Almost a year on from its release, twenty one pilots are finally ready to peel back the curtain on their sensational seventh album, and The Clancy World Tour. Joining K! in Barcelona, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun reveal why their fans have been a guiding light, how they’ve brought this latest chapter to life, and if there’s even more to come…
Pull up a desk chair, grab a fully-charged laptop, or perhaps your favourite notebook and a few decent pens, because class is in session with twenty one pilots.
Right now, Tyler Joseph is detailing a logistically tricky aspect of The Clancy World Tour. The frontman (aka Professor Of Putting On The Best Show On The Planet) is explaining why, in the midst of an all-new two-hour, 27-song gig, with outfit changes, multiple stages, dazzling lights, fire, confetti, and even a teleportation trick, he felt it necessary to add one beautifully unique, last-minute element to every single concert. Settle in – things are about to get nerdy.
Early on into the setlist on their current tour, twenty one pilots play ukulele pop ballad The Judge, from 2015’s Blurryface album. Before Tyler and drummer Josh Dun launch into their performance, a video displays on the venue’s screens of fans happily waiting in line before doors. They’re captured on camera singing, dancing, doing the Stressed Out handshake or wearing themed make-up and outfits – all yellow tape, red beanies, black body paint… you know the drill. On a purely practical level, it’s a lot of extra work each day, particularly for the band’s long-time creative/content director Mark Eshleman. Now’s your cue to start really paying attention.
“It’s not easy,” begins Tyler. “We’ve come up with a very streamlined system with our buddy Mark, who films it. I mean, we could give a seminar on how to pull off shooting a video and layering it in so that it shows up on the screen with the correct audio underneath it, all gelled together, with a backing track and a click that Josh is playing to, and then we come in at the right time. It’s a lot of coordination and a lot of threading files through each other.
“But,” he stresses, “we love this stuff. It’s one of my favourite feelings in the world: coming up with an idea that’s kind of abstract, it’s not grounded in any sort of reality or experience that you’ve had, but then you go, ‘Okay, hold on, how do I reverse engineer this idea to make it work?’ Josh and I really stay extremely involved with the technical side of the show. And I think that’s also why we feel so confident in it, because as we’re playing, we can picture the moving parts that are happening, especially musically.”
twenty one pilots believe that this segment – which, as Tyler unpacks, requires filming, editing and then projecting every night – holds significant meaning to their devotees. It tells them: we are with you, we are here.
“It’s really important,” the singer continues. “I feel like you can go to a show and watch an artist onstage and it’s great, but you have this [feeling of], ‘Are they present? Do they really feel like they’re here?’ But we’re interacting with the same doors to get into this building that you’re in – although maybe we didn’t have to spend a bunch of time parking and walking and all the stuff that sucks about coming to a show (laughs). So we always try to find ways to demonstrate that we’re reacting to whatever is being presented to us in a particular city.”
Currently, said city is Barcelona, several hours before the band headline the 17,000-plus-capacity Palau Sant Jordi. Arriving at the Spanish arena earlier, one of the venue staff pointed out the smaller, adjoining Sant Jordi Club, and it got Josh feeling nostalgic about twenty one pilots’ early gigs.
“One thing that Tyler and I like to do is talk about the old days,” the drummer smiles. “There was a time where we would walk into a venue and someone would be like, ‘One day you’ll be playing here…’ while we’d be going off to the corner stage in another room. But now, we’re playing the bigger venues. Thinking about the opportunity that we have to be doing this after 13 years of being in a band, it was one of those moments of reflecting on the past. It was really, really great.”
While the past and the present are great places for twenty one pilots, they’re also a reminder of quite how long they’ve been at this. For 36-year-old Tyler, this is something he very literally felt on the first night of The Clancy World Tour in Denver last August, when a typically fearless jump off his piano – something he’s done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before – resulted in a broken fibula and a torn LCL.
“We’re back intact now – things have healed up a bit,” he grins. “I guess it’s an inevitable reality as you get older. I was telling someone last night how I think I need to give myself more time before a show to warm-up. It used to be that you slam some fast food and then go up onstage, but you can’t do that anymore. You’ve got to be a little smarter! Josh texts me almost every show, reminding me to stretch. Sometimes I don’t have time because I’m running late. But he’s looking out for me…”
Not that twenty one pilots would ever let anything as trivial as major ligament damage get in the way of performing, though. Armed with their newest album Clancy, the duo have been on unstoppable form since its release in May 2024, playing gigs that have only gotten bigger, better and more breathtaking – and once again taking over the globe in their own enigmatic way. That’s why Kerrang! are here today: for the first deep-dive since 2021’s Scaled And Icy album. And with The Clancy World Tour preparing to make its long-awaited stop in the UK and Ireland in the coming weeks, there’s a lot to talk about.
“It’s been incredible,” says Tyler. “We’ve said this before about travelling the world and playing music, it’s not so much about how different every culture is – the thing that sticks out to me is how similar they are. Music is just that global language. Even if you feel like you’re being articulate in English, you go over to Argentina and for some reason everyone contextually gets it, even if they don’t maybe fully understand what we’re saying. That’s the most amazing thing about what we get to do: seeing people react to music almost identically to each other, but on opposite ends of the Earth.”
twenty one pilots have an expression they use when it comes to making artistic decisions. In a way, it actually ties back to those The Judge fan videos in their set. They call it “painting the line”.
“‘What does an album look like? What are the themes?’” asks Tyler. “We like to imagine what the line of people going into the show may look like. We almost use them as the canvas to come up with the branding of our albums.
“Everything is so silly if it weren’t for them,” he adds, proudly. “It would be such a waste of time. We’re leaning into that, like, ‘Hey, there’s an asset that we have: this fanbase. Let’s utilise it.’”
Case in point: Clancy’s electrifying lead single Overcompensate. Not only was it the first song the pair finished for the album, therefore setting a towering benchmark for what else was to come, but its accompanying music video gave fans a whole new aesthetic to sink their teeth into, and then instantly emulate.
“We walk out there onstage and that’s the first song that we play,” says Josh, “and we look out and see yellow tape, red tape, Clancy masks, people colouring their hair and being even more creative than that. Looking at photos of the fans in the show, it feels like Overcompensate is the theme song. It’s really cool. And I feel like it represents a little bit of all of our albums in the past, too. I love that song.”
Overcompensate was also our first introduction to a whole new accessory for this era: the stole. A narrow, scarf-like object draped around Tyler’s neck with the word CLANCY printed all along, it’s already an iconic fixture on tour. And it came from nothing…
“I just dreamt it out of thin air,” recalls Tyler. “As a performer you have a microphone, but you also like to interact with things – having something to interact with is really helpful to stimulate a cooler performance. I kept describing it to our stylist Laura, who helped bring it to life. I said, ‘It’s like if I were going out to recess in elementary school and I brought my jump rope and I just wanted to kind of hang it over my neck and head out on my way to the playground!’
“I always wanted something simple,” he adds. “It’s not hard to make. I thought that it would be cool to see other people adopt that style choice and have their own stole. It’s really cool to see – similar to the tape [from 2018’s Trench]. It’s like, ‘What’s something that stands out, it’s stark, but it’s simple and easy to access, and people can do it themselves and make it their own?’ That’s where I came up with the tape idea, because everyone’s got tape laying around. With the stole, it’s something that people really have made their own.”
Tyler also mentally tapped into the twenty one pilots fanbase when working on Clancy’s superb second single, Next Semester. He loves to play it live, because it’s the perfect example of a band sticking to their guns, and not letting outside influences win.
“It’s such an important track for our culture, our fanbase,” he smiles. “It feels like when we play it live, it’s a track that we’ve always had. When you come down from that spell, you realise, ‘Wait, this song was just released last year, but it feels like it’s been around for decades.’
“I’m also fond of it because in its infancy, there was a bit of discussion and debate on song structure. As we were writing, we had a few people around us that were suggesting that we don’t do as many twists and turns. We kicked the tyres a lot on, ‘Should we make this more simple and easier to digest?’ And I kept thinking, ‘What do you mean? I know [our fans], and they’re going to understand it.’ But I was feeling a little, like, ‘Maybe everyone who’s suggesting to rework this song is right. Maybe I’ve lost touch.’ This is where Josh comes in and he’s a voice of clarity and says, ‘No, no, this is good. The way that we first put it together is the coolest way.’
“So we released the song and I’m thinking, ‘Man, could it have been really, really, really special if we would have done it the easier, kind of simpler structure?’” Tyler continues. “And every night I see the way that people respond to it, and it’s this reminder that those people are in that room because they trust our gut instinct. Being a fan of someone is saying, ‘I trust you with your decisions that you’re gonna make inside of the song.’ It’s very easy to psych yourself out as a songwriter and an artist, because you start to develop what you think people want to hear. But you’re like, ‘I think that they like what our natural instinct is to do with a song. That’s why they’re fans of ours.’ That’s my favourite song to play live, because of that backstory.”
“There’s an inevitable lull to every concert, and one of our main goals is to destroy that lull”
Overcompensate and Next Semester are just two highlights in a show bursting with them. Indeed, this is a setlist the singer’s spent more time refining than ever before, and it’s a topic he sincerely loves chatting about: if the musical key at the end of one track subtly complements the next, how the simple placement of a microphone stand can dictate which song should be performed, and what the “optimal transitions” are throughout.
“I think that there’s an inevitable lull to every concert, and one of our main goals in life is to destroy that lull,” he laughs. “We don’t want it to be there. We don’t want to feel that. It’s hard to keep people engaged for two hours, and we don’t want them checking their watch, like, ‘Okay, is this almost done?!’“
This is lull-free zone before the show even starts. Approaching stage time every night, Midwest Indigo’s lyrics of, ‘What’s your ETA? Two minutes!’ are blasted out into the venue – an idea that sprung to mind around “halfway through” the first leg of the tour.
“I think the fans started to pick up on when we’re supposed to be onstage and sometimes if we’re running a little behind – I mean, let’s be honest, it’s me, I’m running late – then they’ll start yelling, ‘What’s your ETA?’ from the pit,” Tyler says. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s actually dope. We should do that, literally two minutes before we go on. We should play that. And then they will know that we’ll be on in two minutes.’ It’s worked really well.”
Not including that pre-show wink, the duo have been performing 10 of Clancy’s 13 tracks on the road this time around – from the slick Routines In The Night, which sees the frontman ‘walk the layout’ of the venue, to dance-rock banger Navigating, to the playful Lavish. (For the record, our only minor gripe is there’s no Oldies Station – to which Tyler concedes that “it’s a good problem” to have too many songs people want to hear.) And the band couldn’t be prouder that they get to fill today’s performances with so much new material.
“I was telling my manager last night, it’s really cool that our show is so Clancy-heavy as far as the setlist,” Tyler says. “I think a lot of bands get into a position where it’s exciting for them to release new stuff, but when you go to their show, you kind of hope that they stick to what made them great in the first place. I’m really glad that we have a fanbase that is still so open to new music. That’s not easy to do, over 10 years into a career. I think a lot of bands find themselves releasing music that maybe their fans that have been with them for a while don’t necessarily connect to. We consider ourselves very lucky. And we really don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to do that. Because, you know, they’ll stop caring at some point.”
Yeah, never gonna happen…
Josh says that writing and releasing a record is almost like having a child. We’ll let him pick up this light-hearted but actually quite logical analogy, and how it ties into all things Clancy…
“Kids look the same when they’re born, and then as they get bigger they start to develop physical features and personality traits and stuff,” he explains. “That’s kind of how it feels with an album, too. We see a lot of those things growing while we’re touring – the songs almost grow up with us, and kind of develop a personality of their own, and features that I think stick with us a little bit more. Creating songs, recording songs and putting them out is such an exciting thing, and it’s cool to talk about the album almost a year after it came out, because it feels like we’ve been able to live with it a little bit more.”
So you’re telling us that you’re happy with your offspring?
“I can’t tell if this guy has a little more of Tyler’s features or mine!” Josh jokes.
It is an incredibly powerful thing, though. And Clancy is quite possibly twenty one pilots’ most personal release yet, given it was teased as the ‘final chapter’ in their legendary lore – a deeply intimate yet fiercely fantastical multi-album story that began with Blurryface nearly a decade ago.
How was it in the studio, knowing you were working on something that marks the end of an era? Did it feel different to other albums, because of that?
For the first time in this interview, Tyler pauses. And then again.
“With Clancy, not only is the story that we’ve been telling for a while coming to an end,” he begins, carefully. “But it was also different because in the past, I would always try to make my lyrical content different from the last thing that I said, and I was always trying to say something new – or saying something old, but in a new way.
“Clancy was the first album where I felt like I was making a circle back to things that I’ve said before, and being okay with that, and kind of feeling like we just did a walk around the perimeter of who we are as a band, and what our songs are saying, and what they mean to our fans. It’s kind of full-circle, lyrically. It was the first time I felt okay coming back to where we started, in a sense. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it coinciding with the story ending just felt very right.”
He says it also taught twenty one pilots a “valuable lesson” in continuing to put their fans first.
“A lot of artists and bands who are fortunate enough to have a longer career, they feel like they have to keep reinventing themselves,” the singer explains. “Maybe that’s just the natural disposition of an artist: wanting to change and grow and shift and mould into something else. And when you’re fortunate enough to have a long career and have fans, they want to grow with you. But you don’t have to reinvent yourself for the sake of reinventing yourself, because they’re not into that. They’re not really into us doing it for ourselves. I think they can tell if we’re pivoting and trying a new direction for the sake of ourselves, rather than keeping them in mind. And, I mean, that’s the deal now. We must keep them in mind when we create. They deserve it.“
“We must keep the fans in mind when we create. They deserve it”
About that, then. What’s next for twenty one pilots? The Clancy World Tour wraps up in less than a month’s time, culminating with two dates at The O2 in London. After that, their calendars are curiously empty. As with all big, mysterious bands in the modern day, speculation is rife online: maybe something will happen on May 17 to mark Blurryface’s 10th anniversary? Or will there be another part to Clancy, even, given that closing track Paladin Strait ended on a cliff-hanger? Naturally, the band aren’t in the business of divulging their secrets. But we need to know: is this upcoming last gig in the capital one to keep an eye on for clues, maybe?!
“That’s a good idea – Josh, let’s do something in the final show, tease something,” Tyler replies quick-wittedly, forever keeping his cards close to his chest. “You think we’re the masterminds, but really, we just react to you guys (laughs).
“No, I mean, I guess it is kind of weird that we’re coming into this gap of nothingness that we haven’t really described yet,” he ponders. “But I can say: it’s not nothing.”
Realising how utterly unhelpful an answer that is, Tyler bursts out laughing.
“Sorry!”
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