The Singles Jukebox

Last post was a warmup. The true pressing question: DO OUR NEW WRITERS LIKE “STRESSED OUT”???

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[4.08]Iain Mew: Welcome back to Twenty One Pieces, the show in which a band spins a wheel to select from a set of musical ideas, and then has to fit them together into a pop song. Next up are returning contestants the Pilots. What’s going into their track this time? First spin for the chorus: power-pop! That’s a good sign, they know what they’re doing there. Next, the mood: breezy. That fits too. Third spin; the bridge: gentle, sighing. They can work with that. Now, what to finish it all off with in the verses? It’s a big spin, it’s slowing, it’s going to be juddering electronics! This might just be their best result so far! But wait, the wheel hasn’t quite finished turning yet! The needle has flicked one space further and landed on the next option! It’s… it’s cod-reggae. Oh well, maybe next time.
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Cassy Gress: A blend of 311 Sublime with RedOne, this mixes frighteningly violent fantasies with good old-fashioned white-boy rappin’ and bakes it until shrugging and clueless.
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Katie Gill: Nothing about Twenty One Pilots appeals to me. Their aesthetic makes me want to shove them in a bath, their music isn’t even well done alternative, their lyrics are hilariously Fueled by Ramen in a way that dates them to mid-2005, and “Stressed Out” is my least-favorite song of 2016. So when you add in a boring white-boy pseudo rap break over a tacky beach restaurant backing and puddle-depth lyrics that masquerade as being meaningful, my dislike of them increases tenfold.
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Thomas Inskeep: Dear white boys: stop trying to skank. Just stop. This isn’t as bad as “Stressed Out,” but then again “Stressed Out” might be the worst top 10 single of the past 2-3 years, so the bar ain’t exactly high. These guys are stunningly, almost impressively terrible.
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Alfred Soto: You wanna stay in the sun? Not with that skin. Like reggae and dance hall? Stay in your lofts with our Burning Spear albums. If the International Criminal Court learns that Twenty One Pilots are perpetuating this stank-ass fraud on citizens of Earth, it may treat the musicians like Pinochet.
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Claire Biddles: Spotify alleges The 1975 as a “related artist” to this third-rate remake of “Butterfly” by Crazy Town, and as a result I am cancelling my subscription.
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Megan Harrington: Let’s accept that Twenty One Pilots have insinuated themselves in the cultural fabric of now. They are stacking hits, they are purging polemic, the teens just love them. I’m a little too morphed to find “Ride” personally resonant or meaningful, but I recognize that by virtue of its existence as a layer of the current everyday that it’s memorable. And that a little bit when I think back on this time, and a lot when people much younger than me think back on this time, “Ride” will stand out as a song that attempted to fuse the way everything was suddenly accessible and available with the way everything felt hopelessly doomed and dangerous. Twenty One Pilots are willing to be dumb, but they aren’t dumb and “Ride” is a song that asks its listener to care, to think, to answer. The questions it poses are asked earnestly and they’re worth considering.
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Gin Hart: Did you know that Tyler “Metaphorically the Man” Joseph named his band after an Arthur Miller play??! Did you know that I would like to dismiss American not-Christian but not not-Christian musical duo Twenty One Pilots as emotionally and spiritually irrelevant dudes whose music is too fake to touch me?!! Well too dang bad, I guess, ’cause even though I make merciless fun of “Stressed Out” and its calorically empty longing, I think I might like this track, like, a lot? (Trash rap and all?) Sort of an asexual love child of Vampire Weekend and Sublime, “Ride” delivers the feeling of itself with abundance, walking the tightrope between goofy self-indulgence and oddly dignified dismay. It rolls me down the lane in somebody else’s car on a too-hot day, thighs sweat-gluing themselves to the leather interior, Tyler’s gentle falsetto pleas worming their way out of the speakers like he stole my tongue. I have been thinking too much; I would like you to help me. His scream on “taking my tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime,” rawer than you can generally expect from pop, is where I bend backwards out the window, inhaling bugs. We accelerate.
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Hannah Jocelyn: Blurryface sometimes felt underwhelming compared to their previous album Vessel, but it’s nonetheless the album that brought them to superstardom, to the point that a year after its release they’re still releasing singles, though to diminishing returns. Tyler Joseph’s voice, amping up the affectations that made “Stressed Out” stand out on the radio, sounds flanderized, and there’s none of the genuine emotion that powered “Tear In My Heart,” one of their best songs and probably one of the best power-pop songs of the last few years. It picks up, though; the falsetto on the bridge is lovely, and the scream adds a welcome jolt to an otherwise dull single.
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Brad Shoup: Ricky Reed, at it again! He and the Pilots push into as much space as radio-rock allows; the drums are crisp, the organ crisper. In the first verse, Tyler Joseph is his own Greek chorus. In the second, he’s just a wreck: worrying over platitudes and why we say them, and what happens when our talk comes due. It’s not, like, Titus Andronicus or something, but it’s still real.
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