By Solomon Taylor
Twenty One Pilots is a unique phenomenon in the music industry. Composed of a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist frontman, they are known for their cryptic yet personal lyrics and their dedicated fanbase. While the majority of the academic world glances past them as just another band catering to teenagers, the depth of their lyrics merits much closer study than your average Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift song. Over the course of five studio albums to date, Twenty One Pilots has constructed a rich world of metaphoric language and symbolism that reflects their Christian roots and gives a voice to the emotions felt by millions of their fans around the world.
Despite their popularity in the music world, there are only about five academic pieces written on their music, all of which are from undergraduate studies. The two that were most similar to my own thesis discussed the way certain lyrics revealed the band’s background (Larasatika, 2017) and presented an analysis of the figurative language in their Vessel album (Syuhudi, 2016). This minimal coverage is a far cry from the kind of value that music has been given for the vast majority of human history. Music has always been a way for cultures to pass on their stories, values, and histories, from the emblematic stories of the Native American tribes to the epics of Odysseus and Beowulf to the religious texts of the ancient Israelites. Given that the rhymes and rhythms of music are what make it so easy to remember, the meaning they convey has always been essential. Those who created music would do so because they wanted their audience to remember their message with a greater degree of accuracy compared to what a conversation or a written message would elicit.
Given the prevalence and accessibility of music today, it would be expected that the message would be considered more important than ever. However, the emphasis on the content of music has largely been set aside in favor of aesthetic qualities like the singer’s range and the chords they put together. While the aesthetic is a critical part of music as well, that role is secondary to the meaning. It is designed as a tool to better convey the artist’s message, making a love song lighthearted or bringing a weightiness to a deep thought. When the artist instead prioritizes the sound of the song over its message, its impact becomes unpredictable. Listeners still have the potential to remember the content just as well, filling their heads with mindless fluff. Alternatively, they can feel justified in tuning out the content for the sake of its musicality. Both approaches lead to a kind of apathy toward music, allowing it to stagnate until the industry eventually devolves into nothing more than an aesthetically pleasing bubble, devoid of any real substance.
To address this increasingly pervasive problem, it is the duty of the academic field to publish critical analyses about today’s music. The music industry requires feedback in order to grow. This criticism should be based on two standards that have been used across countless mediums. First, the music should be technically well-crafted and aesthetically pleasing. Even more importantly, the music must convey a message that deserves repeating. Given its prevalence and broad appeal, music plays an instrumental role in shaping the culture. Duty requires that it be held to a particular standard. If music is able to meet both of these goals, it should be celebrated as an example for other artists to emulate. Twenty One Pilots has a unique ability to convey deeply philosophical ideas in unusual and genre-stretching ways. The bulk of my thesis will explain in depth why this ability makes them a prime candidate to introduce this kind of analysis.
Twenty One Pilots enters the scene surrounded by aesthetic music. Instead of jumping on the pop music bandwagon, however, they set themselves apart with a carefully chosen band name. It comes from the twenty-one pilots in Arthur Miller’s play “All My Sons,” all of whom are killed because their manufacturer chose to sell faulty airplane parts in an effort to keep his business running (Miller, p. 106). As Tyler Joseph put it in an interview, the band name is “a constant reminder that you have to make the right decision, even though it may be the hard decision” (Ztvlowdown, 0:55). The consequences are always there in front of them. They have a very unique, genre-bending sound as a band, but the music itself is secondary to and supportive of the lyrics. They are one of the few mainstream artists who take this approach today, providing an excellent example for analysis.
To demonstrate their emphasis on the lyrical, I will be analyzing select songs that highlight their usage of orientational metaphors, drawing inspiration from Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By and combining it with my own observations and research. In order to do so in a way that makes sense, I will first summarize the main points of the narrative so far and introduce its characters. The primary characters are the band members, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun. Tyler Joseph was one of the band’s founding members and is the creative force behind it. He writes their songs and plays every instrument besides the drums, which are Josh Dun’s specialty. While Josh was not a part of the first album, he joined when the other members broke off (Joy, “Full-Court Press,” para. 11). Both Tyler and Josh grew up as Christians, so their music regularly contains religious underpinnings that can be fleshed out upon closer examination.
Within the world of their music, the two play slightly different roles. As the songs are primarily about Tyler’s life and struggles, he represents the protagonist in their videos, while Josh acts almost as a guide toward the life Tyler is seeking. The symbolic world itself is known as Trench, which is also the name of their newest album. This world was described in a hidden website that documented a series of letters written by a character named Clancy (Clancy’s Letters, 2018). Trench is home to a city called Dema, which translates from Iranian to “the Tower of Silence.” This is where Tyler, Clancy, and many others live. It is a heavily structured society ruled by nine bishops who teach the inhabitants in the ways of a mysterious religion called Vialism, which centers around fluorescent lights. There are inhabitants who reside outside of Dema, though, Josh among them, who are known as banditos. Tyler has escaped Dema on numerous occasions over the years with their aid, but he is always recaptured and brought back eventually.
There are three primary songs from Twenty One Pilots that I will be analyzing in this thesis due to the metaphors they utilize. For the sake of clarity, I will be emphasizing Lakoff and Johnson’s terms “Target” and “Source” by way of capitalization. The first song is “A Car, A Torch, A Death” from their debut album Twenty One Pilots. In line 5, Tyler sings “I begin to envy the headlights driving south.” This is the first song in which Tyler begins to fill the cardinal directions with meaning. In the biblical narrative, the South is where Egypt was (Rodríguez, para. 8). It is the place where the Israelites were enslaved for generations before God rescued them and led them to the Promised Land. However, for much of that journey, the Israelites complain about the journey and wish they could go back to Egypt instead (Exodus 14:12). Instead of recognizing the ways in which God was providing for them, they retained a sort of Stockholm Syndrome toward their former captors, ready to turn back at the first sign of trouble. Having grown up as a Christian, Tyler is quite familiar with this story. He sings about how the people heading toward the South seem appealing to him, admitting that a part of him agrees with the Israelites’ mentality. In the next line, however, he says that “I want to crack the door so I can just fall out” (line 6), implying another part of him knows that trying to go that way will lead to pain and death in the end. Although Egypt might seem appealing in the moment, the journey away from the South is better in the long run.
Vessel’s “The Judge” is the second song to hold a directional reference. In this one, Tyler says that “I head out, down a route I think is heading south” (line 23). Again, we find his default choice of direction at this point to be toward the South. He still hears the call toward Egypt, toward familiarity, and it draws him back. At the end of the verse, though, finding doubt and confusion on that path, he decides that “I probably shoulda stayed inside my house” (line 27). Drawing from the lyrics of both songs, South seems to represent Human Nature. There is always a piece of him that wants to engage in self-destructive behavior, and it is a struggle he does not always win.
In the chorus, we find Tyler pleading with “the judge” to set him free (line 13), but we are never directly told what he is being held captive for. However, given the interpretation of South as Human Nature, I would propose that he is a captive to his own mind, engaging in behaviors he does not necessarily want to engage in. This causes him to return to the doubt and confusion he found when he took the path to the South. His mind seems to be both the instigator and the victim of the crime. While he did make the decision to go down that path, he also had to deal with the resulting chaos. This theory is further reinforced by the bridge of the song, which emphasizes Tyler’s own confusion about whether the song is “about me or the devil” (line 36). As Paul states in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (NIV). Paul aptly describes the battle raging in Tyler’s mind. He has conflicting goals and desires for his life, none of them able to lay full claim to his loyalty. His mind is the stage of a spiritual war between God and the devil, and his Human Nature is the war’s physical manifestation. Tyler’s actions scare him because they seem to be controlled by the devil instead of by his own will, so he calls out to the judge to free him from that mental combat.
The third song of note is “Nico and the Niners” from Trench. There is a consistent refrain throughout the song that “East is up” (first in line 1), which holds several connotations when compared to the other songs. In the ancient biblical world, the compass was oriented differently in comparison to our modern one. While the four cardinal directions remained the same, due to the prominence of the sun, the primary direction was East instead of North (Rodríguez, para. 1). As a result, this particular metaphor has historical and religious roots. There are three primary ways to interpret the line, each one furthering the depth of this metaphor by considering the various meanings of the word Up.
The first interpretation of this line considers the word Up (the target) to mean Good (the source). In this sense, the line seems to imply that East is the best direction to go. This carries on from the songs addressed earlier, which depicted the South as a tempting but fatal option similar to Egypt itself. It also lines up with biblical symbolism. The path from Egypt to the Promised Land travelled up from the South and into the East, where the Israelites would find a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 33:3, NIV). The compass directions also had symbolic meanings in their own right. Consider North, South, West, and East as up, down, left, and right respectively. The right, and subsequently the East, is a common symbol of life (Kosloski, para. 5). The sun rises in the East as a harbinger of light and warmth. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father (Hebrews 1:3), and those who are granted eternal life are put on God’s right side as well (Matthew 25:34). Tyler therefore imbues the word East with the concept of Life.
Conversely, the left, and subsequently the West, is a symbol of death (Kosloski, para. 6). The same story that brings the people on God’s right into Heaven also condemns those on His left to eternal fire (Matthew 25:41). While the East heralds the arrival of day, the West welcomes the darkness of night. Twenty One Pilots’ song “March To The Sea” elaborates on this as well. Once again returning to biblical imagery, the nation of Israel rests on the lethal eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea (Jethani, p. 136). As a result, the sea is often used as a symbol of chaos and death throughout the Old and New Testament in passages like Isaiah 57:20 and Revelation 13:1. In this song, Tyler bemoans how the path he is traveling will “walk right off into the sea, and then we fall asleep” (lines 15-16). In this sense, sleep is used as an allegory for death, as is made clear in other verses. As a result, the West becomes a symbol of Death.
A second, more literal interpretation of “East is up” is made possible by simply rotating the entire map so that East points to the top. In this context, Up simply means Above. From this perspective, in a dramatic shift from the way the rest of the modern world looks at it, East now indicates which direction is up instead of North. As a result, it may be useful to label the North as a symbol of Misdirection. While the majority of the world orients themselves around it, it is actually the East which deserves that orientation. It is worth noting that Jesus Himself came from the East. Given that His purpose was to bring salvation and to provide a way for humanity to connect back to God, East is both literally indicative of which direction is up and symbolically indicative of the way into Heaven. As Jesus declares in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (NIV). “East is up” is therefore a declaration of a higher, better way, allowing the metaphor to be defined by the concept of Salvation as well.
Finally, the previous interpretation can be altered so that only the compass rose rotates. By doing so, the names of the cardinal directions are changed without changing the orientation of the map itself. Following this line of thinking, if the label of “East” is shifted so that it is pointing up, then the label of “South” now points in the direction formerly known as “East.” In other words, the South moves to the East. Doing so gives the East its third name—South. This movement mirrors the Israelite exodus from Egypt that was briefly mentioned in the beginning, as they themselves travelled northeast into what would later become the nation of Israel. Under this interpretation, it is now the South that points to Israel. In the process, the West, the symbol of Death, moves to represent Egypt, providing another reminder that going back is a fatal mistake.
Additionally, if we consider that the other interpretations are equally true, (thereby granting the East its names of Life, Salvation, and South), then Jesus, the source of salvation, can be said to come out of both the South and the East. If the South represents Human Nature—as established by the songs discussed earlier—and if the East represents the Salvation that God enacted through both the Exodus and Jesus, then the claim that Jesus comes out of both the East and the South symbolically demonstrates the theological claim that Jesus is both fully God and fully Man. This is an essential doctrine in the Christian faith, and its appearance within the banditos’ dialogue begins to draw some strong parallels between the group and Christianity itself.
To further expand on this claim, we must analyze the metaphoric usage of movement and stillness in their music. Movement is a physical depiction of change and growth that cannot happen without action. It appears to be an essential characteristic of the banditos. The character Tyler plays in their music videos seems to develop this characteristic the more he tries to escape from Dema. This process begins in “Heavydirtysoul,” where we see him being driven past the same spot repeatedly throughout the video by one of the bishops. This is likely a recurring event. The car is gradually destroyed over the course of the video with each successive escape attempt, finally breaking down on the third pass due to Josh’s drumming (3:07). The music video for “Jumpsuit” continues this story. This escape attempt shows Tyler walking upstream through a valley. Knowing that the sea is to the West, he is presumably heading East by following the stream uphill. The bishop, his car destroyed, is now pursuing Tyler on a horse. Notably, despite the bishop’s advantage in mobility, he only catches up to him when Tyler stops moving (2:15). In the video for “Nico and the Niners,” the bishops are forced to walk (3:54). This is most likely due to the “complete diversion” Tyler sings about in the bridge of the song (line 33) that required a racehorse. The bishops leave to bring him back, but they don’t actually recapture him until the end of the “Levitate” music video (1:52). Over the course of this four-part narrative, Tyler is able to escape for longer and longer periods of time while forcing the bishops to do more and more movement themselves. There are two points worth noting in this narrative.
The first detail focuses on when Tyler gets captured. In “Jumpsuit” and “Levitate,” the two videos where you actually see his capture, it happens in very particular circumstances. In “Jumpsuit,” the bishop puts Tyler into a state resembling sleep before beginning to lead him back (1:58). When the banditos shake him out of it, Tyler begins to run away again. Interestingly enough, despite the bishop’s mounted nature, Tyler manages to stay well ahead of him until he trips and knocks himself out, at which point the bishop takes him back with ease (4:02). This seems to suggest two metaphoric links, first between Movement and Safety and inversely between Stillness and Capture.
We see the same pattern occur in “Levitate.” The entirety of the video shows the banditos in motion. They are walking, dancing, and singing in all but one crucial scene. At the very end of the video, Tyler is sitting with a few other banditos. It is at that single point of stillness that the bishop grabs him and drags him away again (1:52). The bishops seem to have trouble approaching anyone who is actively moving, finding it necessary to either induce stillness, as in “Jumpsuit,” or to wait for the person to stop moving on their own, as in “Levitate.”
Second, it is interesting that the bishops, while desiring captivity, fear, stillness, and sleep for those in their grasp (Clancy’s Letters, 2018), are forced to engage in movement to fulfill their plans. In “Nico and the Niners,” Tyler notes that “When bishops come together they will know that Dema don’t control us” (lines 6-7). The very act of coming together forces them to move. To combat this, the bishops minimize their movement as much as possible. We see this in each of the videos described. While the “Heavydirtysoul” video shows Tyler’s frenetic movement in the backseat, the bishop driving him might as well be a statue (1:36). Even when the car falls apart, the bishop simply disappears instead of physically getting out. In addition, remember that the bishop in the “Jumpsuit” music video is on horseback. Once again, it minimizes the bishop’s reliance on his own movement and gives him a greater sense of independence from it, albeit less so than his car would have. When the horse is lost to the “complete diversion” in “Nico and the Niners,” the bishops walk in unison, strictly controlling their own movements in a sort of final defiance (3:58). One of them may very well have used the words of The Screwtape Letters at some point, noting to his compatriots that “we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground” (Lewis, p. 44). Despite their desire to prevent or at least control the movement of those in their domain, they are incapable of functioning without it.
There is a very strong biblical theme to be found here. To use C. S. Lewis’s words from Mere Christianity, “evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness” (p. 45). In other words, evil is a kind of nothingness. It can only exist by acting upon something exterior to itself, which itself recognizes the superiority of that external object’s Creator. Twenty One Pilots makes this concept literal by characterizing movement itself as the object the bishops fight against. The best the bishops can do is to corrupt movement, either by suppressing it or controlling it in themselves and others. Vialism, the religion of the bishops, is a prominent example. While the banditos are sitting around campfires and carrying flickering torches, the bishops are constructing fluorescent tubes of light (1:20). The banditos embrace the raw, flickering light of the fire, while the bishops control and still it into tubes. They set up their altered lights as the ultimate good, making them into objects of worship in their services in an attempt to devalue the open flame. However, their cause is ultimately futile. If Movement represents Safety from the bishops, then their purpose is ultimately self-destructive because their actions only weaken themselves. This is another core aspect of Christianity, as it emphasizes that evil will not have the final word and God’s people will ultimately triumph over it. The progression of the four videos shows Tyler develop from moving in the backseat of a car to walking and running on his own until he’s eventually performing a concert and being welcomed as a bandito. The bishops follow the same progression, from driving motionless in a car to riding on horseback to walking through overgrown terrain. Tyler’s journey is a celebration, and the bishops begin to lose much of their control over him as he continues on.
The bishops’ hatred of movement is reiterated again in verse two of “Nico and the Niners.” Tyler plans an escape strategy with his listeners, aiming to “start a concert, a complete diversion” (line 33) in order to slip out during the ensuing chaos. Since concerts are full of movement and dancing on a large scale, the bishops would be forced to take extensive action to suppress it all and would provide the banditos with an excellent escape route. The band even conducted their one-off “A Complete Diversion” tour in London, one of the most prominent northern cities in the world, in preparation for Trench’s release (Heaton, 2018). As noted earlier, the North has been imbued with the concept of Misdirection. It represents the well-trodden path that most people attempt to use for escape. By setting up a diversion there and drawing the bishops off, the way is opened up for the banditos to move toward the Salvation found in the East.
Using Lakoff and Johnson’s method of describing the metaphors and providing detailed evidence to support the ways in which “each metaphorical concept might have arisen from our physical and cultural experience” (p. 14), I have demonstrated a number of Christian underpinnings in Twenty One Pilots’ music. They subtly discuss the nature of Jesus, the internal battle against our corrupted human nature, the true path to salvation found in Jesus, and the ultimate triumph of God’s people over evil and death. As this thesis has demonstrated, the world of music has immense potential for high-level study and analysis. While artists like Twenty One Pilots rarely receive the kind of fame they have, the usage of academic criticism is able to highlight their work in a format that lasts far beyond the radio charts. This kind of analysis has the potential to legitimize music, and by extension other forms of creative expression, as a medium worth pondering in the same way that literature and paintings are revered today.
When dealing with much of the modern music industry, the general focus remains almost exclusively on the aesthetic to the detriment of the lyrical. One has only to browse the lyrics of the current top songs (Drake’s “Toosie Slide” at the time of this writing) to recognize their impact. Music influences the culture, which in turn shapes a new generation of music. When meaningful content becomes optional, the content that remains becomes shallow and secondary. As a result, it raises up a generation of people who are ill-prepared to form lasting relationships or find meaning in their lives (Timmerman et. al, 2008).
Twenty One Pilots comes as a breath of fresh air into the world of Top 40s radio. Their music is intensely personal and broadly relatable to the people that pop music has left behind. They sing about their fears, doubts, and failures while maintaining a genuine sense of hope. They use metaphors to convey emotions and mindsets that are hard to express while simultaneously expressing their faith to people who would never step foot in a church. The world of Trench itself is a visualization of Tyler’s mind, one that he openly admits to creating in “Bandito” (lines 36-37). It is simply a tool that he uses to process his thoughts. By creating their music with that goal in mind, Twenty One Pilots ensures that their lyrics remain the focal point. As a result, an audience craving substantive modern music can find something with depth and texture in the songs of Twenty One Pilots.
When the academic world chooses to recognize that kind of lyrical richness in the music industry, it begins the process of redefining what kind of music deserves recognition. Timothy Warner provides a list of pop music characteristics in his book Pop Music: Technology and Creativity, noting its fondness of singles, its artificiality and triviality, and its emphasis on recording as compared to live performances (p. 4). When combined with Timmerman’s findings suggesting a strong correlation between music and future action (2008), the eventual outcome of the current music industry is something we must take immediate steps to counteract.
Music will continue to have an effect on us for the rest of our lives. Its intentionally memorable format makes it arguably the most impactful artistic expression we have. Literature, while profoundly impactful, is not written for memorization. A painting will always be missing details in our heads. Despite this, the academic world has found tremendous value in both mediums through its analyses, and both continue to flourish today. In comparison, music is a multi-sensual experience that naturally lets you know when a piece is missing from its structure. It was designed so that narratives, histories, and cultures could be passed on for generations without losing information in the transition. Regardless of their modern content, songs have a tendency to stick in our minds until another song comes along to replace them. The sheer prevalence of music in today’s culture ensures that most people will encounter it on a regular basis, its accessibility reaching far beyond that of the most famous bestsellers and the most renowned art galleries.
Despite its reach—and perhaps in part because of it—the academic world has largely ignored the music industry. Without the kind of objective standards academic criticism provides, music is left without any icons to aspire to. Criticism provides the necessary feedback and structure required for the industry’s growth. Without it, especially in the age of Soundcloud and Spotify, the most popular artists are the ones who can put out the most aesthetically pleasing music in the shortest amount of time. Singers who want to make a living are often forced to buy into a system where other people write their songs, run their shows, and sell their merchandise in order to keep up with that kind of pace. The result is often a mindlessly catchy tune with lyrics centered around topics that almost anyone can relate to—usually love, influence, wealth, and occasionally friends. When those kinds of songs top the charts, more artists emulate them, and the cycle continues.
Twenty One Pilots’ unique genre of “schizoid pop” remains an outlier in the modern music industry, standing as an example of what music could be. By recognizing Twenty One Pilots and other artists like them, the academic world has the power to start shaping the direction of future artists in a more balanced way. Instead of emphasizing a catchy tune above all else, scholarship serves as a reminder that music is about conveying a message. When the music is about sex, money, and power, that generation will be much more likely to function within the walls of sex, money, and power. Its lack of deeper meaning will teach them not to look for depth in anything else. As Twenty One Pilots puts it in “March To The Sea,” “the emotionless marchers will chant the phrase: ‘This line’s the only way’” (lines 29-30). In order to return music to its original purpose, it is our job as academics to highlight and emphasize music which brings about aesthetic value in service of a message that is worth remembering. With their profoundly metaphorical depictions of the mind, God, and the human condition, Twenty One Pilots is an excellent place to start.
Appendix A:
“A Car, A Torch, A Death”
The air begins to feel a little thin
As I start the car and then I begin
To add the miles piled up behind me
I barely feel a smile deep inside me
And I begin to envy the headlights driving south
I want to crack the door so I can just fall out
But then I remember when you packed my car
You reached in the back and buckled up your heart
For me to drive away with
I began to understand
Why God died
The demon sat there waiting on her porch
It was a little dark so he held a makeshift torch
And when my car was far out of sight
He crept in her room and stayed there for the night
And then I felt chills in my bones
The breath I saw was not my own
I knew my skin that wrapped my frame
Wasn't made to play this game
And then I saw Him, torch in hand
He laid it out, what he had planned
And then I said, I'll take the grave
Please, just send them all my way
And then I felt chills in my bones
The breath I saw was not my own
I knew my skin that wrapped my frame
Wasn't made to play this game
And then I saw Him, torch in hand
He laid it out, what he had planned
And then I said, I'll take the grave
Please, just send them all my way
I began to understand
Why God died
The air begins to feel a little thin
As we're waiting for the morning to begin
But for now you told me to hold this jar
And when I looked inside, I saw
It held your heart
For me to walk away with
I began to understand
Why God died
“The Judge”
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
When the leader of the bad guys sang
Something soft and soaked in pain
I heard the echo from his secret hideaway
He must've forgot to close his door
As he cranked out those dismal chords
And his four walls declared him insane.
I found my way
Right time, wrong place
As I pled my case.
You're the judge, oh no, set me free
You're the judge, oh no, set me free
I know my soul's freezing
Hell's hot for good reason, so please, take me.
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
Three lights are lit but the fourth one's out
I can tell 'cause it's a bit darker than the last night's bout
I forgot about the drought of light bulbs in this house
So I head out, down a route I think is heading south
But I'm not good with directions and I hide behind my mouth
I'm a pro at imperfections and I'm best friends with my doubt
And now that my mind's out, and now I hear it clear and loud
I'm thinking, "Wow, I probably shoulda stayed inside my house."
I found my way
Right time, wrong place
As I pled my case.
You're the judge, oh no, set me free
You're the judge, oh no, set me free
I know my soul's freezing
Hell's hot for good reason, so please
I don't know if this song is a surrender or a revel
I don't know if this one is about me or the devil.
I don't know if this song is a surrender or a revel
I don't know if this one is about me or the devil.
You're the judge, oh no, set me free, oh no
You're the judge, oh no, set me free, oh no
I know my soul's freezing
Hell's hot for good reason, so please
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh
Na na na na, oh oh (You're the judge, oh no, set me free)
Na na na na, oh oh (You're the judge, oh no, set me free)
Na na na na, oh oh (You're the judge, oh no, set me free)
(Josh Dun!)
(You're the judge, oh no, set me free)
“Nico and the Niners”
East is up,
I’m fearless when I hear this on the low,
East is up,
I’m careless when I wear my rebel clothes,
East is up,
When Bishops come together they will know that,
Dema don’t control us, Dema don’t control,
East is up.
They want to make you forget,
They want to make you forget,
Save your razorblades now, not yet,
Save your razorblades now, not yet.
I’m heavy, my Jumpsuit is on steady,
I’m lighter when I’m lower, I’m higher when I’m heavy,
I’m so high, my Jumpsuit takes me so high,
I’m flying from a fire, from Nico and the Niners.
East is up,
I’m fearless when I hear this on the low,
East is up,
I’m careless when I wear my rebel clothes,
East is up,
When Bishops come together they will know that,
Dema don’t control us, Dema don’t control,
I’m heavy, my Jumpsuit is on steady,
I’m lighter when I’m lower, I’m higher when I’m heavy,
I’m so high, my Jumpsuit takes me so high,
I’m flying from a fire, from Nico and the Niners.
What I say when I want to be enough,
What a beautiful day for making a break for it,
We’ll find a way to pay for it,
Maybe from all the money we made razorblade stores,
Rent a race horse and force a sponsor,
And start a concert, a complete diversion,
Start a mob and you can be quite certain,
We’ll win but not everyone will get out, no no.
We’ll win but not everyone will get out, no no.
We’ll win but not everyone will get out.
East is up,
I’m fearless when I hear this on the low,
East is up,
I’m careless when I wear my rebel clothes,
East is up,
When Bishops come together they will know that,
Dema don’t control us, Dema don’t control,
East is up.
“March To The Sea”
There's miles of land in front of us
And we're dying with every step we take
We're dying with every breath we make
And I'll fall in line
A stranger's back is all I see
He's only a few feet in front of me
And I'll look left and right sometimes
But I'll fall in line
No one looks up anymore
'Cause you might get a raindrop in your eye
And Heaven forbid they see you cry
As we fall in line
And about this time of every year
The line will go to the ocean pier
And walk right off into the sea
And then we fall asleep
And as we near the end of land
And our ocean graves are just beyond the sand
I ask myself the question
Why I fall in line
Then out of the corner of my eye
I see a spaceship in the sky
And hear a voice inside my head:
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Follow me
Then the wages of war will start
Inside my head with my counterpart
And the emotionless marchers will chant the phrase:
This line's the only way
And then I start down the sand
My eyes are focused on the end of land
But again the voice inside my head says,
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Follow me
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Follow me instead
Take me up, seal the door
I don't want to march here anymore
I realize that this line is dead
So I'll follow You instead
So then You put me back in my place
So I might start another day
And once again I will be
In a march to the sea
“Bandito”
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
This is the sound we make
When in between two places
Where we used to bleed
And where our blood needs to be
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
In city, I feel my spirit is contained
Like neon inside the glass, they form my brain
But I recently discovered
It's a heatless fire
Like nicknames they give themselves to uninspire
Begin with bullet, now add fire to the proof
But I'm still not sure if fear's a rival or a close relative to truth
Either way it helps to hear these words bounce off of you
The softest echo could be enough for me to make it through
Sahlo Folina
Sahlo Folina
Sahlo Folina
Sahlo Folina
I created this world
To feel some control
Destroy it if I want
So I sing someone
Sahlo Folina
Sahlo Folina
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I could take the high road
But I know that I'm going low
I'm a ban—I'm a bandito
I created this world
To feel some control
Destroy it if I want
So I sing
Sahlo Folina
Sahlo
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