I Feel Better in the Cellar

Breach Review Series Part 4

I’ve been spending a tonnnn of time worrying about this post because I didn’t know if I could do this song justice. I still don’t know if I was able to accomplish that, but I’ve procrastinated long enough, so here it is.

But first, story time

I never really thought of twenty one pilots as a Christian band.

Whenever I first heard about them at first, I realized that it is accepted as fact throughout the fanbase that both Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun are Christians. But my first interaction with the band’s music was Scaled and Icy, specifically the music videos for “Choker” and “Shy Away.” I immediately concluded that there was nothing “Christian” about this band or their music, and I held on to that belief for about a year, despite eventually becoming a dedicated fan.

But though I was able to ignore my worries most of the time, I was always anxious that these guys were no different from any other pop artist.

Somewhere along the line I realized that I couldn’t stop being a fan of twenty one pilots, but I should still learn as much as I could about them. So I started watching interviews and compilation videos on YouTube, because I am of this generation. I learned that these guys are big old comedians.

Then I began looking into the lore and ended up even more confused. But after that, I realized there was more of their music that I hadn’t heard, even after listening to their main albums over and over.

So a little over a year ago now I got into their really old music (Twenty One Pilots, Regional at Best, and Tyler’s solo project, No Phun Intended). I found a whole lot of Christian themes here. I will briefly give a few examples.

1. The Twenty One Pilots song “A Car, a Torch, a Death” tells the story of a man who has to drive off and leave his wife alone in their house, though he doesn’t want to. He knows if he leaves she’ll come under attack. In a moment of desperation, he states, “I begin to understand why God died.” The theme of this song is sacrifice; the man is willing to die so that his wife can keep living, and a direct parallel is drawn between this and Jesus’ willingness to give up His life for the church.

2. The last song on Regional at Best is called “Clear,” and I’ll refer back to it later. It ends with the words “I sing of a greater love/Let me know when you’ve had enough.”

3. Several No Phun Intended songs mention God by name. “Drown” contains the line “I’m back in front of you, Lord, with blood on the floor/Is the blood mine or yours?/Don’t wanna do this any more.” And the second pre-chorus of “Save” says “Jesus, Jesus, I will ask/Please save!”

But Tyler wrote all of these songs over 15 years ago. He’s obviously a different person now than he was then, in more ways than one. These examples don’t represent the kind of music they make now. Or do they?

A drag path

To date, eight twenty one pilots albums have been released. Two were released independently, six under the supervision of their label.

A thread runs through all of these albums in some way or another, and the story that began in Trench (or Blurryface, depending on how you look at it) ends with Breach.

This album is the end. Tyler has introduced the main conflict and the villain who needs to be defeated (Blurryface), the people he’s found to help him in this fight (Trench), and the tools he’s going to use (Scaled and Icy). He came to a point where he was doing better, but he had not been fully healed (Clancy). And finally, it’s time for the final battle that we saw play out in “City Walls.”

Breach tells a story all on its own, and it’s told in chapters. The first chapter is the songs “RAWFEAR,” “Drum Show,” “Garbage,” and “The Contract.” The last song in that list ends the chapter on a note of desperation and defeat. And now, “Downstairs” is going to explain more clearly what that defeat is, and how it can be overcome.

Now let’s go downstairs

Before I get to the verses, I want to start with the chorus:

Downstairs
I feel better in the cellar, down there
It’s some shelter from the weather, I wear
All of my heart of my sleeve
I’ll take what I believe, and I’m hidin’ it

Musically, this is one of my favorite melodies ever. And here is a poorly-taken screenshot of the sheet music for a portion of it:

The melody itself moves progressively downward. We are being led downstairs, but only to see what is happening there. We see that Tyler hides himself down there, along with what he believes.

Downstairs is a place to hide from the weather, external circumstances beyond one’s control.

Downstairs is a place to hide what you don’t want other people to see.

The idea of going downstairs and hiding is like the idea of a retreat. It’s a cowardly move; the chorus acknowledges that it’s for no reason other than “I feel better” hiding from everything—but not even everything, just the weather.

And though the cellar is “some shelter from the weather,” it isn’t a place to hide from everything.

But that last line of this song’s chorus, “I’ll take what I believe, and I’m hidin’ it,” is the most important one of that section.

So far, the situation the lyrics of “Downstairs” are describing doesn’t seem like a very good thing. The chorus is supposed to be the thesis of the song, the high point where you get up and dance because you’re hearing something fun or motivating. But the thesis of this song appears to be that Tyler is hiding what he believes, and that’s a very negative, and kind of odd, thesis for a song to have.

What can’t he hide from?

If the rest of the song weren’t the way that it is, we would have a problem. You could just read those lyrics and think that hiding is something he’s proud of. So I think it’s time to talk about the first verse.

You can have all I’ve made and all I’ve ever known
You can have both my lungs if You ask me so

Tyler has a habit of speaking to an unnamed “you” in many of his songs. It refers to different people in different places, but I’ll go ahead and establish that in this song he’s talking to God; it’s pretty obvious from the lyrics anyway.

Additionally, the song comes in softly, with gentle, sweeping synth chords. The reverence in Tyler’s voice makes it feel even more like a prayer.

And so far as the lyrics go, he’s completely surrendering.

The verse continues,

‘Cause I-I-I wanna be the one after Your own heart
But I-I-I might doubt the process like I doubted the start

“I wanna be the one after Your own heart” is a reference to David. 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22 both call him a man after God’s own heart.

And while David is known for many things, he was, in addition to being a giant-slayer and king of Israel, a poet and a musician. He is credited with writing most of the Psalms, and was skilled on the lyre.

You found me downstairs

Downstairs is a place to hide from the weather and from other people, but you can’t hide there from an omnipresent God. What happens when conviction starts to creep in?

So I’m beggin’, oh-oh-oh mercy
I’m beggin’, oh-oh-oh mercy

This pre-chorus was what really got me. I still want to cry every time I hear it. It’s something about the touch of autotune and the fact that there’s really nothing in the background. It stands out.

And because it stands out, I believe that this is the thesis of the song, not “I take what I believe, and I’m hidin’ it.” That’s the central conflict; but this song is really a plea for mercy. Mercy is God’s justified wrath withheld; judgment is justified when sin has been committed. The sin? “I take what I believe, and I’m hidin’ it.” Christians are called to be bold in their faith. When challenged, the Holy Spirit will give them the words to say.

So why would Tyler not be bold like that?

Sounds of empty Uzis

The second verse answers that question. It goes like this:

Feelin’ like I’m nothin’
Feelin’ like I’m run-down
Was afraid of nothin’
Now I’m just ashamed how
I hide my face from You

We see the feeling of failure. This is what leads to the pre-chorus’ plea for mercy.

“Was afraid of nothin’” is the reason given for hiding downstairs. “RAWFEAR” came only a few songs before this one; it portrayed fear as a motivator rather than something that paralyzes. We now see what fear motivates Tyler to do: hide. The line in that song, “sound of empty Uzis,” already implied that he really never had anything to be afraid of.

He was only afraid of the idea of turning people away with brashness. This is why he started hiding in the first place, and we see it in the song “Clear.” Here, Tyler lays out his whole reasoning for hiding what he believes within the lyrics of his songs. He believes it will be more impactful if people have to look for it. They have to want to find it.

So this is why Tyler started to hide his beliefs, but why does he continue to do it? Begging for mercy is one thing, but eventually there has to be repentance.

Dirty and Wretched One

Following that second verse we get another “oh mercy” pre-chorus, a repetition of the chorus, and then comes the bridge, which has some of the most heart-piercing lyrics I’ve yet heard:

Oh, what have I become?
Dirty and wretched one
Am I unholy land?
Have I forced your hand?

The line “Am I unholy land?” is, I think, a reference to the Parable of the Sower, which compares the gospel to seeds that are scattered on the ground. There are different types of ground, or land, and some of them are receptive and the seeds grow well, but some of them are not. I’ll leave the rest up for interpretation.

But if you thought that Tyler was proud of the fact that he hides his beliefs downstairs, allow me to point out the line where he refers to himself as “dirty and wretched one.”

And how does he compensate for that? We’ll get there in upcoming posts.

Change It Up

And here we get something that twenty one pilots had only done once¹ before: a key change. I want to give a quick shoutout to the key of D-flat major. You are an excellent key, and you have served your purpose well, but we are moving on to E-flat. Thank you.

This key change does three things of note.

First, it grabs your attention. This song is very important. It has to stand out, and in this way, it is forced to. It’s similar to “Ode to Sleep” in this way. That song also contains many repeated shifts in mode and feel, from the anxious and almost creepy E minor verses to the bouncy and optimistic G major choruses.

Second, the key change paints all the lyrics you’ve already heard in a fresh light. “I feel better in the cellar” hits so different from the previous ones because it’s hitting notes you aren’t necessarily expecting to hear. The notes fit in E-flat, but your ears are so used to D-flat they feel strange and especially punchy. At least, that’s how they hit for the first time for me. It almost felt like I could hear more clearly, going from a key with five flats to one with three.

Third, it gives new momentum to a longish song that could have simply faded out and ended. But it’s able to keep going for a minute and a half longer because the modulation introduces something new, and the chorus has to be allowed to play out so you hear all of it in E-flat.

But even after the chorus is done, the song is not through. It has done a lot already; how do you end a song like this?

It ends, not with a falsely triumphant “I’ll take what I believe and I’m hidin’ it,” but with a repetition of the first verse, at first layered into the chorus, hiding in the background, but eventually breaking out to sound out on its own:

You can have all I’ve made and all I’ve ever known
You can have both my lungs if you ask me so
‘Cause I want to be the one after your own heart
And I might doubt the process like I doubt the start

And with one final swell of the synth, the song simply cuts out.

Final Takeaways

This song is a surrender, not a revel, and though he never states it explicitly, it’s pretty plain to see Who Tyler is surrendering to.

“Downstairs” is a little rough around the edges when it comes to its sound, but overall, it does so much with so little. Its minimalistic approach relies heavily on synth, piano, and drums, highly similar to the style of Vessel. That’s because this song was originally a demo called “Korea.” It first came into existence around the same time as Vessel, but it wasn’t fully developed until now.²

One thing that twenty one pilots accomplished astoundingly well with this song was making it feel shorter than it really is. “Downstairs” clocks in at just under five and a half minutes long. Many lyrics are repeated several times; every chorus has the same four lines repeated twice. But as the listener, you don’t really notice because the song is constantly shifting and changing up rhythms, dynamics, and even the key signature. Breach is, from start to finish, a masterclass in how to intrigue listeners.

As far as lyrical content goes, “Downstairs” is something of a milestone along the drag path. “Doubt” back in 2015 asked God,

Don’t forget about me
Even when I doubt You,
I’m no good without You

“Leave the City” (2018) was a bit of a low point:

I’m tired of tending to this fire
I’ve used up all I’ve collected, I have singed my hands
It’s glowing, embers barely showing
Proof of life in the shadows dancing on my plans

And though 2021’s Scaled and Icy tried to convince us that “It’s a good day,” it ended up being even lower and emptier than anything before.

“Backslide” (2024) expressed desperation at once again falling into bad habits:

I’ll take anything you have, if you could throw me a line
I should’ve loved you better, do you think that now’s the time?
You should let go, it’s over my head

And Breach exists in extremes. We see even more desperation in songs like “City Walls” and “The Contract,” but it’s contrasted with the surrender and peace found within songs like “Downstairs.” Which side will win? We’ll get there. But for now, this has been my analysis of “Downstairs.” I think I’ll be talking about “Center Mass” next, so stay tuned for that.

1. I’m referring to “The Run and Go,” which is structured similarly to “Days Lie Dormant,” and modulates twice. If you count “Time to Say Goodbye,” then this list now includes four songs.

2. One might use this as reason to argue that this band isn’t really making “Christian music” again, this song is just a leftover from years past. But the lyrics of a few other songs on this album (new songs) make it pretty clear that this argument is unfounded.