Tyler Robert Joseph (born December 1, 1988) is an American singer, rapper, songwriter, musician, and record producer best known as the frontman of the musical duo Twenty One Pilots alongside bandmate Josh Dun. He has recorded nine albums: one solo, and eight with Twenty One Pilots. As part of the duo, he has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, of which he has won one.
Tyler Robert Joseph was born on December 1, 1988, in Columbus, Ohio, to Christopher Anthony Joseph and Kelly Joseph (née Stryker). He has two younger brothers and a younger sister. His mother was a math teacher in the Olentangy school district before being named Olentangy Orange High School's basketball coach in 2013. His father was born to a Lebanese father and an American mother and was a coach at Worthington Christian High School from 1996 to 2005, as well as being a former school principal.
Joseph was homeschooled in his childhood. His first real exposure to music was the Christian rap rock group DC Talk, and one of Joseph's favorite bands is indie rock band The Killers. Joseph cites Canadian actor and comedian Jim Carrey as another influence, saying that Carrey "helped raise me". Joseph played basketball from a very young age and went on to play point guard for Worthington Christian. In 2008, the varsity basketball team placed second in the Division IV state tournament. Future Twenty One Pilots bassist Nick Thomas also played on the same team as Joseph, the pair having performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" together at one of their games.
After seeing a songwriter perform at a High Street Club, he rejected an opportunity to play basketball at Otterbein University along with a scholarship to the university. He began playing music after finding an old keyboard in his closet, a Christmas gift from his mother, and began to mimic various radio melodies. From around 2007 to 2008, Joseph recorded a solo project titled No Phun Intended in his basement. It was later revealed that Thomas contributed guitar to several songs on the album.
Among Joseph's first performances with Twenty One Pilots, he recounts that his mother would often stand outside Ohio State University giving away tickets to his shows. "She'd be like, 'Come see my son play music'", Joseph says.
Between 2007 and 2008, before assembling the band Twenty One Pilots, Joseph recorded a variety of songs. On November 30, 2008, Joseph uploaded six of these songs to his PureVolume account, titling the release No Phun Intended. The album was recorded in Joseph's senior year of high school from 2007 to 2008, in his basement. The six tracks were "Taken by Sleep", "Drown", "Tonight", "Save", "Hole in the Ground", and "Blasphemy" in that order. Some of Joseph's earlier music has been reworked into Twenty One Pilots recordings. It was later revealed that aside from Joseph, bassist Nick Thomas contributed guitar to several songs. The song "Save" off the release, was redone and released as a free download for some time on Twenty One Pilots' official website before it was pulled.
The project became unavailable in 2015, and PureVolume itself shut down in 2018.
2009–present: Twenty One Pilots
Twenty One Pilots was formed in 2009 in Columbus, Ohio and consisted of frontman Joseph, bassist Thomas, and drummer Chris Salih; the latter two left the band in 2011.
On December 29, 2009, they released their debut, self-titled album and began touring Ohio, followed by their second album, Regional at Best in 2011, which consisted only of Joseph and newly recruited drummer Josh Dun.
Twenty One Pilots' third full-length album, Vessel, was released on January 8, 2013. They also embarked on a tour in support of the album, in which they named the "Quiet Is Violent World Tour".
On March 17, 2015, the band announced their fourth album's title, Blurryface, and unveiled its track listing and release date. The band's fans crashed their website attempting to pre-order the album. The album was released on May 17, 2015, two days ahead of its intended release date. Joseph and drummer Josh Dun embarked on two international tours in 2015 and 2016: the Blurryface Tour and Emotional Roadshow World Tour. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, the duo won the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.
On July 11, 2018, the band announced the release date of their fifth studio album, Trench, which was released on October 5, 2018. A world tour, called The Bandito Tour, began on October 16, 2018, as well. On July 25, 2018, a music video for the song "Nico and the Niners" was released, as a second addition to a three part music video series, regarding Tyler Joseph's fictional city, "Dema". A 10-second snippet of the song "My Blood" was played at the end of a commercial for Trench during the 2018 VMAs on August 20. On August 27, 2018, a Twitter user leaked the full song onto his Twitter account in low quality, after they found that it could be played on their Apple HomePod. The leak was confirmed real when the band made the song available on streaming services later that day as the album's fourth single. The audio was uploaded onto YouTube on the same day, which shows singer Tyler Joseph in his home studio playing the song's bass line. A music video for the song was released on October 5, 2018, the day of the album's release.
On April 9, 2020, the band released a new single "Level of Concern". The song's lyrics reference the anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the accompanying music video for the track filmed in Joseph and Dun's homes while they were under lockdown due to the U.S. state and local government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Joseph directed a portion of the song's proceeds to Crew Nation, a charity for live music crews who cannot be paid during the international quarantine.
On December 8, 2020, Twenty One Pilots released a Christmas song, titled "Christmas Saves the Year", during a Twitch livestream hosted by Joseph. Originally, Joseph was reluctant to write a Christmas song, although he said that he was inspired by the fact he was "experiencing Christmas through a little girl's perspective". The sound of the track was inspired by a musical instrument called the Mellotron.
The duo's sixth studio album, Scaled and Icy, was released on May 21, 2021.
The duo's seventh studio album, Clancy, was released on May 24, 2024, nine years after the release of their breakthrough album Blurryface. The lead single for the album, "Overcompensate", was released on February 29, 2024. On March 18, Joseph announced that each song on the album would have an accompanying music video, with all of them having been released alongside the album.
On May 21, 2025, the duo announced their eighth studio album, Breach, for release in September. Its lead single, "The Contract", was released on June 12, accompanied by a music video. On July 15, Joseph posted a video to many of his social media accounts that showed him writing the tracklist for the upcoming album. On August 18, "Drum Show", the second single from Breach, was released. Similarly to "The Contract", this release was also accompanied by a music video. Breach was released on September 12, with the third single, "City Walls", and its music video released on the same day.