too. Saw them twice live in this time (w/ my teen kids) and the energy start to finish was impressive (band and crowd). Surging quasi pit filled most of the room. Many backflips were flipped. Show climaxes with Tyler on a 30 foot steel pillar above the crowd singing Car Radio.

i really like blurryface at this point. even lowlight “lane boy” has a sick dnb freak out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sBRnnnZyFw

really good imo

it's good until the second half where it goes into half-time and then the outro rap is dreadful

god what a weird record

like in many ways it is deeply unweird, cf. "saturday" is just a groovy song about the weekend! until it consumes itself pixel by pixel

they largely make the weirdness work for them for this time instead of making you go "that is one of the worst musical decisions i've ever heard"

"bounce man," tho... i don't hate it but they gotta lock the uke in the closet

and his rapping too, though it's not quite as bad on this one as it's been in the past

"bounce man" isn't good but it's not like bafflingly in the way say the "guns for hands" bridge is or anything

i think dude's rapping majorly improved between blurryface and trench, so for the most part i think it's rad, another tool in the unexpectedly deep toolbox this band's working with. still a few lines that make you clutch your forehead and wish you didn't know what words are

in mood/songwriting/everything else this feels like a complete photonegative of trench and i'm really about bands that make these kind of hard right turns between records

"mulberry street" -> "formidable" is the part of the album i could credibly describe as sophistipop

it's mostly just i hate the sound of his rapping, he just sounds like a less technical eminem or something and it's not pleasant

his rapping is more pleasant than his singing

https://i.ibb.co/fQn4050/21pilots.png

no security or anything - just now on Rock Werchter (Belgian festival)

the grin when he walks back to the stage at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9UOzYPu24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5i-KdUQ47o

aoty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mREOvIgImmo

this song kinda sounds like dirtbag phoenix??? (compliment????)

yeah this is good! they seem to be spreading out their influences a bit more.

CAN'T CHANGE WHAT YOU'VE DONE
START FRESH NEXT SEMESTER

it's so fucked how good this album is. cohesive despite genre-hopping on every track. a lot more fun than trench which is what ultimately puts it over for me. i don't even have to equivocate about the dude's rapping anymore. it's good!

it occurs to me that their success may have something to do with how they sort of invert the traditional xtian rock lyrical ambiguity, where it sounds like a typical pop love song but the beloved is actually Jesus. what TOP seem to do is take, you know, His perspective and use typical emo concerns as a vehicle to explore living in a fallen world … obviously that can be patronizing and problematic in its own right but the way they seem to have created a sort of fanbase qua emotional mutual aid group, and how they seem to be for their fans, rather than going for the whole fan as Stan brand builder and online troll conscript seems, idk, salubrious

maybe that’s too charitable, but in another way their mystifying rap ukulele pro tools 311 sound is another expression of non-judgmental acceptance. you feel safe with them because they’re simultaneously embarrassing and confident and seem to offer a way to not just live with your own embarrassing qualities but make something out of them. anyways I sorta can’t believe I’ve given it this much thought but I always hated stressed out and heathens and have been ignorant about both the extent of their success and how intensely uncool their sound is, as well as how sticky some of the hooks are.

new album is AWESOME. the best rock band rn

Did a listening party with my boys. They’re just about all they listen to. They’re settling into a consistent groove. I really like their sound

This is my 10 year old nephew's favorite band, new album has a rockier vibe than the old stuff, quite welcome when you have to hear it all on repeat all day.

Center Mass is my favorite atm. great last 90 seconds, even turns into a pop punk song for a moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAbv0MXFYgE

i mean this is basically a lost chris carrabba verse from 2002 or w/e

https://i.imgur.com/ByemqvQ.png

I feel like my 15 year old is going to ask me about this band any day now.

good band for a teen to be into imo

revisiting this incredible album, wow

really good

ivy what are your standouts on here? days lie dormant my current favorite i think

"city walls," "rawfear," "drumshow," "garbage," "one way," "days lie dormant," and "tally" are all stunners imo. i mean tough to single things out because i just named a majority of the songs

i love the way a lot of these songs start in one place and then explode into something else

yeah def makes the album feel more vast. rawfear is awesome.

back to 16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw-0pbY9JeU

im falling so i'm taking my time on