How did Imagine Dragons become the biggest band of the 21st century?
Rock and roll hasn’t had the best ascent after 2000. Even though artists like The White Stripes and Green Day were still proud to fly the flag for rock and roll throughout the first decade of the new millennium, there have been more acts that want to pivot towards genres that make the big bucks, like hip-hop, pop, or country. It’s a hard decision to sell yourself out like that, but Imagine Dragons managed to take every single step towards becoming the epitome of background music.
Granted, it’s not like they were exactly underground darlings when they started out. Beginning with the album Night Visions, the group already had a fair amount of pop sensibilities in their sound, but at least they still had a sense of identity. Say what you want to about whether or not they were worthy of any merit, but tracks like ‘Radioactive’ and ‘It’s Time’ were at least decent pop songs for the time, even though they seemed to have rock scrubbed from their DNA.
Even when the rock giants were making music that people didn’t like that much, it was still easy for people to recognise their sound on that first album. They had touches of electronica laced into their music, and each of them could pull off the percussion like nobody’s business, especially when they performed at the Grammys with Kendrick Lamar.
While that last statement seems sacrilege, hearing Imagine Dragons perform a medley of their own songs with Lamar’s verse for ‘Maad City’ is exactly far better than anyone gave it credit for, but it was also one of the last times the group went for any credibility. Regardless of what they wanted to say with their next album, never before has the name Smoke and Mirrors been more appropriate for an album title.
Despite their songs getting creatively neutered, each subsequent single from ‘I Bet My Life’ to ‘Believer’ has put up major numbers, leading to them being the most popular band of the 21st century, with over 103.5 million units sold online alone. But, really, does that reflect the quality of their music half the time? Better yet, outside of me saying it right now, when’s the last time that a song like ‘I Bet My Life’ had an effect on the greater music world at large
If you listen to half of their songs, they’re more about the textures of the beats rather than anything meaningful underneath the surface. While Dan Reynolds has mentioned numerous times that he has endured struggles with mental health and has even attempted to use music to let out his frustrations, a lot of their biggest tracks end up sounding like cheap background music that you put in the background of a sports montage in a B-movie.
That might be the point behind their music, though. They never claimed to be a purely rock and roll outfit, and looking at their productions, some of their songs are meant to reflect a little bit of everything, having hip-hop beats here and guitar feedback there and maybe a massive bass drop in the breakdown to get people pumped up.
The main problem behind that logic is that when you claim to be the band for everyone, that also means you’re the band for no one. The entire basis of any group gaining a following is because of how much people relate to the music, but by making music designed to be ignored, Imagine Dragons feels less like an actual rock and roll outfit and more like a group that comes together to make commercials every now and again.
Take another rock group that has managed to stay relevant in the modern age of rock and roll by comparison: Arctic Monkeys. While they aren’t going to put up the same fantastic numbers as Imagine Dragons, you can, at the very least, tell the tone that Alex Turner is going for whenever he gets behind the microphone. No matter how many times he switches up his style, you can still understand where he’s coming from because he’s still got the passion for it.
It’s not like Imagine Dragons’ brand of rock-flavoured pop has gone unnoticed, either. For years, the biggest names in rock and roll have started to take a few cheap shots at how dull their music sounds, with Corey Taylor of Slipknot saying that they took the torch away from Nickelback as everyone’s favourite artist to hate.
Will Imagine Dragons have the kind of motivation as other rock stars of their ilk ever again? It’s hard to say. Their recent material at least showed that they were angry with their place in the conversation of modern rock, so maybe they will be able to pull off some sort of return to the lighter version of Linkin Park that they started out as.
Rock and roll may not have as strong a foothold in the public consciousness as it did 20 years ago, but Imagine Dragons, being one of the most profitable acts of the modern age, could be a wake-up call for any up-and-coming artists. It’s never easy to break into the mainstream, but since they have made a living out of making the most drab music imaginable, it’s only a matter of time before some other artist comes out to knock everyone on their asses.
