The music video “Stressed out” by 21 pilots is about the stresses of getting older and the nostalgic feeling of being young without responsibility. The music video explores many interesting techniques that enhance the themes. The theme of youth and getting older is depicted through the color scheme.

The song starts out with a long tracking shot that shows the singer riding down a neighborhood with a kid’s tricycle. He rides up to one of his friend’s house and they share in a handshake. They are in the main living room and then they head outside and are having some juice. They go to the singers house and go up to his room. Then there is dramatic setting change when they show up in a full white room sitting on their beds while their family gazes down on them. There is a clear color scheme throughout the song that depicts the color red as youth and the color black and being an adult. There are two main colors in the video and the video is about two different stages on life.

 In the first shot when the singer comes out he is wearing a red backpack and a red hat while also wearing mostly black. The singer also has his neck and his hands painted black showing a contrast in the two colors. The black on his neck and hands represents adulthood creeping up to him. As the setting changes to his friend’s house more red appears. In his friend’s house the back wall is red and shows a sign that says “Faith Family Friends” as like a sign a family would have. The style of the sign is a happy family sign that a standard family with children would have. In the scene there is only one wall that is red while the rest are white. The placement of the sign was deliberately on the red to make a correlation between the color red and the depiction of youth. 

The message of the color scheme develops clearly when he enters his friend’s house and says “Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days, when our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out”. When the singer says “but now we’re stressed out” he takes off his red hat. The singer has had this bold red hat on the entire song and he takes it off once he mentions growing up. The move itself shows him getting older because the red symbolizes youth and the action of taking the hat off is removing the youth now that he is older and stressed out. The next scene when he is referring back to his youth the hat is back on his head. This shows the direct correlation to the color red and the youth of the singer. 

Later in the song it shows the singer and his friend sitting in a bed facing towards the sky with their family looking down at them. The two are wearing bright red clothes and they are resting their heads on red pillows. The family which consists of all adults are all wearing black while looking down at the two friends. The singer says “We used to play pretend, give each other different names, We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away, Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing at our face Saying, "Wake up, you need to make money"”. This part of the song is reminiscing about the past with his friends and his wild dreams that every kid has. The singer is still holding onto this youth and that is why they are still wearing red. The adults in this scene are all wearing black and telling them to get over their childish ambitions. The black represents how they are adults and no longer hold onto those childish dreams. That is why the families that are wearing black are looking down at them. The notion of looking down on someone shows that they are above a person. 

In the last 30 seconds of the video the tone entirely changes. It starts out by changing the singer’s voice to a really angry deep voice. His voice is eerily relatable to a demons. The setting switches from the family friendly neighborhood to the singer staring at you up close with creepy red eyes. His red eyes are made very clear and stick out to the viewer. The color red has had a happy nostalgic feel but has turned into anger. The image is only from the singer’s neck upwards. The background of the singer at this point is pitch black, again relating to adulthood. His demeanor of the singer changes from a nostalgic look to one of anger. He finishes off the song with saying “We used to play pretend, give each other different names, We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away, Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face, Saying, "Wake up, you need to make money"”. With the lower voice and red eyes these lyrics are not said in the same way. The lyrics about the past are now said in anger as opposed to nostalgia. The lyrics have been repeated but they don’t have the same effect. The change reveals that there were darker times in his past and it all wasn’t great. As the end of the song comes he is looking at the viewer in the eyes while most of the song he has looked upwards to signify looking into the past. The song finishes with him staring at the viewer vanishing into a black screen. In the end the black screen is there to show him becoming an adult. The choice to have him fade into the darkness rather than just cutting off into darkness reveals him becoming an adult. Black and red are chosen because they are darker colors and usually don’t project happiness.

“Stressed out” by 21 pilots was as high as #2 on the billboard hot 100 and the video has won awards for its quality. The song is a part of their album “Blurryface” which is a recurring line throughout the album. The theme of youth and getting older is depicted through the color scheme.

  