The Singles Jukebox

First they were stressed out, now they’re heathens.

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[2.71]

Katherine St Asaph: “Stressed Out” remains a goofily likable, underrated track, but the haters were right: by allowing it we allowed worse to come. Tyler Joseph is here to stay, and he shall squeak peace unto the heathens. Bullying is rampant and awful, but addressing it in song is nigh-impossible without being didactic or unintentionally funny — the latter guaranteed when you lead with crusade metaphors. The moment I stopped taking this seriously was pretty much 0:01. The moment I realized I’d never take it seriously is when I started singing it to “All My Friends.”
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: Take the least energetic Eminem song you can think of, crank it down to about half-speed, and strip it of creativity. There’s no doubt in my mind that Twenty One Pilots are, artistically (and commercially) speaking, 2016’s Limp Bizkit.
[0]

Alfred Soto: Besides Drake, I thought fun’s Nate Ruess had the most insufferable voice in pop. Glad Tyler Joseph (is that really his name? It can’t be) relieved him of the title and the vocoder rental.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: First they “have problems,” and now they’re nonbelievers — with friends like Tyler Joseph, who needs enemies? I like the turn of phrase “our brains will change from hand grenades,” but orchestral bombast aside, this is basically the pre-chorus of “Stressed Out” stretched into a full song, with lyrics copied and pasted from everything else they’ve ever done.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: This fresh cut off “Suicide Squad: The Album,” a star-studded compilation that absolutely nobody asked for, is lyrically more tolerable than its cinematic raison d’etre only because that particular bar has been placed center-of-the-earth low. It’s the exhausted trope of mental illnesses as edgy superpowers played absolutely straight, which is to say played like it’s the coolest thing in the world. The good: for about two-thirds of it, I can tune out the lyrics and pretend I’m listening to a competent Massive Attack B-side.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: They turn the mirror to get a solid point across: those sinners you condemn are people, just like you! They hold it long just enough for us to leave with a good thought. But it ends with what I assume is meant to be a twist ending, and their whole exercise in empathy just feels like an elaborate set pieces leading up to a cheap joke.
[5]

Adaora Ede: Why are all Twenty One Pilots songs about the weird kids that sit at the dark side of the lunch room and still wear “I Heart Boobies” bracelets? The production of this song involves a lot of eerie sounding bleep bloops and probably some guitars or something and surprisingly, it all sounds pretty decent when it comes together, but sometimes I really can’t get over what this Tyler guy is saying. Can I just say that “Ride” was so better anyway, even with the monopolizing rap part?
[3]