Sorority Noise Frontman Reimagines Twenty One Pilots Hit

The biggest new rock band in the world right now doesn’t have a guitarist. They’re the Ohio duo Twenty One Pilots, made up of singer / songwriter / keyboardist Tyler Joseph and his best friend, percussionist Josh Dun. Their music is essentially inescapable — the pair has managed to combine certain adolescent anxieties with dark pop hooks that resonate both within the Hot Topic crowd and well outside of it. At their best, they combine genres in a fashion that feels inventive; at their worst, Joseph’s speak-sing can become a Sublime-tinged rap — if their 2015 title track “Blurryface” wasn’t so damn catchy, the white guy hip-hop move might’ve been distracting. “Tear in My Heart,” the first single from their last LP, identifies with the former's genre-meddling, and that’s perhaps what drew Sorority Noise frontman Cameron Boucher to it.

Boucher’s songwriting style is vastly different from TOP’s — it’s heavily guitar-driven. Cameron’s voice sits on top on his band’s instrumentation and is instituted instinctively, economically — he sings when there’s a story to tell, screams when the narrative needs some help along the way. Covering a massive radio hit like “Tear in My Heart” seems like a far removal from that.

In listening, his creative impulse was to slow it down, to rearrange it into a heartbreaking song that feels less single and more like his penchant for sensitive storytelling. It’s both beautiful and somber.

Boucher said of the song:

When I was home for winter break last year, my little brother Connor showed me this song. It’s truly a hit, like, objectively great. [It’s] catchy, the pacing is really great, and the way the choruses develop are akin to the way the Killers have done it. I’m particularly taken to this song, specifically because the dynamics allow for it to take its full stride, so I thought it would be interesting to try and take it in the opposite direction and see how it worked … so I made this rearrangement and made the mistake of showing it to my dear friend Maria!

I apologize for nothing. Listen to Boucher’s cover of “Tear in My Heart” below.