Some people categorize twenty one pilots’ sound as “Schizophrenic Pop” and that seems an apt description of their newest release, “Stressed Out,” a snappy up tempo 3-minutes that laments how stressful it is to be an adult. They wish they “could turn back time, to the good ol’ days, when their momma sang them to sleep.”
Twenty one pilots is two young men in their 20s, singing about being stressed to the point that they are self-soothing with fantasies of their youth, wanting to regress to when they were actual babies—in the video they are riding oversized tricycles and drinking from little juice boxes.
Hard to take seriously, and yet… the inspiration for their name—“twenty one pilots”– is taken from Arthur Miller’s play “All My Sons” about a man who caused the death of ‘twenty one’ WWII pilots because he knowingly sent them faulty parts for the good of his business.
I figured that any band (or duo) that takes their name based on a literary moral dilemma is worth listening to, and also because I loved an earlier hit of theirs, “Tear In My Heart.” https://boomermusicupdate.com/alternative/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-redux/
At first I thought that they are way too young to be this stressed out but then I remembered Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate,” he was about that age, and he felt the same way. And so did my younger sister, 25 yeas ago, as does my niece, who graduated from college last June, and over Thanksgiving was definitely feeling “stressed out” as she prepares to start supporting herself.
So I stopped looking for social insight just went along for the crazy ride.
This song is currently a hit in both the “Alternative” and Top 40 formats.
Twenty one pilots was formed in in 2009.