They play the album track “Heavydirtysoul”: Like most songs on their newest album, Blurryface, it delves deep into Joseph’s insecurities. “I’m anxious to get up there and get this over with.” “This makeup forces me to recognize what I’m trying to say on this stage with this song,” he says. He stands up from the couch and begins pacing back and forth.
“I just push my wiener out? I guess it just reads the ween!”Īs 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. 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. 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'”). “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.'” “There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it,” says Joseph. It’s a seemingly odd combination that makes total sense to their teen fan base.
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. Onstage, Joseph plays bass, piano and uke when he’s not stalking around in smeared makeup and a bondage mask. 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.