Wiki
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Length
3:36
“The Outside” expresses frontman Tyler Joseph’s criticisms toward the music industry as a whole, commentary on the monotony of mainstream music, and his reservations that what is considered mainstream will replace twenty one pilots.
Tyler uses a variety of metaphors (e.g. a Megalodon and Megatron) to express a sense that the band was once a leader in their music due to their success during the Blurryface era when many of their songs topped the charts, but now that time has passed and the Megalodon faces extinction as well as Megatron watching the cogs he once stepped on rising up. “The Outside” expresses the inevitability of how the music industry moves on from one artist to the next and highlights Tyler’s bitterness towards the industry and how it prioritizes non-controversial, non-challenging music.
This is not the first time Tyler has been bold in declaring his criticisms. On twenty one pilots 2011 hit “Holding On To You,” he wrote:
"Lean with it, rock with it, when we gonna stop with it?
Lyrics that mean nothin', we were gifted with thought."
And on 2015’s “Lane Boy” he says:
"Don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless."
Tyler has always been at odds with music that is thoughtless, but “The Outside” sees him tired of having this argument and even accepting that if twenty one pilots can’t be mainstream, they will still make music from the outside.
Additionally, listeners can read “The Outside” as a confrontation with Dema and their control over Tyler’s character and his music.
The “The Outside” made its live debut on May 26, 2021 as part of The Livestream Experience, the same day the studio version was released as part of "Scaled And Icy". While this performance has not been officially shared post-stream, its audio was remastered and released as part of the "Scaled And Icy (Livestream Version)" album.
It was later performed for the Corona Capital Festival at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City on November 21, 2021. The performance video was released later on December 16.
A tweet promoting the performance video also teased that a music video would be filmed after the year-end holidays.
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