twenty one pilots

that resigned "yeh" after "wake up you need to make money" kinda gets me

searched ilx this morning to see if anyone had mentioned them, nothing.

You must have not been looking in the old "WORST SONGS" threads from like 2013 onwards.

We should all be glad that at least Fake Shark Real Zombie never really became a huge sensation.

feels inevitable in hindsight that a band that's the mid point of 00s mall emo and youtube eminem ukulele covers would make it this big

Turns out I accidentally saw these guys live at a festival two years ago because I confused the stage where the artist I actually wanted to be was. I don't find them awful but they make me feel old... I honestly don't understand how these guys became the 'rock' band of 2015/2016, the songs are catchy and all but is that all there is?

I actually wanted to *see

i think i have heard "Ride" 1,000 times already. didn't know rock was this big in 2016. KIIS FM plays it like every hour.

"I've been thinking too much"

this isn't rock tho

there was a thing on the nyer website about them - http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-slippery-appeal-of-the-biggest-new-band-in-america

that article was great

yeah jia tolentino's been doing some really good stuff for them imo

and i've said this before, but its crazy how much stuff they have on the nyer website that's not in the magazine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmv8aQKO6k0
the sudden reggae break in this one is baffling enough to almost be endearing

+1 for the jia tolentino article

Popular with high schoolers, as I learned when a friend's kid said they were his favorite band and had seen twice. I hid under the table rather than share my opinion.

*Mario voice*

"This-a band, she-a no so good"

Though in ilx terms I find them, and really a lot of stuff now interesting in the respect that kids totally raised in the post internet Pangaea where genres all sort of fell away into technologically produced hybrids ended up being being stuff that the popists hated, and really popular with young ppl

Coldplay with tattoos

the raps on the hits are terrible, just wanky stoned adolescent shit. not that that prevents it from being enjoyed among actual stoned adolescents but yeah.

i think literally the only band shirts i've seen on tweens/teens in the past year have been for these guys.

i still see the occasional kid in (judging by the font) a shirt for some metalcore band i've never heard of, but yeah, this is otm for me too.

this band is terrible but yes they would have fit in fine on late 90s alt radio. (with different production choices obv.) they're no len, though.

are they the flys then

i will demure because my knowledge of current radio is sadly limited to when my boss decides to torture us with the "today's hits" station. (christ on a crutch they still play the hell out of that wiz/puth song.)

Coldplay with tattoos

Coldplay sound like a very classicist pop/rock band to me. Like, it's easy to draw a direct line to them from the Beatles. This is some hyper-digital genre mash-up shit, which sounds good on paper, but the results don't do much for me. Pro-Tooled 311 seems closer to the mark to me.

reiterating what's been said upthread, but i'm a 6th grade teacher and these guys are absolutely huge with my students, when i let them pick music in my classroom this is always the consensus first pick.

i think literally the only band shirts i've seen on tweens/teens in the past year have been for these guys.

i still see the occasional kid in (judging by the font) a shirt for some metalcore band i've never heard of, but yeah, this is otm for me too.

is it pierce the veil? That's another big one.

i think the last one was asking alexandria. which is actually a band i've heard of. (but never actually heard.)

they are truly awful. Metalcore is the pits

Metalcore has its good and bad bands, just like every genre except black metal, which is 99% shit. Asking Alexandria are direct descendants of Mötley Crüe and Skid Row.

pierce the veil are great btw

Yeah, they really are. At their best they're almost a metalcore Mars Volta.

cool, i'll check them out. i've never actually heard them, just seen students at my school with the shirts or drawings in notebooks. I actually have no idea how "big" they are

that nyer piece was garbage guys come on

"let me list a bunch of recent rock bands because i don't know how to describe sound but i want to place myself above this"

i liked that new yorker thing. i thought it did a good job at explaining their appeal/what they are.

lol i thought it was p good snark, it's the nyer's stock in trade. maybe if i liked the band more i'd be more critical of the piece.

i didn't even think it was that snarky.

i just feel like music writing of that sort is useless if you want to know what the act sounds like and not what their fans purportedly think. bad writing. but the new yorker's music writing has been at sea lately so.

it was trying to explain their popularity though. not review the album. and i thought it succeeded in describing why teens like them. i thought it was written well. and i hate everything.

like, if someone said: what's up with those guys? i would have them read that.

i just dislike that kind of bemusedly removed pop sociology but i guess we can agree to disagree

It's not just teens though, my 30-something friends who stopped caring about new music like a decade ago all have 'stressed out' or 'ride' in their ipods/spotify/iphones.

it's not just bemusement though.

I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack for a horror movie sponsored by Hot Topic, in which the great and terrible horror was just learning to be you.

sure it's snark but it also feels really perceptive to me, it cuts through to something important about the how the band project their identity onstage and how that connects with people

most people writing removed pop sociology wouldn't have bothered going to a concert. a field report! i dig that. i was just re-reading greg tate's review of a bruce springsteen show in new jersey and i could read that kinda stuff all day long.

sfj spent most of his last few years at the new yorker explaining what songs sounded like and it was super boring imo

but i also don't need to read a 20,000 word nu-journalism account of a twenty one pilots show. not that anyone is really doing that. maybe john jeremiah sullivan could do it.

i was trying to read that grover lewis anthology recently and my eyes started glazing over. zzzzzzz......soooooo long. and so dated too in a way. the attitude. the allman brothers should have kicked his butt.

(same thing happened when i tried to read that old nik cohn rock book recently. ugh, get me out of here...)

that graf is boring! also i go to shows all the time :p

aw c'mon

sorry but yeah i'm not! it's a totally facile observation

well maybe but imo it's deliciously put.

there are other things to be said that could be more about the music, or just about any music - like there are actually tons of "remember when you were a kid, and having a parent, when you were a kid???" songs in the charts. there have been for years now. which you wouldn't know from that article. "don't you worry child" by swedish house mafia. lukas graham. there are so many more than i can't think of right now because i've spent time actively trying to block them out. (lukas graham slipped through the net)

i think dude's rapping majorly improved between blurryface and trench, so for the most part i think it's rad, another tool in the unexpectedly deep toolbox this band's working with. still a few lines that make you clutch your forehead and wish you didn't know what words are

in mood/songwriting/everything else this feels like a complete photonegative of trench and i'm really about bands that make these kind of hard right turns between records

"mulberry street" -> "formidable" is the part of the album i could credibly describe as sophistipop

it's mostly just i hate the sound of his rapping, he just sounds like a less technical eminem or something and it's not pleasant

his rapping is more pleasant than his singing

https://i.ibb.co/fQn4050/21pilots.png

no security or anything - just now on Rock Werchter (Belgian festival)

the grin when he walks back to the stage at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9UOzYPu24