TWENTY ONE PILOTS AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN IN NEW YORK CITY

Twenty One Pilots are currently out on “The Icy Tour” in celebration of their most recent 2021 album Scaled and Icy. The duo took a stop at the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City for a sold out show and reminded everyone exactly why they deserved to sell out the venue. If you’ve never been to a Twenty One Pilots show before, you are absolutely missing out on quite the experience. 

The night started off with a performance of the track “Good Day”, the opening track to the most recent album. The duo appeared on stage sporting ski masks that covered their faces, as they generally do, and came out from a door on the stage floor. After a short video transition they went into “No Chances”, dropping the curtain on the stage to expose the full stage setup, including lights in the shape of the symbol from the album. They elevated the performance early on with the addition of snow falling from the ceiling while vocalist Tyler Joseph stood in the middle, lit by a spotlight and wielding a guitar for the outro. Yes, you heard that correctly - snow. Tyler Joseph pulled off his mask for his face reveal and then ran and jumped off the stage, the crowd screaming wildly in the background. Drummer Josh Dun filled in this space with a sick drum solo. All of this happened within the first two songs alone, really solidifying for the audience that they were in for a wild night. 

Throughout the performance the audience were hit with tons of other fun additions including laser lights, smoke/steam/fire shooting up from the stage, fantastic visuals from large LED screens spanning the length of the stage, and tons more snow falling upon them from above. The fanbase, known as the Skeleton Clique, were fully invested in every single aspect of the performance - dancing along and singing to every lyric. Josh Dun is a phenomenal live drummer, blasting away on the kit the whole performance and always giving you something to be impressed by. At one point, Tyler ran back to a B-Stage to perform a medley of songs and to thank everyone for being with them for so long throughout their career. During the performance of “Mulberry Street” on this stage, he had everyone hold up their phone lights and to raise them up depending on what lyric was being sung and what section they were in, creating a very interactive and really cool lighting effect around the arena. The B-Stage performance also included a medley of “Addict With a Pen”, “Forest”, “Ode to Sleep”, “Hometown”, “Bandito”, and “Choker” - a span of songs from every album release they’ve done. When it was time to take things back to the main stage, Tyler dove off the B-Stage onto a mattress on the crowd and was crowd surfed back to join the rest of the band on stage for the campfire acoustic part of the set, which involved an actual campfire on stage. He had the audience crowd surf his ukulele on the mattress separately before continuing the set (which gave me a good laugh because of how silly and lighthearted this was - just a tiny ukulele being carried on a huge mattress). 

During this next portion of the set, the back of the GA floor actually had a whole conga line going during the track “Nico and the Niners”, led by a fan who had a plushie of the beloved Ned character held high above their head. If one thing’s for certain, it’s that Twenty One Pilots have fostered a beautiful community amongst their fanbase. You could have gone to one of their shows alone and certainly left having made new friends. 

For the rest of the set, they pulled out the heavy hitters from their tracklist including “Jumpsuit”, “heavydirtysoul”, and “Level of Concern” to name a few. When it was time for “Ride”, Tyler ran out into the audience in the seated area of the arena to perform in a couple spots. When it was time for “Car Radio”, fans already knew what was coming - he would be running to the back of the venue where a small, high platform stood for him to climb up. He stayed up here, sporting the famous beanie for the performance of “Stressed Out” before making his way back to the stage to meet up with Josh again. A small video transition played before Josh and Tyler stepped back out from the stage floor door again to perform their encore tracks, “Heathens” and “Trees”. There are certain things you’ve come to expect from Twenty One Pilots if you’ve seen them before, and “Trees” is one of those things. The two ended up on their platforms on top of the audience, playing drums as confetti shot off during the end of the song. Josh and Tyler took to the stage, arm in arm to bow for the audience before leaving them with their famous phrase, “We are Twenty One Pilots, and so are you!” 

If Twenty One Pilots come around to your area, they are not an act to miss. Their songs translate better live than you can imagine, and they always have something up their sleeves to elevate the performance. I’ve been lucky enough to witness 7 shows from the group now, and it never gets old. It truly is an experience getting to see them live and I highly recommend making it out to a show if you can.