A QUICK WORD WITH:
Twenty One Pilots are and Electro Pop duo from Ohio who are striving to bring substance back into mainstream music. They recently made their late night TV debut in the States on the Conan O’Brien show and they’re about to go on tour over here alongside Fall Out Boy. We caught up with drummer Josh Dun: How did the band form and how did you first meet lead singer Tyler Joseph? It was around 2009 or 2010. I was playing music and Tyler was playing music and we met through mutual friends. And we kind of wanted to get together, which is something people say all the time you know ‘hey let’s hang out’ and it never happens. But we ended up getting together two days later and we stayed up all night talking about our dreams and outlandish ideas for the future. We both wanted to play music together in some capacity although we didn’t exactly know what that looked like. I think it was about a year later that things fell into place so that we could play together. You’ve supported dance and rock acts. Why do you think you’re music appeals to so many different music fans? I think if you were to ask someone right now what their favourite genre of music is, I think probably maybe ten years ago people would
say ‘I love listening to rock’ or ‘I love listening to rap music.’ But I think now it’s not so much like that. If you ask most people that question now they’ll say ‘well I listen to everything.’ What kinds of things are written about on your album Vessels? A lot music on the radio is meaningless. Sometimes when you listen to a song you think, ‘what is this about?’ A lot people enjoy listening to music that has to do with dancing all night or partying or drinking alcohol. The approach with this was to not write about those kinds of things. When we started out, travelling around playing smaller shows, we’d have conversations with people, and for some reason or other they’d be comfortable with talking about deeper issues that were going on in their lives. Whether that’s dealing with depression or searching for focus or even just figuring out how to grasp the concept of hope. Music needs talk about those things.
Twenty One Pilots’ Vessels is out now.
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