Twenty One Pilots

Twenty One Pilots, the Columbus, Ohio duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, emerged in 2009 as a genre-resistant phenomenon that captured millennial anxiety through a volatile blend of hip hop, indie rock, and electronic pop. Their breakthrough album Blurryface (2015) yielded the ubiquitous "Stressed Out," a nostalgic lament about adulthood that became a cultural touchstone for a generation drowning in student debt and existential dread. Joseph's lyrics oscillate between Christian metaphor and mental health confession, delivered through schizophrenic arrangements that shift from ukulele whispers to distorted bass drops mid-song. The band's theatrical live performances, featuring Dun's backflipping drumming and cryptic symbolic mythology, cultivated a devotional fanbase. Trench (2018) and Scaled and Icy (2021) continued their commercial dominance whilst maintaining the band's core appeal: articulating internal chaos through meticulously crafted pop hooks. They remain one of the few rock-adjacent acts to achieve sustained mainstream relevance in the streaming era, translating personal fragmentation into stadium-sized catharsis.