“Chlorine” by Twenty One Pilots

"Chlorine" comes from Trench, Twenty One Pilots' 2018 album, and Fueled by Ramen sent it out as the record's fifth single early in 2019. Tyler Joseph wrote and produced it with Paul Meany of Mutemath, and he plays nearly everything on it himself: piano, keyboards, synthesizer, ukulele, bass and electric guitar, with Josh Dun on drums, percussion and backing vocals and Adam Hawkins mixing.

It slides between trip hop, rap rock and electropop, and its subject is creativity as a kind of cleanser, something that scrubs away dark impulses even as it brings its own sting. Critics singled out how catchy and how restrained it was next to the band's earlier work. It missed the Hot 100 altogether, but it became the duo's fifth number one on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and the first Trench track to go platinum.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.