With a new single out and a new album on the way, twenty one pilots are gearing up for an exhilarating new era…. One that is filled with pastel visuals, updated hairdos, and a sense of newfound delicacy within their unique rock sound.
A Much-Needed Return From Twenty One Pilots
How do you know if a song is good? Is it when you can sing along and dance around to it? Maybe it’s the important message within the lyrics? Could it even be the success that it is having? For twenty one pilots, it’s all of the above. The band just released their first single in almost a year, titled “Shy Away.”
In less than 48 hours, it has woken up hundreds of fan accounts and racked up an immense amount of streams. Fans are ready for a new age of creative, complex alt rock from twenty one pilots. The 4.5 million streams (and counting) “Shy Away” has on it’s official music video proves it. This is in addition to it’s tens of millions of streams on popular streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
“Shy Away” is the lead single off their forthcoming record, Scaled and Icy. This new album, their sixth full-length to date, drops May 21, and is already causing quite the stir online.
Fans have been speculating for years what a new twenty one pilots album would sound like. Their last record, Trench, came out in Fall 2018 and was followed by a multi-leg world tour. With many shows and even more fans coming out to hear the Trench songs live, people were inundated with that record’s sound. It wasn’t until 2020 that the band released a new song. “Level of Concern” was a quarantine hit written in, and about, lockdown during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a relatively successful song for Tyler Joseph and Joshua Dun, but it wasn’t leading up to anything.
The reason “Shy Away” is doing so well is not just because of its slick new sound, but because there’s a lot riding on it. After the success of their last record and the weight that it carried musically, the duo have big shoes to fill. It might be their own shoes, but that doesn’t mean they are any easier to compete with.
Learning To Let The Light In
“Shy Away” is a bubbly alternative pop song. There are elements of the band’s rock sound within it, though, thanks to their always clever instrumentation.
Very few acts consisting of just two band members can create such a robust, room-filling sound. Time and time again, Joseph and Dun are able to do just that. “Shy Away” is no different, even with its lighter musicality and overarching warmth.
Rainbows, space buns, and twerking are a perfect display of youthful abandonment from twenty one pilots. It’s all seen and heard within the music video for this new single. Twenty one pilots are adults, and lyrically, the music reflects that. The aurora that surrounds this band has shifted from the days of accepting Grammy Awards in their boxers and questioning the meaning of life on albums like 2015’s Blurry Face.
Coming in at just about three minutes, “Shy Away” is an anthem for authenticity and reality. Life is a rollercoaster – nobody understands that more than a pair of rock stars. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be an element of reflection, introspection, and personal growth within their lives. This new song depicts that deeper purpose and meaning that life can have when the right people are in it.
Josh Dun recently married Disney Channel star and fellow musician Debby Ryan. Tyler Joseph recently had his first child, his daughter Rosie, with his wife Jenna. No longer are these two guys just throwing beats at the wall and hoping for success. They are showing that they can evolve as people and as artists. Twenty one pilots are in love with their craft, but also their livelihood, their families, and the art world that surrounds them. “Shy Away” is about that. Yet, it doesn’t (pun intended), shy away from the element of fun that makes up who these two musicians are and who these two musicians always will be.
