Lyric discussion by LindRawr 

Cover art for Forest lyrics by Twenty One Pilots

I always felt like this song was about worries, fears, and problems that you can never really leave behind and trying to escape from them momentarily even though you know in the back of you mind they are still there. In the first verse it gets into these problems, "wanting to be listened to" not "heard" and being bothered when others have the same name. Then after another verse it ends with "So let's think of something better" and the chorus starts. I think the "forest" represents a place to escape to and "singing" as something to tune out your problems with. When they mention the chorus being one that everybody knows I imagine it's because it's supposed to be "normal" and "expected" which is what he is trying to be by avoiding his problems and putting up a front. The "hands held higher" and "we'll" be on fire" part is the problems catching up to him. Then in the next verse he addresses them: "Quickly moving towards the storm Moving forward, torn into pieces Over reasons of what these storms are for I don't understand why everything I adore Takes a different form when I squint my eyes

Have you ever done that, when you squint your eyes And your eyelashes make it look a little not right And when just enough light comes from just the right side And you find that you're not who you're supposed to be? This is not what you're supposed to see"

In these verses he has stepped out of the forest and is slowly coming back to the reality of his situation. That nothing is perfect and the harder he focuses on it, the worse the problems seem. After spending so much time away in his "forest" he has forgotten his own problems and when they suddenly show up again he panics and they seem 10x worse. Hence:

"Please, remember me, I am supposed to be king of the king Devil swinging on the swing, something happened in my imagination The situation's becoming dire, my treehouse is on fire And for some reason I smell gas on my hands This is not what I had planned"

In fear he runs back to his "forest" and continues to ignore his problems.

My Interpretation

i feel like the eye lash thing is supposed to be much more literally taken for some reason. I've found myself doing it, so i related it. Sometimes things youre so used to just seem a little different, you see from a different perspective and you feel insignificant.

I get that his treehouse is his escape or even his dreams or hopes, referencing his childlike aspirations. But as he grew up, through all the changes that took place in his life, he inadvertently set fire to those dreams....aka he changed to degree where he can't go back.

@LindRawr I agree, but I also think that when he talks about his tree house, he's talking about his dreams and goals. But then when he says that it's on fire and he has gas on his hands, I think he's saying that he thinks that the goals and dreams are childish and he is never going to accomplish them, so he destroyed them, like in We Don't Believe What's On TV from Blurryface when he says "We have all learned to kill our dreams."

@LindRawr I was going to quote the two parts that you quoted from his rap verse. I have anxiety, and I relate to some of these lyrics so much, it just feels like he's describing exactly how it makes me feel.

"I don't understand why everything I adore takes a different form when I close my eyes", followed by the part about the eyelashes and such. That's just what it's like for me. And then in the end of it all, the anxiety attack or the panic attack, when I start to get ahold of myself again... "my tree house...