Blog Post #1: Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots

1.     What is the context and how did that influence the work?

The song “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots is largely about the stress facing teens and young adults. Today’s teenagers are faced with more challenges than any generation before. In an American Physiological Association 2013 stress survey stated, “31 percent of teens report feeling overwhelmed as a result of stress, 30 percent say that they feel sad or depressed as a result of stress, and 36 percent report feeling tired or fatigued because of stress”. The expectations of teenagers drive them to ignore their limits by taking extremely challenging classes and pursue extracurricular activities not for fun, but for their resume.

“Stressed Out” also talks about the necessity for the stress being placed onto young adults shoulders while also showing the immense pressure facing kids today. With a broken economy and poor job market facing almost every country around the world, students must be the best of the best in order to make money, the primary goal of our society. Twenty One Pilots have gained more and more popularity for their authentic emotion in the past year. They have come along way from Columbus Ohio, having recently been dubbed “the Biggest New Band of the Past Year” by Rolling stone magazine.

2.     What is the artist communicating and how?

Twenty One Pilots communicates both the emotions of being stressed out, frustrated, and nostalgic for easier times while also communicating the origin for these emotions. Twenty One Pilots communicates the emotion of being stressed out by sharing what initially causes being stressed out, being people’s opinions and his level of talent as a musician.

Twenty One Pilots also communicates being stressed out with the tempo and mixed rhythms of the song. The fast tempo of the stanzas and the slower calmer chorus also juxtaposes the emotions of stress and nostalgia. Placing the lines focused on the past in the chorus shows the desire of returning to simpler times, that Twenty One Pilot’s communicates. The fast paced chorus communicates wishing that things were simpler like in the past while the main content of the song is slower and communicates Twenty One Pilots feeling of stress and frustration at the world.

      Twenty One Pilots’ use of repetition and rhyme communicate the cycle of stress and wishing for things to be different. Placing a large amount of rhyme in the last few lines of the song calls attention to the conclusion Twenty One Pilots’ want’s their audience to come away with. It adds emphasis on the importance the world puts on conformity in order to obtain monetary success.

3.     Why do you find it beautiful?

I find “Stressed Out” Twenty One Pilots beautiful because of the way that I can connect to it emotionally. Being real about the desire to return to innocence and dreams, is something I think everyone connect too. Being raw and allowing catharsis from its audience is what makes this song so beautiful. It has emotionally charged lyrics and great rhythm that allows me to both mentally and physically experience the song. Being at the time in my life in which I am deciding where I will spend my next four years, and possibly what I will spend my life it’s easy for me to connect to this song. By connecting with it and feeling emotions of the song while listening to it allows me piece of my mind, which I find beautiful.

            I also find the repetition of the song incredibly beautiful. The emphasis and contradiction of childhood innocence and the required greediness of adulthood creates stress throughout the entirety of the song that is felt organically in life as well. “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots is beautiful because of the way it combines real emotion and complex rhythm to form such an organic emotion that everyone feels, stress.