Welcome to the Clique
- 10 hours ago
- 9 min read
This article will mention suicide and mental health disorders.
This is the second of a three-part series. Part One, Why Twenty-Øne Pilots May be the Best Music Artist, was released Monday. Part Three, The Story in the Songs, will release this Friday.
So you read my post on why Twenty-Øne Pilots may be the best music artist ever, and you're here. You're ready. You want to know what you need to know to be a part of the Skeleton Clique, as the fandom is named.
Not to worry. I've got you covered.
Welcome to Trench.
Meet the Band/History
Twenty-Øne Pilots is a duo, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun. Tyler is married to Jenna Joseph, and they have three children: Rosie, Junie, and Tommy. Josh is married to Debbie Ryan, and they just had their first child: a baby girl named Felix Winter. They also have a dog, Jim (or Spooky Jim).
Tyler and Josh are both from Columbus, Ohio. Don't even try to figure out how they met unless you want to watch hour-long compilations of their various responses (it's an inside joke, they tell a different story every time). I take that back - watch all the compilations. They're hilarious. Let me know which one you think is true. I think they really met when Chris Salih quit, but maybe it was in prison.
Tyler Joseph is Twenty-Øne Pilots' singer and songwriter. He also plays the piano, ukulele, guitar, and probably other instruments I'm forgetting. He started Twenty-Øne Pilots in his basement by writing songs like Trees and Taco Bell Saga (opposite ends of the spectrum) when he was seventeen and eighteen. The oldest Twenty-Øne Pilots album, No Phun Intended, is just him. He had no band name at that point, and was just handing the music out to his friends. It was uploaded to his PureVolume account circa 2007-2008.
In 2009, Tyler Joseph officially founded Twenty-Øne Pilots (they're only, like, a few weeks older than me!). He was joined by Chris Salih, the band's original drummer, and Nick Thomas, the band's original bassist. Together, they released Self-Titled (Twenty One Pilots, the album). As the band grew, Chris and Nick left and Josh Dun joined the band as the drummer. Since 2011, Twenty-Øne Pilots has been Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun (and you, as they will often say). In 2011, they released Regional at Best.
In 2012, Twenty-Øne Pilots signed to Fueled By Ramen, their current producer. Fueled By Ramen made a deal with them: if they wanted to get signed, they had to recall all of Regional At Best. They were allowed to keep Self-Titled up.
The rest is history.
Things You Should Know
Before you get too deep in, there are a few things the fandom sort of expects you to know. It sort of makes you look bad if you don't know these things, which is unfair, so I'm doing my part by telling you.
Stressed Out is called Stressed Out, not Blurryface. The album is called Blurryface. This one is actually pretty bad. If you didn't know that, you probably have a lot to learn. Furthermore, the general consensus is that Stressed Out is overplayed, and therefore, not very many hardcore fans listen to it. If you want to listen to it because it's good but agree that it's overplayed, I highly recommend the MTV Live version, which in my opinion is better.
Do not ever refer to them as "21 Pilots." They have said that that is not the way they want to be referred to. In the words of Tyler Joseph, "If you're a hater, you can use the 21. But if you like us, maybe spell it out." If you don't want to go through writing out Twenty-Øne Pilots (Twenty One Pilots is also acceptable) then TØP is also fine. Do your best to cross the Ø. If you want, you can also say "tee-oh-pea" out loud. I can't stand to do that, but it's generally acceptable.
Twenty-Øne Pilots did not write Cancer. Cancer is a cover of Cancer by My Chemical Romance. You should probably listen to the original so you can say you have.
Twenty-Øne Pilots did not write all of Robot Voices. Robot Voices is an alternate version of My Soft Spots My Robots by Blanket Approval, which caught Tyler's eye. He made a good amount of changes to it (with Blanket Approval's consent, of course). I highly recommend listening to My Soft Spots My Robots to see the differences between them.
The Albums
1) No Phun Intended - Unofficial Circa 2007 [RECALLED]
NPI was unofficially released by Tyler Joseph sometime in 2007. Its "official" release date is November 30, 2008. It was never really released, but you can still find bits and pieces of it.
2) Self-Titled (Twenty One Pilots) - December 29, 2009
Self-Titled was the first album Twenty-Øne Pilots officially released as a band. When they signed to FBR, they were allowed to keep it up.
3) Regional at Best - July 8, 2011 [RECALLED]
RAB was the last album Twenty-Øne Pilots self-released. When they signed to FBR, they were forced to take it down. Some songs were recycled and rerecorded for Vessel: Guns for Hands, Holding On to You, Ode to Sleep, Car Radio, and Trees.
4) Vessel - January 8, 2013
Vessel was the first album Twenty-Øne Pilots released through FBR. The men on the cover are Tyler and Josh's grandfathers. It was the last album not related to the lore. Shortly after Vessel, they went silent and practically dropped off the map before going into full lore mode.
5) Blurryface - May 17, 2015
Blurryface is the first lore-related album. The album cover is a reference to the Nine Bishops, which we'll learn more about in the next post.
6) Heathens (Single) - June 16, 2016
Heathens was written for the movie Suicide Squad. However, the music video is extremely related to the lore. It has a lot of direct ties to the song Nico and the Niners, which they would release later.
7) Cancer (Single) - September 14, 2016
Twenty-Øne Pilots did not write Cancer. They did it as a cover of My Chemical Romance's original version of the song. However, nothing is an accident, and the album cover also has ties to the lore. (East is Up.)
8) Spotify Sessions - June 18, 2018
These are alternate versions of the songs performed live with some commentary at the end, usually jokes or tidbits about the songs and artists.
9) Trench - October 5, 2018
Trench is the second album to contain lore. The vulture on the cover is Clifford. He's a spy for the Bishops. (More on it later.)
10) Level of Concern (Single) - April 9, 2020
Level of Concern was released during Covid, and the music video illustrates this. The yellow tape on the USB drive is a reference to the lore.
11) Christmas Saves the Year (Single) - December 8, 2020
Christmas Saves the Year is the only song released by Twenty-Øne Pilots that is explicitly a Christmas song. I argue Oh Ms. Believer also is. Ned is featured in the music video.
12) Scaled and Icy - May 21, 2021
SAI is the third lore album. It's essentially propaganda (again, more on that later). The dragon on the front is Trash. The symbol Twenty-Øne Pilots temporarily changed their logo to is called a sai (Scaled And Icy). Scaled and Icy can also be unscrambled to spell "Clancy is dead."
13) Scaled and Icy (Livestream Version) - November 19, 2021
Part of the propaganda - Clancy performed select songs on Good Day Dema for the rest of the citizens of Dema. (More later.)
14) MTV Unplugged - April 21, 2023
Twenty-Øne Pilots was invited to feature on MTV and recorded their tracks in real time as opposed to using pre-recorded tracks. I highly recommend listening to the songs.
15) Clancy - May 24, 2024
Clancy was supposed to be the last lore-related album, but it wasn't. It was released with The Craving (Single version) accompanying it as a single, as opposed to The Craving (Jenna's version), which is on the album. (You'll remember Jenna is Tyler's wife.)
16) The Line (Single) - November 22, 2024
The Line was written for the TV show Arcane: League of Legends. However, it too is related to the lore. The music video foreshadowed the resolution of the lore. I highly recommend listening to the live version of The Line from The Games Awards.
17) Breach - September 12, 2025
Breach is the last album in the lore story. The Contract was actually the first song released, and the music video for it is the next in the lore sequence. City Walls is to follow, though it's the first in the album. The album cover is most likely meant to resemble a skull.
18) Drag Path (Single) - February 17, 2026
Drag Path, in my opinion, is the real resolution to the lore. It feels more like the end than Intentions did to me. It was originally released only as an add-on available for purchase. I bought it as soon as humanly possible, even though I knew they'd release it to the public later. Sure enough, they did - but it's a shorter version missing the first verse. It's still amazing, though.
FAQs
What's with the Ø?
If you've been paying attention, you realize I've been crossing the Ø everytime I type out Twenty-Øne Pilots. If you read my coming post on the lore, you'll learn about Nicolas Bourbaki, a character in the lore. In the real world, Nicolas Bourbaki was the collective name a group of French mathematicians. Said mathematicians were the ones to assign the Ø symbol to mean "null set" or "no answer." They also created the "dangerous bend symbol" (see Overcompensate, Clancy, 2:42).
Where did the name come from?
The name "Twenty-Øne Pilots" came from a play called All My Sons by Arthur Miller. Part of the play is that two men run a factory where they make airplane parts. They knowingly sell broken cylinder heads to the Air Force - when they have the opportunity to stop the shipment of the parts, they do not. The parts are used in Air Force airplanes and end up causing the deaths of twenty-one pilots. Tyler read the poem and it resonated with him; he would later say, "I feel like we are all constantly encountering moral crossroads where the decisions that benefit the 'now' will have consequences down the road; but the decision that might seem tough and tolling right away will ultimately be more rewarding."
What does "sahlo folina" mean?
You kind of have to wait for the lore post on this one, but if you're on my Substack you've seen me use "sahlo folina" to acknowledge other Twenty-Øne Pilots fans. Sahlo folina is "the sound we make when in between two places, where're we used to bleed and where're our blood needs to be" (see Bandito, Trench, 1:15). "Sahlo" means "easy" and "folina" generally means "creativity or not conforming to rules and standards." Essentially, it's something Banditos (the good guys) say to each other. Sahlo folina.
Are Tyler and Josh really friends?
A lot of people wonder this because of how many celebrities there are out there who fake stuff for the publicity. But nope. Tyler and Josh are actually friends. They're together constantly, they have hundreds of inside jokes, no one even knows how they really met. Not only are they friends, they're practically best friend goals.
Is Tyler the only one who sings?
99% of the time, Tyler is the one who sings. This does not mean that he takes the entire stage or all the bragging rights - the stage is very equally shared between them. Josh is a lot of people's favorite, actually. But usually, Tyler sings. But not always. The Clique has a few precious recordings of Josh singing (or "Jocals" - Josh vocals). Also, if you ever go to a concert, you will probably hear Josh sing. As far as recorded songs go, though, you can only hear Josh sing in Drum Show (2:00) and in a couple of the MTV Unplugged Live songs.
Why are the recalled albums recalled?
No Phun Intended and Regional at Best are unavailable on most streaming platforms. NPI is "recalled" because it was never formally released. It's really more of a collection of old, difficult-to-find songs that we refer to as NPI, even though NPI was more of an EP he passed out to his friends. Regional at Best, on the other hand, was formally released soon before Twenty-Øne Pilots signed to FBR. When they signed, they recalled RAB and rereleased some of the Regional songs on Vessel. They won't talk about why they did this and why they never redid NPI, and personally, I think it might have had to do with the heavy religious themes of the albums. I may be wrong, since there is some religious undertone in Self-Titled, but there's only one explicit mention of God (A Car, a Torch, a Death, Self-Titled, 1:08) as opposed to many direct references to God, Jesus, and religious concepts in NPI especially.
More info on NPI and Regional
Here are all the songs on Regional and the songs we consider part of NPI. Shoutout to Time to Say Goodbye, Coconut Sharks in the Water, and Taco Bell Saga, which are not specifically in either album. Also, their covers of I Can't Help Falling in Love With You and Jar of Hearts, along with other covers they did at concerts that aren't formally recorded. Regional and NPI records/CDs are still owned by select individuals, since you can't recall physical media as easily, and these honorable people will record the songs and upload them to YouTube and to Spotify as podcasts.
Links You'll Probably Want
I hope that helped you get the general idea of what you're getting into! If you're ready to get into the lore, hold tight for another day - listen to some songs while you wait for my next post, which will release this Friday at 12am EDT! Until then, sahlo folina, friends!