Twenty One Pilots

[WIP]

About

Twenty One Pilots, sometimes stylized in all lowercase as twenty one pilots or twenty øne piløts, is an American indie pop duo from Columbus, Ohio. Comprised of members Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, and originally a band with Nick Thomas and Chris Salih, the group garnered notoriety after several independent releases from 2009 to 2012, before signing onto a major record label in 2013 and garnering further mainstream attention in 2015.

History

Twenty One Pilots initially consisted of Tyler Joseph, Nicholas "Nick" Thomas, and Christopher "Chris" Salih.^[1] Tyler and Nick had been familiar with each other through high school, whereas Tyler would meet Chris at a party while attending Ohio State University. Chris initially brought up the idea of forming a band after seeing Tyler's talent and artistry, as he had recorded a solo album, No Phun Intended, in his parents' basement. Taking their name from the play All My Sons where the main character's choices ends with the deaths of 21 pilots, the trio put out their debut self-titled album on December 29th, 2009, recorded entirely in their house's basement. The band would subsequently do an Ohio-wide tour.

In 2011, Salih would leave the band to focus on work on May 8th, followed by Thomas on June 3rd to focus on schooling. In Salih's place would be friend and co-worker Josh Dun, though Salih and Thomas would still be involved in the band in some form. Under this new lineup, the duo would release their follow-up album Regional at Best on July 8th. In November 2011, the duo played a sold out concert at Newport Music Hall in Columbus, catching the eye of several record labels wishing to sign them. In 2012, the two officially signed to record label Fueled by Ramen, a subsidiary of major record label Atlantic Records, releasing their first EP under the label, Three Songs, on July 17th, followed by their major label debut album Vessel on January 8th, 2013.

In 2015, they released their fourth studio album Blurryface. With this album, the duo saw immense commercial success with hit singles such as "Stressed Out" and "Ride". The two would also release a song as part of the soundtrack for the movie Suicide Squad titled "Heathens" as well as a cover of the song "Cancer" by My Chemical Romance.

In 2018, the duo released their fifth studio album Trench. The album was preceded by the release of the singles "Jumpsuit" and "Nico and the Niners".

Reputation

Both Blurryface and Trench received positive reviews from critics, receiving scores of 80 and 81 on Metacritic,^[2] respectively. Critics praised the depth of the band especially against the context of most radio pop music. Music critic Anthony Fantano, while not impressed with their album Blurryface, giving it a "light-to-decent 4", later gave Trench a "decent-to-strong 8" in his YouTube reviews for the two albums (shown below).

Online Relevance

Twenty One Pilots has a strong online presence, with over 3.5 million Facebook likes,^[3] 3.71 million Twitter followers,^[4] and a subreddit^[5] with over 50,000 followers. An additional subreddit for the band pertaining to theories about it, /r/theoryonepilots,^[6] has over 760 followers. Fans of the group call themselves the "Skeleton Clique."^[8]

Dads Dancing to "My Blood"

On October 15th, 2018, Twitter user @happyseascn posted a video of her dad dancing to the Twenty One Pilots song "My Blood," gaining over 1,200 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below).

The video led to Tyler Joseph asking his followers for more videos of dads dancing to the song. This led to a flood of such videos being posted online, which Joseph shared, including a post by @alyssa_searcy (shown below, top) and a post by @lexydray (shown below, bottom). The meme was covered by The Daily Dot.^[7]

Search Interest

External References