Imagine Dragons
Have become a case study for rock music fading out of the zeitgeist. The rise of the Las Vegas rock band in 2013 coincided with the in the format’s popularity, yet, remarkably, they were a runaway success.
Their breakthrough hit, “,” stayed on the Hot 100 chart for a record-setting 87 weeks. They turned down their guitars and turned up every expensive synth pad known to man, and exactly one later, they were one of the biggest new rock bands in the country. How did Imagine Dragons become so huge despite the fact that the average American couldn’t pick out a single Dragon in a lineup? Their sound is kind of like the machine learning output of the Lumineers, the Chainsmokers, and a SoulCycle playlist.
Imagine Dragons
After the breakout success of “Radioactive,” Imagine Dragons’ sophomore record, Smoke + Mirrors, topped the Billboard chart in its first week. Their third album, 2017’s Evolve, sold 147,000 copies in its first week, an incredible amount in the streaming era. It had the inescapable “Thunder,” a song that bored itself deep into the collective consciousness thanks in part to a mind-numbingly catchy chorus and ubiquitous Microsoft and Jeep ads. Since Imagine Dragons scaled to a mass audience so quickly, their songs have had to stay just as huge. They make low-hanging-fruit music, which can be great in theory, but because of all the styles it stitches together, their songs something more distant and mutated. On their new album, Origins, Reynolds finds himself on the other side of the personal darkness that shaded Evolve, emerging with a more positive outlook, a world-weary curiosity now turned outward. Reynolds feels compelled to turn his attention to this modern life, outlining his grievances in language that feels almost too accessible: “How many artists fear the light?
Imagine Dragons Natural
Fear the pain, go insane?” he asks on “Bullet in a Gun.” On closer “Real Life” he ponders, “Hey, turn your phone off, won’t you look me in my eye?/Can we live that real life?” Do we live in a society? Imagine Dragons are almost positive we do. The music is categorically soaring and sometimes pleasant, because sometimes the algorithm finds you where you want to be found. The anthems—“Natural,” “Bad Liar,” “Machine”—lean heavily on the trusty loud-quiet-loud dynamic that buoyed the bands’ past hits. Reynolds, though, uses that tension to increasingly hollow effect.
Stylistically, the singer tries on enough hats to differentiate Origins’ collection of music from the more homogenous Evolve, in particular, the Bleachers-meets-Coldplay pop of single “Zero,” a nod to soul music on “Cool Out,” and the “”-core country textures of “West Coast.” But with its tired aphorisms and eerily familiar sonic environments, it never adds up to be much of a comment on the music Imagine Dragons is referencing. Since their songs scan like a competent survey of the entirety of mid-aughts pop rock, there’s no real personality to identify within the songs. Origins wants to conversate with the current moment, but it never amounts to a coherent statement.
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In TV terms, it’s like a hoary crossover episode of “Black Mirror” and “This Is Us.” Although Origins leans far too heavily on Instagram-quote culture—the idea that any snippet of thought, removed from context, can build a base of inspiration—Reynolds is a passionate and versatile singer. It courses through his veins. In June, HBO released a documentary called Believer, which follows Reynolds as he learns about LGBTQ Mormon youth and their struggles to find an identity within an oppressive church. In Believer, Reynolds tells a story with a powerful message—the film showcases Reynolds as a likable, empathetic figure who works hard to earn a new point of view. Listening to Origins, you wouldn’t know that this was the same person behind the music, that this was the same person singing, “Nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost, tell me/Will the stars align?” with such embarrassing conviction. Reynolds has a story to tell, but the music fails to be the ideal delivery system.
Get Origins, ft.