The song at #7 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Tear In My Heart” by twenty øne piløts. It’s one of six songs by them on this list, more than any other artist or band, and they’re my current favorite music act. Although the talented duo, consisting of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, had been putting out music since 2009, it was this song that introduced me to them in April 2015. I instantly loved it and became a huge fan, bingeing on their back catalog of music, especially their brilliant album Vessel.

“Tear in my Heart” was the second single from their phenomenal fourth album Blurryface, which I think is one of the greatest albums of the decade, and also ranks among my all-time favorites. The song peaked at only #82 on the Billboard Hot 100, but reached #2 on the Alternative chart, where it also ended up as the #6 song of 2015. It spent four weeks at #1 on my Weekly Top 30, and was my favorite song of 2015.

The delightful song of love was inspired by Joseph’s marriage to his wife Jenna a month earlier. Not only do I adore the song’s unusual stop-start arrangement, lively melody, colorful instrumentation, and Joseph’s wonderfully quirky vocals, I also love the endearing lyrics about the contradictory emotions of joy and agony that often come from romantic love: “The songs on the radio are okay. But my taste in music is your face! And it takes a song to come around to show you how. She’s the tear in my heart. I’m alive. She’s the tear in my heart. I’m on fire. She’s the tear in my heart. Take me higher than I’ve ever been!”

The humorous video shows Joseph and Dun performing the song in L.A.’s Chinatown, with the people around him barely paying attention. Eventually, the surrounding buildings begin crumbling as Joseph notices Jenna in a group of people, and follows her down an alley and into a restaurant. She sings to him the opening lyrics of the song: “Sometimes you’ve got to bleed and know that you’re alive and have a soul“, to which he responds: “but it takes someone to come around to show you how“, whereupon she starts beating him until he’s bleeding. The video ends with them kissing.