They’re Twenty One Pilots and So Am I: My Clancy World Tour Experience

Clancy World Tour spoilers ahead!

When Twenty One Pilots said “Welcome back to Trench,” they were NOT joking. 

The alt-rock, electropop-esque duo opened night one of two at the United Center in Chicago on October 1 with Clancy’s lead single “Overcompensate.” (A banger if I do say so myself). When Josh Dun started hitting those drums and Tyler Joseph made his entrance, I was one hundred percent in it. Not that I would have any other choice, considering the duo demands the full attention of every person in the arena –– even the dads who act like they don’t want to be there. They definitely deserve it, and I’ll show you why…

PHOTOS BY ALYSSA GOLDBERG

After the first slapper of the night (Wait what? Wait what?) Joseph jumped down from the stage to stand ON TOP of the fans at the barricade as he got into the next song of the set, “Holding On To You.” While this barely scratches the surface of the trust that have in their fans, it’s still an amazing thing to witness in person. But maybe what tops this is the best drummer in the entire universe (my totally humble and totally honest opinion), doing a backflip off of Mr. Tyler Joseph's piano! Very cool!

For all you synth lovers out there, I would recommend going to a Twenty One Pilots show on this tour simply to see “Vignette” live. Joseph goes crazy with it, I’m not exaggerating when I say my jaw dropped. In addition to the insane synth solo, they even do magic tricks! During the classic hit “Car Radio” from one of their earlier records Vessel, you’re assuming that Joseph is at his piano, y’know, as he normally would be, until a spotlight hits somewhere in the 200s sections and HE’S UP THERE?! Okay, sure, why not? 10/10, Harry Houdini would be proud. As he makes his way to the stage, a video starts playing on the screens of fans who had waited outside the arena all day leading up to the show. The fans, most clad in red and black, start “The Judge” from the duo's 2015 album Blurryface before Joseph returns to the stage to finish it out. 

If there’s something that Twenty One Pilots do really well (besides like…everything), it’s transitioning their songs live. “The Craving” into “Tear in My Heart” was one of the best things I’ve ever experienced in my life (I’m very normal about Twenty One Pilots if you can’t tell). Also, while I love “Shy Away,” I’d like to take this time to say justice for Scaled and Icy. Tyler Joseph if you’re out there, more SAI on the setlist in the future, please. We won’t take it for granted this time, I promise. 

PHOTO BY ALYSSA GOLDBERG

After 2016 smasher “Heathens,” Dun left the stage, walking between the lower bowl and the pit, high-fiving fans as he made his way to his B-stage setup while Joseph was nowhere to be found. When we see Joseph again, he’s on the big screens making his way from backstage, carrying a chair with him as “Routines in the Night” starts. He follows the same path as his bandmate, instead putting the chair down and sitting in it right in front of the fans at the barricade. One thing about Twenty One Pilots fans is, for the most part, they’re extremely respectful. The fact that the guys can trust their fans enough to do things like that is very telling of the relationship they’ve built together over the years, and if I think about it too hard I will cry. Anyways! After Joseph walked around the entirety of the pit barricade, he finally ended up at his own B-stage, a piano ready and waiting for him. In this part of the show they do some oldies, blending together “Addict With a Pen,” “Migraine,” “Forest” and “Fall Away.” The crowd then gets involved during “Mulberry Street,” as Dun leaves his B-stage and Joseph instructs them to turn on their phone flashlights and lift them when he says to, lighting up the venue in an perfectly coordinated pattern, which was extremely fun.

Dun returns after the song, dressed as Torchbearer (it’s a whole thing, you just have to know the lore) and brings Clancy (Tyler Joseph…again, it’s a whole thing) his jacket and they make their way back to the stage, watching as the fictional city of Dema is set ablaze. That part was…phenomenal. My jaw was dropped, I can’t lie. The duo then got into “Navigating,” which makes sense because the music video is extremely lore-heavy. Then comes “Nico and the Niners.” East is up…if you know you know. 

If you heard that I cried during “Oldies Station”, no I didn’t (yes I did). That’s all I have to say about that. Next was “Fake You Out” and “Guns for Hands,” which went extremely hard. The entire arena was involved for this part of the set, but in my opinion, it’s extra exciting to watch the pit during the songs that require the most crowd involvement. Watching the hands moving, the people jumping in unison, just everything. There’s something so special about being at a Twenty One Pilots show specifically, and I think it really boils down to how you can feel the trust and love in the room. 

PHOTO BY ALYSSA GOLDBERG

The aforementioned trust and love then shift to something a little more weird as “Lavish” starts. Not a bad weird, a good weird. Welcome to the new way of livin’, y’know? Dun and Joseph lock arms and walk down the stage together in holy matrimony set to the track of the year, but not before Dun naturally takes his shirt off (a Chicago jersey, thank you very much) and pretends to throw it to different people in the crowd before finally turning his back to the pit and tossing it behind him, never to be seen again. They then begin “Ride,” another smash hit of theirs. During this part of the set, Joseph finds himself back at B-stage and invites a member of the “new generation of Twenty One Pilots fans” (that being a little kid) up to finish the song with him, which was genuinely the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. 

Back on the stage, the duo started “Paladin Strait,” the closing track of Clancy. I’m very grateful for this song live because it gave us Josh Dun vocals! Next was “Jumpsuit,” the first track from the 2018 album of perfection Trench. (Happy belated birthday Trench!) They smashed through new track “Midwest Indigo” before we were back in 2015 with the absolute classic “Stressed Out,” which again, gave us Josh Dun vocals. Bless up. 

They of course ended the night with “Trees” as they always do, but for this tour, they placed a red circle on the floor of the pit. Joseph made sure to have the fans open that circle before security brought in a set of drums for Dun and keys for Joseph. They made their way through an aisle made by the fans for them to safely get through the pit. When the guys were set up on their platforms, the crowd closed in, eager to be close to them for the end of the show. “Trees” live is an otherworldly experience, there’s simply no other way to put it. When the confetti came down, all I wanted to do was cry but all I could actually do was smile. As corny as it sounds, it was a very “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” moment. 

After listening to this band for the last nine years, this was my first time ever seeing them live, but not for a lack of trying. Although for me this show was more like a try-not-to-call-Tyler-Joseph-’pookie’-challenge, and as much as I would’ve loved to attend any of their other tours, I’m almost glad this was my first experience. Like a lot of their fans, they got me through some of my worst years when I was a teenager and I had no idea what the future held for me. Now, as a 23 year old, I got to see one of my favorite musicians perform a song about how he's pushed through and made it to this moment, just like I did. (“Oldies Station” supremacy!)

Anyways! If you want to see Twenty One Pilots and probably be slightly less sappy than me, they’ll be on the Clancy World Tour until May 2025, so don’t miss it!