In my interpretation, “Forest” by Twenty One Pilots is about growing up, and in the process, losing your childhood, your dreams, and your idea of a perfect life. The forest represents childhood, where he is happy and stress-free. He can go back to the forest to reenter the calm childhood state, but only temporarily before reality sets in, and he is stressed once again about his life. “I scream, you scream, we all scream cuz we’re terrified, of what’s around the corner. We stay in place cuz we don’t wanna lose our lives.” The uncertainty of the future is so terrifying that it is sometimes easier to just stand still. Trying to progress your life when you don’t know what you are doing is stressful, and as kids, we never knew it would be this way.
- What Does Stressed Out Mean
- Blurryface Lyrics Meaning
- Twenty One Pilots Heathens
- Blurryface Stressed Out
What Does Stressed Out Mean
In almost all of his songs, he has a portion where he is doing this half sing, half rap type style, which sounds like him talking really quickly, where he presents the most thought provoking lyrics. The part starts a little past the halfway mark of the song, and is anticipated by the tempo getting faster and louder, followed by these insanely deep lyrics:
Twenty One Pilots - Stressed Out Lagu bertajuk 'Stressed Out' yang dibawakan oleh Twenty One Pilots ini adalah sebuah lagu yang menggambarkan dirinya sebagai Blurryface atau tentang kekhawatiran yang ia miliki dan kegelisahan hebatnya bernostalgia tentang masa kecil yang ia miliki. My InterpretationI think this song is about growing up and realizing that you are human and that you don't quite live up to the ideals that society tells you you should. For example, society tells you 'Don't care what other people think!' I think this song references that by saying 'My names Blurryface and I. In it, the protagonist indirectly kills twenty-one pilots by selling plane parts which he knew were faulty, knowing that had he not sold them he would have lost money he needed and tainted his business's name. The band's website says the name was chosen because we are all facing moral dilemmas frequently, and that the 'right' answer is usually the one that seems tough at the time but will ultimately end up for the better.
Blurryface Lyrics Meaning
“Quickly moving towards a storm
Moving forward, torn
Into pieces over reasons
Of what these storms are for
I don’t understand why everything I adore
Takes a different form when I squint my eyes
Have you ever done that?
When you squint your eyes
And your eyelashes make it look a little not right
And then when just enough light
Comes from just the right side
And you find you’re not who you’re supposed to be?
Moving forward, torn
Into pieces over reasons
Of what these storms are for
I don’t understand why everything I adore
Takes a different form when I squint my eyes
Have you ever done that?
When you squint your eyes
And your eyelashes make it look a little not right
And then when just enough light
Comes from just the right side
And you find you’re not who you’re supposed to be?
Twenty One Pilots Heathens
This is not what you’re supposed to see
Please, remember me. I am supposed to be
King of a kingdom or swinging on a swing
Something happened to my imagination
This situation’s becoming dire
My tree house is on fire
And for some reason I smell gas on my hands
This is not what I had planned
This is not what I had planned.”
The “storm” he is quickly moving towards is everything in his adult life. He is starting to wonder what the point of it all is. The stresses of adulthood are starting to overwhelm his mind, and he is beginning to have an existential crisis about it all. “Quickly moving towards a storm moving forward torn into pieces over reasons of what these storms are for,” he is being destroyed trying to figure out the point of everything in life, the joy, the misery, the hardships, the “storms”. Going through life, the storm, he realizes that when he “squints his eyes,” looks at his life from another perspective, he turns out not to be the person his childhood self thought he would be. “This is not what you’re supposed to see, please, remember me I am supposed to be King of a kingdom or swinging on a swing something happened to my imagination this situation’s becoming dire my tree house is on fire and for some reason I smell gas on my hands, this is not what I had planned, this is not what I had planned.” As a kid with no knowledge of the real world, he imagined he would be something great when he grew up, like a king, and that life would be fun, but now those thoughts are gone, and they never became reality. The tree house burning represents his childhood dying, and the gas on his hands represents that he was the one who accidentally destroyed his childhood, and imagination, by getting consumed with the stress of reality. This part is sung/ talked extremely quickly, so quickly that you cannot distinctly hear all the words without looking up the lyrics. It is sung that way to show how pressing the matter is, and how quickly the stress is building up in his mind as he loses control over his life’s path. He does not realize until it is too late, until his dreams and stress-free life are up in flames, never to be recovered. The verse ends with him pleading that “this is not what I had planned.” He did not mean to kill his imagination, to have his childhood slip away, and to grow up into this stressed out, scared, miserable adult. It just happened. He never planned for it, but he ultimately is the one who caused it, “my tree house is on fire and for some reason I smell gas on my hands,” his childhood self is being destroyed, and he accidentally destroyed him. He did not “plan” this, it comes with growing up. He just grew up, got wrapped up in the adult world, and lost the person he had planned to be in the process, now left with an unrecognizable life.
Please, remember me. I am supposed to be
King of a kingdom or swinging on a swing
Something happened to my imagination
This situation’s becoming dire
My tree house is on fire
And for some reason I smell gas on my hands
This is not what I had planned
This is not what I had planned.”
The “storm” he is quickly moving towards is everything in his adult life. He is starting to wonder what the point of it all is. The stresses of adulthood are starting to overwhelm his mind, and he is beginning to have an existential crisis about it all. “Quickly moving towards a storm moving forward torn into pieces over reasons of what these storms are for,” he is being destroyed trying to figure out the point of everything in life, the joy, the misery, the hardships, the “storms”. Going through life, the storm, he realizes that when he “squints his eyes,” looks at his life from another perspective, he turns out not to be the person his childhood self thought he would be. “This is not what you’re supposed to see, please, remember me I am supposed to be King of a kingdom or swinging on a swing something happened to my imagination this situation’s becoming dire my tree house is on fire and for some reason I smell gas on my hands, this is not what I had planned, this is not what I had planned.” As a kid with no knowledge of the real world, he imagined he would be something great when he grew up, like a king, and that life would be fun, but now those thoughts are gone, and they never became reality. The tree house burning represents his childhood dying, and the gas on his hands represents that he was the one who accidentally destroyed his childhood, and imagination, by getting consumed with the stress of reality. This part is sung/ talked extremely quickly, so quickly that you cannot distinctly hear all the words without looking up the lyrics. It is sung that way to show how pressing the matter is, and how quickly the stress is building up in his mind as he loses control over his life’s path. He does not realize until it is too late, until his dreams and stress-free life are up in flames, never to be recovered. The verse ends with him pleading that “this is not what I had planned.” He did not mean to kill his imagination, to have his childhood slip away, and to grow up into this stressed out, scared, miserable adult. It just happened. He never planned for it, but he ultimately is the one who caused it, “my tree house is on fire and for some reason I smell gas on my hands,” his childhood self is being destroyed, and he accidentally destroyed him. He did not “plan” this, it comes with growing up. He just grew up, got wrapped up in the adult world, and lost the person he had planned to be in the process, now left with an unrecognizable life.
Blurryface Stressed Out
This is just my interpretation of the song, and of specific lyrics in it. Everyone interprets songs differently, which is the beautiful thing about music, it can mean different things to different people, and all are valid. If you have your own interpretation, or a comment about mine, feel free to leave a comment here, or tweet me @PhilosophMusic.
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Philosophical Music
There is no doubt that the trials of adulthood can be stressful. Stressed Out by Twenty-One Pilots is a song that nearly every adult can relate to. It uses easy to understand words and has a bouncy rhyme scheme that not only makes the song catchy but improves the general understanding behind the meaning of the song. I believe that within all of us there is a longing for the “good old days”, the days of when we were children, and free from responsibility. In the song, the writers skillfully utilize ethos, logos, and pathos to show what they mean by being “Stressed Out”. Who better to know about the stresses of the adult life, then someone who has lived through those stresses themselves? The ethos in the song is established by the fact that the writers are adults. The writers have the experience of living through the stresses and insecurities of being an adult as well as the societal and necessary pressure to conform and get a job. This pressure is reiterated in the line “Wake up you need to make money!” that is repeated multiple times towards the end of the song. The writers are wishing for a simpler time when they weren’t under the pressures of being an adult.
Both the song lyrics and the video have a core ethos that they share. The trend of ethos in the video is somewhat more noticeable than the ethos in the song because of the visuals provided, but still just as complex. Whereas in the song the writer is simply stating that he wishes he could turn back time, in the video, he brings the audience back in time with him to see the things that he experienced as a child.
In the opening scene of the video, we are shown Tyler, Twenty-One Pilot’s lead singer, riding down the street on a tricycle, like a child might do. Later on, in the video, the band is shown wearing backpacks as if they had just let out from school, and they go home and enter what looks to be a bedroom decorated for a young boy. With this description, the writer is telling the listeners so much more than just his expression of nostalgia for his childhood, he is bringing the audience back to show them the positive things of his childhood, and then in that setting, the writer expresses the longing.
The official video follows along with the
Both the song lyrics and the video have a core ethos that they share. The trend of ethos in the video is somewhat more noticeable than the ethos in the song because of the visuals provided, but still just as complex. Whereas in the song the writer is simply stating that he wishes he could turn back time, in the video, he brings the audience back in time with him to see the things that he experienced as a child.
In the opening scene of the video, we are shown Tyler, Twenty-One Pilot’s lead singer, riding down the street on a tricycle, like a child might do. Later on, in the video, the band is shown wearing backpacks as if they had just let out from school, and they go home and enter what looks to be a bedroom decorated for a young boy. With this description, the writer is telling the listeners so much more than just his expression of nostalgia for his childhood, he is bringing the audience back to show them the positive things of his childhood, and then in that setting, the writer expresses the longing.
The official video follows along with the