Leave the City

Album: Trench (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun are both graduates of Christian schools, and even though Twenty One Pilots aren't a Christian band, both members are believers. However this solemn and poignant piano ballad finds Joseph admitting to a crisis of faith.

    Last year I needed change of pace
    Couldn't take the pace of change
    Moving hastily
    But this year, though I'm far from home
    In Trench I'm not alone
    These faces facin' me


    Joseph began to question his beliefs during the grueling tour cycle for Blurryface. He explained to Alternative Press: "[The song is] definitely about losing faith, which I've been working through on this record. It's something that may have moved the needle for me during the last record and touring cycle. Trench, is like, saying I found the sense that I was there. But [actually saying], 'Guys, I know where it is, follow me,' and you're going to come to our show and I'll tell you about it? I don't have that yet.

    But at the very end of [the song], it says, 'These faces facing me, they know what I mean.' That's me onstage, looking at them, maybe - at least for the record - that was the place I was trying to get to all along."
  • "Leave the City" is the closing track of Trench. The album describes a world in which Tyler is trapped in a walled city called Dema. This song describes the point when he decides he will one day leave Dema, but is content with staying alive for now.

    "I really thought it was a great way to close the record," he said. "Once I started creating [the song], I knew that I [wasn't] going to name the place I'm going: I'm talking about the world I'm from; I'm talking about the world I'm traveling through, but I never really reach the place I'm trying to get to. It's not because I'm holding on to some secret: You're looking at someone who is still trying to figure out where that place is."

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