OKAY LANE BOY THEORY TIME.
Soooo at first when I saw the video for “Lane Boy” I was confused, but let’s face it, that’s how I feel whenever I first watch a video of theirs. Then I thought about it, and I think I have an okay understanding.
When the people in the hazmat suits get on stage, one has “fame” written on them and the other has “success.” Tyler says, “Why do I kneel to these concepts? Temped by control, controlled by temptation. ‘Stay low’, they say. ‘Stay low.’” And that whole song, lyrically, coincides with that, and is about challenging the music industry and how there are so many things wrong with it.
Tyler talked in that issue of Alternative Press with Fall Out Boy on the cover (issue #323) about how since he has been involved in the music industry, he has realized how calculated and unauthentic everything is. Everything is to make money – artists are expected to write a single specifically that can be played on the radio. So many artists write what they know people want to hear and what they know for a fact will be played on the radio. Artists and bands are turned into products. Many artists don’t even enjoy the music they play. All of this surprised and upset Josh and Tyler, as they had never really thought about writing a song specifically for radio.
Basically the guys were saying a big polite “fuck you” to the music industry with that song (“all these songs I’m hearing are so heartless//don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless” - “I’m in constant confrontation with what I want and what is poppin’// in the industry it seems to me that singles on the radio are currency”…there are a bunch of lyrics that say that).
I think the hazmat suits represent the “fame” and the “success” and the danger that those two concepts can create in the music industry- the lack of authenticity. And that danger is represented by the hazmat suits, which he obviously talks about in the song. Tyler says “I’m sorry if the question that I asked last scared you bit like a hazmat…” and the question that he “asked last” was “but will they be alive tomorrow?” And I always thought that that question was referring to the people in the industry who “stay in their lane,” or “stay low:” the products, the people who do what they’re told to do and write perfect radio singles. Will they be alive tomorrow? Will those bands and artists last? Probably not. But a band like Twenty One Pilots, who “go where we want to” might survive by doing just that.
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