In the mid-’10s, Twenty One Pilots became one of the biggest crossover acts in pop music, scoring a trio of top five hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Billboard 200 with its Blurryface album. A decade later, the Pilots hadn’t matched that crossover success on either chart, with no additional top five singles and a number of top five albums, but no subsequent number ones.
That is, until this week. On the Billboard 200 dated Sept. 27, the duo’s latest set Breach — marking the apparently final entry in the decade-long narrative the group started with Blurryface — bows at No. 1. The set posts 200k in first-week units, not only besting even its Blurryface total from 2015, but also bettering the debut number from any other rock album yet this decade.
How did the duo manage this performance? And what other rock acts could rival that number in the years to come? Billboard writers answer these questions and more below.
1. Twenty One Pilots’ Breach debuts atop the Billboard 200 with a career-best 200,000 first-week units. On a scale of 1-10, how excited should Twenty One Pilots be about that performance?
Kyle Denis: 10. I don’t see how anyone wouldn’t be over the moon after pulling off a career-best opening week, especially when they debuted 16 years ago. In 2025, cracking 200k first-week is nothing to scoff at for pretty much anyone. And it’s incredibly impressive that Twenty One Pilots did this as a rock act without a current crossover hit.
Gil Kaufman: 10. For a group that — as they noted at their tour kick-off in Cincinnati last week — has been around for more than 15 years and never knows if its new music will hit, this is a huge deal. Whether you believe the perpetual “rock is dead” mantra or not, rock has been largely missing from the top of the 200 as of late. Landing the biggest debut for any rock LP in six years is a monumental feat for a group whose chart success hasn’t always matched its steady, and still-growing, live appeal.
Jason Lipshutz: A 10. This is a statement opening week — a veteran artist returning with a ton of excitement and a physical-product promo blitz, scoring a notably huge debut number, and reasserting their commercial power unequivocally. Twenty One Pilots have been earning top 5 album debuts for over a decade, but Breach becoming their first chart-topper since Blurryface — which was their mainstream breakthrough in 2015, with their career-best first-week total — is the type of accomplishment that can re-frame the legacy of a group for those who hadn’t been paying close attention. More artists wish they could notch a game-changing No. 1 debut like this one.
Andrew Unterberger: Gotta be a 10, right? A number even half as big would’ve still been pretty impressive for the duo at this point in its career, but 200k with no major hits or pop-cultural momentum behind it? That’s a jaw-dropping number, and one that shows how successfully Twenty One Pilots has tended to its fanbase over the years, making sure that even at times when not many new fans were jumping on that no one old was ever jumping off, and continuing to slowly-but-surely grow the core audience to where it is today.
Christine Werthman: A No. 1 album and some career-best numbers? No-brainer: That should register as a big 10 on the excitement meter. On top of that, this is the biggest debut for a rock album since Tool’s Fear Inoculum in 2019. Does this thing go to 11?
2. That 200k number is going to be an eye-opener for a lot of people who assumed that the duo’s popularity had declined with its radio dominance. What do you think is the biggest reason the Pilots were able to have such an impressive debut for Breach?
Kyle Denis: I think there were several factors at play. First, Breach had the luxury of arriving as the final installment in a decade-long album series consisting of Blurryface (2015), Trench (2018) and Sealed and Icy (2021). That hype from fans who have patiently followed the series and unpacked the band’s lore is priceless; it also helps that the duo started dropping teases for Breach during the final dates of the Clancy World Tour.
Moreover, Breach was available across 15+ vinyl variants, three deluxe CDs and various streaming platforms, giving fans ample opportunity to collect different versions of the record, some of which house bonus tracks or alternative cover art. Finally, 21P’s Josh Dun has been a hot topic across socials, particularly TikTok, thanks to the news of him and wife Debby Ryan (a Disney Channel icon for mid-late Gen Z) expecting their first child. Even if the Breach singles weren’t necessarily crossing over à la “Ride” or “Stressed Out,” the band’s celebrity certainly did.
Gil Kaufman: The proof is in the band’s live draw. This just-launched tour opened with a 21,000-capacity sell-out of a soccer stadium, with the feeling that it could have been even bigger. This band’s die-hard fans, the Skeleton Clique, not only buy merch in fistfuls, but they came with their own home-brewed gear, knew every lyric to all of the new songs from an album out less than a week, and ride or die for the duo, in an emo-Swiftian fashion.
Jason Lipshutz: A combination of in-demand physical releases — including 15 vinyl variants, which contributed 72,000 copies to that 200,000 total — and music that continues to connect. In addition to Breach wrapping up the multi-album Clancy arc for hardcore fans, the album also included another alternative radio smash in “The Contract,” and set up another arena tour for the duo. While this No. 1 debut is much bigger than expected, Twenty One Pilots is still a very popular band, with a catalog of hits and lots of industry support for their new music.
Andrew Unterberger: Everybody loves a happy ending, right? Can’t say I could really explain the plot the duo’s albums have (mostly) been following since Blurryface, but the superfans certainly can — and they were definitely looking forward to what the final installment held in store.
Christine Werthman: Sales contributed a large part to the album’s success, thanks to 15 vinyl variants, three deluxe CD boxsets, a standard CD and more available for purchase. The vinyl alone accounted for 72,000 units, which, according to our own Keith Caulfield, makes it the largest vinyl sales week for a rock album since Luminate started electronically tracking in 1991.
3. “City Walls” debuts at No. 83 on the Hot 100 this week, the only song from the set to reach the chart thus far. Does it feel like it’ll grow into a long-lasting hit for 21P, or is it just an album-release week blip?
Kyle Denis: I think album-release week certainly helped get the song on the Hot 100, but I’m unsure of how much steam “City Walls” will sustain in the coming weeks. Between the big-budget music video and “Heavydirtysoul” (from Blurryface) sample, this could be the song to get casual 2015-era 21P listeners back on board. For what it’s worth, I’d love a world where “Downstairs” gets the single treatment.
Gil Kaufman: That is not the song I think will have legs. Based on the response during the show, the wildly catchy “Drum Show” — featuring the first vocals from silent but deadly drummer Josh Dun — or the super-pop (for them) “Garbage” could/should be this LP’s breakout hits.
Jason Lipshutz: “City Walls” might be my favorite Twenty One Pilots single since “Jumpsuit” — it’s spacious, moody, a little bit gritty and a hell of a lot of fun to blast with your windows down on early-autumn drives. A shape-shifting, five-minute alt-rock single is not a safe bet to scale the heights of the Hot 100, but I could certainly envision “City Walls” sticking around rock platforms for a while, as a type of late-career jam that logs month after month in heavy rotation.
Andrew Unterberger: Put me down as another one who thinks “Drum Show” will ultimately be the song from Breach that really sticks — but “City Walls” is a great album opener, and a worthy first Hot 100 hit from the set, even though I sorta doubt it’ll be hanging around the chart for too long.
Christine Werthman: “The Contract” and “Drum Show” preceded “City Walls” as singles and didn’t do this well, so it seems like a possible good sign that this latest song has more staying power and isn’t a blip. That said, it is the first song on the album, which could explain some of the repeat plays that will eventually taper off. It’s also over five minutes long and isn’t quite as memorable as, say, “Stressed Out,” so I don’t have enormously high hopes for its longevity.
4. While this is its first No. 1 album in a decade, each of Twenty One Pilots’ four new albums since 2015’s Blurryface have made the chart’s top three. What lessons, if any, would you take from the chart longevity of Twenty One Pilots as an albums act?
Kyle Denis: Deliver good music, never take your core fan base for granted, and bring your music on the road. 21P had one of the splashiest top 40 crossovers of the mid-2010s, but instead of abandoning its base to continue chasing a mainstream pop audience, the duo remained committed to its sound and ethos. In doing so, their later career hits (“Jumpsuit,” “Level of Concern,” etc.) arrived on their own time without needing to be chased down. Furthermore, since launching the Blurryface Tour in 2015, there have only been two calendar years (2020 and 2023) during which 21P was not carrying out a headlining tour. Getting your music in front of consumers and connecting with them on a face-to-face level will always be important!
Gil Kaufman: See previous answer about their Clique. Like Phish or Taylor Swift or The Dead, 21P have created a universe for their fans that is a self-sustaining mechanism, even if the hugeness of it doesn’t always translate into huge chart success. From grade-schoolers who paint their faces and hands black like singer Tyler Joseph — along with their parents — to groups of friends who show up in costumes modeled on the knotty four-album Blurryface epic saga, 21P have forged an ecosystem that may not always spin off hits, but will seemingly always bring out masses of superfans. The die-hards will always check out the new music, but the proof is in the foot traffic.
Jason Lipshutz: While bands like My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park played to huge audiences this summer after prolonged breaks in activity, Twenty One Pilots have taken the opposite approach, grinding out albums and tours and making consistency part of their brand. The mainstream explosion of Blurryface was always going to be hard to replicate, and to their credit, the duo haven’t really tried chasing more hits — they’ve simply followed their muse, made for a reliable radio and touring band, and set themselves up for a commercial renaissance when the time and music was right.
Andrew Unterberger: I’ll always think back to 2018, when the duo was readying Blurryface follow-up Trench, and they tabbed the bass-freakout, near-metal throwdown “Jumpsuit” as the set’s first single. In the short term, the song basically immediately ended the duo’s run as crossover stars, but in the long term, perhaps it helped establish Joseph and Dun as artists who followed their own muse above all else, and who trusted their fans would understand even when radio and streaming didn’t. Looking back in 2025, you can’t say they haven’t been validated there.
Christine Werthman: For Twenty One Pilots, it seems like if they release it, the fans will come; they’ve got a loyal fanbase that shows up for their releases. It’s not quite a replicable lesson for other acts, but it seems to hold up, considering the band’s success, even when they aren’t popping off on radio. As for any other important takeaways, what about: rock fans love vinyl? Eh? An untested theory, but perhaps.
5. The first-week total for Breach is the highest debut for a Billboard charts-classified rock act so far this decade. Who’s another rock outfit that you could see outdoing that number by decade’s end?
Kyle Denis: If all goes according to my plan and Imagine Dragons headlines the Super Bowl halftime show before 2030 — and launches a new album in conjunction with the performance — my money’s on them.
Gil Kaufman: If they were inclined to do so, the reunited Oasis could smash the charts in a massive way with their first album in nearly two decades, given the rabid response to their hell-froze-over comeback.
Jason Lipshutz: If My Chemical Romance ever decides to pair a stadium tour with its first new album in over a decade, watch out — the commercial returns will be astronomical. We’ve got four years and change left of the 2020s. Let’s make it happen, boys.
Andrew Unterberger: Sleep Token is already pretty close — give the band another album or two and 200,000 may very well be within striking distance.
Christine Werthman: I think Sombr has big potential for big numbers. He gets my vote.