twenty one pilots: “It’s full-circle. This was the first time I felt okay coming back to where we started”

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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.”

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.”

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…

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.“

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!”

Get your limited-edition twenty one pilots Kerrang! zine

Clancy is out now. twenty one pilots return to the UK from May 5 – get your tickets here.

Read this next:

• Trench: The story of twenty one pilots’ most ambitious album ever
• twenty one pilots’ Tyler and Josh: The songs that changed our lives
• “I would rather die than fake a song”: Inside the revolutionary success of twenty one pilots’ Blurryface