2020, so all of a sudden I was a stay-at-home dad working on music. 2020 was going to be a year of travel and it turned into a year of me at home writing a record. We were going into that “victory lap” on our last record with some festivals and a few headline moments and all that obviously got upended.
What was your original plan for this year and last before the world went sideways? ( Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.) For Joseph, it was a chance to reset and give the band’s fiercely loyal fans a taste of the next iteration of 21P before he sets off “in another direction” with the follow-up that’s already in his head.īut first, Joseph talks with Billboard about why he embraced his inner Earth, Wind & Fire, why he’s not afraid of leaning into his pop side and how the more somber album closer “Redecorate” might be a bridge to what’s next. 3 on the Billboard 200 album chart this week - got a coming-out party during a kaleidoscopic, ambitious day-of-release livestream that had the band performing most of the tracks on custom sets built in their hometown arena. “Or I could make a right-hand turn and kind of escape from that feeling.”
“When I first started writing in 2020 I could go one of two ways: I could make a left-hand turn here and really lean into what I felt like everyone was feeling, this ominous world is ending feel,” Joseph tells Billboard about his creative fork in the road moment during COVID lockdown. Coming out of the global pandemic lockdown, Joseph and drummer Josh Dun U-turned from the dense, frenetic concept album’s twisty storyline and jittery emotions to a breezy, 37-minute buzzbomb of tracks such as “Good Day,” “Mulberry Street,” “Saturday” and “Bounce Man.”Īnd, rather than taking what Joseph jokingly referred to as a planned “victory lap” of arenas and festivals to close out the Trench cycle, the hard-touring duo suddenly found themselves with an abundance of empty calendar pages for the first time in a decade.
For a band whose music has often delved into the struggles of navigating life with an anxious, worried mind, S&I is, indeed, a buzz and a light.