Twenty One Pilots don’t do anything small. The Columbus, Ohio duo of singer/guitarist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun are fans of expansive world-building who’ve cooked up an alternate universe filled with evil empires, oppressed subjects and mysterious forces across a series of albums featuring more hidden clues than Taylor Swift’s Easter basket.
But, like all good things, every story has to come to an end eventually — and for 21P, the final chapter in their long-running Blurryface saga has arrived in the form of their seventh studio album, Clancy. The 13-track collection was originally timed to drop exactly nine years after the Blurryface album, which introduced fans to a title character that Joseph has said represents his (and our) insecurities and anxieties.
On the 2018 concept album follow-up, Trench, the duo introduced the character Clancy and additional elements of a shadowy alternate cement-walled world called Dema on the continent Trench, governed by a group of nine totalitarian bishops and their leader, Nico, who are trying to keep down a rebellion by the Banditos. The story continued on 2021’s Scaled and Icy, a more pop-leaning effort on which Nico was betrayed and narrator Clancy escaped to a an island where he was give the same powers as the Bishops.
Always happy to let their music do the talking, the duo have not spoken at length about the conclusion of the story told on Clancy. The album opens with the ominous first single, “Overcompensate,” a classic combo of Dun’s skittery, hard-hitting drums and Joseph’s signature mix of singing and rap-like cadence over lyrics that sprinkle in bits of the ongoing mythology.
As always, Joseph’s storytelling seamlessly intertwines personal struggles with big picture storytelling, from suffocating anxiety that feels life-threatening (“Next Semester,” “Backslide”), to the dread of insomnia (“Routines in the Night”) and the knot-in-stomach ache of a painfully shy person forced to keep brave-facing it in public appearances to keep the show going (“Lavish”).
The album bears the expected hallmarks of the pair’s by-now-familiar rock-meets-beats sound and vision, layered with some new wrinkles of frenetic, punky new wave (“Navigating”) and gentle 1970s AM radio balladry (“The Craving (Jenna’s Version)”).
Keep reading to see how Billboard ranks the songs on 21P’s new LP Clancy, from worst to best, below.
Joseph has mastered the art of turning his anxiety into arena-worthy shout-along anthems, but this song’s draggy, laconic pacing and spare instrumentation don’t exactly match the striking refrain, “If I’m gonna snap necks, then I gotta snap back.” Unless, of course, that’s the point.
This song is a tight encapsulation of the 21P oeuvre, opening with bird song, a gently strummed ukulele and Joseph crooning about tracing a route back to his beloved. As the beat picks up on this six-minute journey (which ends with more birds and a hidden uke-strummed coda seemingly wrapping up the Clancy saga), the lyrics come into focus as they reveal a tale deeper than a literal death-defying swim to safety and security.
21P excel at the slow-build song where Joseph languidly sings his way into higher register as his stress level rises, only to down-shift into a lament about the road not taken, or a wrong turn. In fact, one of the key lines of this mid-tempo track appears to be a mea culpa for the poppiest of songs from the band’s previous Scaled & Icy album, “Saturday,” with Joseph singing, “Kind of wishing that I never did ‘Saturday.’” The urgency of “Backslide” ramps up near the end, with the singer keening, “I should have loved you better/ Do you think now’s the time you should let go?” as the song dissolves into a jazzy keyboard squiggle.
A dreamy, slow-rolling ballad about the terrors of the nighttime and things that go bump in your brain, “Routines” is another rap/sung anxiety monster that feels like the fitful moment before your eyelids finally droop, afraid of what the dark might bring. Over a metronomic beat and keyboard washes, Joseph perfectly encapsulates what it feels like to battle insomnia when he gently sings, “While all the worlds asleep, I walk around instead/ Through the memories, down the halls of my head.”
One of the more ambitious pieces on Clancy, “Vignette” opens with an orchestral flourish and floats in and out of a variety of moods — from the violin-spiked opening to a rappy opening verse, wistful pre-chorus and in-the-rafters falsetto refrain, where Joseph sings, “Clinging to promises, fighting off the vignette/ Tunnels cave, visions fade, swallowed by the vignette.” The whole thing tumbles to a close with 1970s-style burping keyboards and the repeated mantra, “No no, not me, it’s for a friend.”
Opening with carnival-like organs and a far-away sounding Joseph vocal, this reggae-tinged pop-rap tune has one of the more entrancing choruses on the album — for a song that, like some of the best 21P tracks, doesn’t settle on one genre for very long. After the sweetly crooned refrain, “Welcome to the new way of living/ It’s just the beginning of lavish from the floor to the ceiling,” the track hop-scotches through a pair of rappy verses with shades of Eminem flow, before downshifting back into a dreamy wind-out groove.
Joseph’s plucky bass line propels this speedy, somewhat predictable rocker, which feels like a throwback to the band’s earlier days with its pile-on mix of staccato drums, buried keyboard drones and bright piano. “Indigo” occasionally flares with the pyro-ready energy that fuels some of 21P’s most endearing live set pieces, as the lyrics probe time anxiety.
Nobody wants to be seen at their worst moment. Who can relate? While this fairly by-the-numbers 21P has a predictable mash-up of crisp Dun beats and a booming, guitar heavy swell for the chorus. The message about keeping your loved ones close when you need them (but more importantly, when they need you) is vital: “So please keep in mind/ Check on your friends/ Every once in a while/ Even if they say/ At the risk of feeling dumb, check in.”
As someone who has seen 21P at least a dozen times, listening to Clancy kept turning into a game of, “What will this look like live?” And “Oldies Station” feels like it will be the kind of track that the Skeleton Clique fan group will heartily embrace for its lyrics of demon-overcoming encouragement (“Make an oath and make mistakes/ Start a streak you’re bound to break”) and a “When the darkness rolls on you/ Push on through” refrain that will surely be shouted to the rafters.
There comes a time in every 21P show (and album) where Dun takes a powder from bashing his kit to pieces to let Joseph strum his acoustic and get into into singer-songwriter mode. This beautifully spare campfire ballad (with whistling!) about fretting whether the love you give is equal to the love you get is a gem that you can already picture lighting up an arena with phone flashlights. And, check out the way Joseph’s voice breaks just perfectly near the end when he sings, “But I swear that I will give more than I take away.”
The album’s bull-rush first single initially bops along on Dun’s crisp drumming before down-shifting into a less hectic pace, as Joseph rhymes/toasts lines larded with Clancy mythology references to the “bend symbol,” the “prodigal son” and bowing “to the masses.” It’s of a piece with the kind of shout-along crowd-pleasers that inevitably become an integral part of the all-are-welcome, high-energy 21P live experience.
A chaotic new wave sprint, “Next Semester” is full-tilt boogie 21P, with Dun playing triple-time beats over Joseph’s frenetic yowls about the terrors of anxiety (including the line “can you die of anxiousness?”). The frantically-beating-heart pace slows near the end as Joseph gently strums his acoustic, crooning, “It’s a taste test of what I hate less/ I don’t want to be here” on a track about contemplating suicide and feeling like you don’t belong, but also can’t find a way out.
Clancy highlight “Navigating” has elements of Berlin-esque new wave keyboard pop that practically screams for a video featuring a parade of parachute pants, guyliner and swoopy hair. (The band announced that they were pushing the album’s release date back by a week in order to finish making videos for every track, so there’s hope for a Flock of Seagulls-esque visual.) The second half of the song adds in a thrumming bass line that wouldn’t be out of place in a New Order B-side as Joseph stresses over losing his connection and feeling the finality of it all after his grandmother’s death.
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