Tyler Joseph

At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, the duo won the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Tyler Robert Joseph (born December 1, 1988) is an American singer, rapper, musician, songwriter, and record producer.

He is best known as the frontman for the musical duo Twenty One Pilots, alongside bandmate Josh Dun.

Across his career he has recorded eight albums: one solo, and seven with Twenty One Pilots.

He has been nominated for six Grammy Awards as a member of the duo, of which he has won one.

Joseph was born in Columbus, Ohio and has two younger brothers, Zack and Jay Joseph (the latter of whom is also a musician), as well as one sister named Madison Brett.

His father, Christopher Anthony "Chris" Joseph, is half Lebanese 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.

Joseph played basketball from a very young age and went on to play point guard for Worthington Christian.

In 2007, Joseph began uploading short comedic skits and videos to a YouTube channel named "slushieguys".

The channel currently has over 122 thousand subscribers as of February 2024, despite not uploading any content since 2013.

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 in his basement.

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.

On November 30, 2008, during his senior year of high school, Joseph uploaded six of these songs to his PureVolume account, titling the release No Phun Intended.

The six tracks are "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.

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.

His mother, Kelly Joseph (née Stryker), was a math teacher in the Olentangy school district before being named Olentangy Orange High School's basketball coach in 2013.

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".

In 2015, the project became unavailable, but the No Phun Intended tracks and other songs from this time period were collected by fans and assorted into compilations.

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.

On July 2, 2018, Joseph's song "Going Down" and an untitled demo surfaced on the Internet, years after the initial discovery of No Phun Intended.

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.