The Untold Truth Of Imagine Dragons

Depending on your opinion of them, Imagine Dragons is either one of the few great arena rock bands to emerge in recent years or the final nail in the genre's coffin. Their unabashedly varied influences have created a brand of pop rock that borrows from EDM and even hip-hop. That plus their ear for a catchy tune has propelled the band to numerous hits and millions of album sales. While hordes of fans adore them, their style has remained divisive within the ranks of the more traditional music community, to the point that noted industry publications like Spin and NME have discussed the possibility that they're the "worst band in the world."

This sort of "love them or hate them" dynamic, of course, is far better than being so dull that everyone in the world just shrugs and ignores you, and the story behind the band is just as peculiar as their place in the world of popular music. Here's what a lot of people don't know about Imagine Dragons.

Unlike the nigh-universally mocked Nickelback who have managed to become the 11th best-selling band of all time despite their allegedly unlistenable awfulness, Imagine Dragons tends to specifically draw the ire of fellow musicians. Consequence of Sound reports that members of bands like Slipknot, The 1975, Foster the People, and Smashing Pumpkins, as well as Marilyn Manson, have all spewed public hate at the band, and Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour has even labeled them "the new Nickelback."

Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds says he finds the criticism "extremely harsh" but has nevertheless taken it in stride for a full decade despite the fact that the bile and hatred has actually affected his mental health. In 2019, he finally addressed the haters and said that while he's not particularly angry about it, he's pretty disappointed in the way the music industry embraces this kind of antagonistic mentality, as opposed to a more healthy environment where artists would actually support each other despite differences in matters of style and taste.

However, Reynolds' biggest gripe is not about himself and his band. He worries that famous figures openly mocking Imagine Dragons can lead to kids getting labeled uncool (and perhaps bullied) just because they commit the crime of liking Imagine Dragons. He's also concerned that his own kids might be made fun of when they grow older because of the assorted nasty comments about their dad's band.

Some bands are born ready, while others take some time to find their perfect lineup. As ThoughtCo describes, Imagine Dragons is firmly in the latter category. The band was formed in 2008 and operated as a local cult band in Provo, Utah, before moving to Las Vegas in 2009 in an effort to find a larger audience. But the four-man group that eventually became an internationally renowned hit machine is a very different beast from the old Utah alt-rock darling lineup of the band. In fact, the only person who has been an Imagined Dragon (?) throughout the band's history is singer Dan Reynolds.

The group's original lineup included Reynolds, Andrew Tolman, Andrew Beck, Dave Lemke, and Aurora Florence. Guitarist Beck and keyboard player Florence left the group almost immediately, and were replaced by current guitar player Wayne Sermon and Andrew Tolman's wife, Brittany. Lemke was the next to leave, at which point Sermon brought bassist Ben McKee into the fold. The last current band member, drummer Daniel Platzman, stepped in when the Tolmans quit in 2011. Brittany Tolman's replacement, Theresa Flaminio, played keyboard on the band's first album, but when she left Imagine Dragons stuck with a quartet and things calmed down on the lineup front.

In 2012, Imagine Dragons recorded their first album, Night Visions, and the place they recorded it was pretty unorthodox, according to alt-rock station 105.7 The Point. (If you need any context for the band's rapid rise to global fame, they were considered to be an "up-and-coming alternative rock band" as recently as 2012.) Fittingly enough for a Las Vegas band, they recorded their debut album in a casino — namely, on the third floor of the Palms. As Diffuser reports, the band had already worked there on an EP and evidently the experience was good enough to go back.

Of course, they didn't just set up their equipment in the middle of a casino and hope no one would ruin their drum track by hitting the jackpot. The casino had a recording studio that guitarist Wayne Sermon describes as "world-class," and while the space itself was obviously soundproof, he says the atmosphere was quite surreal. The band would walk through a busy casino and lock themselves into a small, isolated space without windows so it was easy to forget what was outside. Then, they'd get hungry and walk out of the studio, only to be hit with the bustle of gambling all around them.

What do Imagine Dragons and Spider-Man have in common? According to Cleveland.com, not a lot — but that's just because the band was too good at songwriting. Reportedly, hit producer Alex da Kid started working with Imagine Dragons because he was looking for inspiration for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the Broadway musical he was developing with U2. Da Kid figured that the up-and-comers would be ideal collaborators for the Spider-Man score, but soon ran into a problem: The demos Imagine Dragons had recorded were "too good."

Imagine Dragons never got to join forces with Peter Parker, but one thing led to another, and da Kid ended up producing the band's first album, Night Visions. Unfortunately, the story doesn't say just which of the album's songs were originally considered for the musical. Still, in the interest of pure speculation, wouldn't "Radioactive" or "It's Time" make a lot of sense in a Spider-Man musical context?

Imagine Dragons is known for a very distinct, drum-heavy style, as befits a band with two able percussionists (drummer Daniel Platzman and frontman Dan Reynolds). According to the New Yorker, this is not just a stylistic choice. No, this signature sound was born out of necessity. During their early days in Las Vegas, the band played a lot of parties, and the parties generally took place in casinos. They immediately discovered that they were competing with the sound of a whole bunch of slot machines, and learned to counter the clanging by developing an explosive, percussion-driven sound that could cut through the gambling.

In a 2012 interview, bassist Ben McKee revealed that the ambient noise wasn't the only thing they were fighting in those early days. He says the stages they played were tiny, the casinos smoky, and distractions were everywhere, so no one would have even noticed them if they hadn't literally learned to bang their own drum.

Imagine Dragons is quite hard to categorize outside the way-too-generic "pop rock" genre most media seems to file them in. However, if you ask the band members themselves, at least three Imagine Dragons out of four have never worried about being labeled "rock" at all. Instead, as the New Yorker reports, guitarist Wayne Sermon, drummer Daniel Platzman and bassist Ben McKee are all trained jazz musicians. They met at Boston's Berklee College of Music and all of them played in various jazz ensembles before destiny came calling and threw them into one of the world's biggest rock outfits. Still, even at the height of their fame they haven't forgotten their roots. While on the road, these unlikely rock stars have been known to spend their nights off checking out interesting jazz joints and, on occasion, playing Scrabble.

The band's singer, Dan Reynolds, is decidedly not a jazz man, but as CBS News notes, he's also a far cry from your average rock star. Reynolds highly dislikes the "drugs" part of the classic "sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll" trifecta, and his cleaner approach combined with the musical expertise of his bandmates has led to a fairly unique take on the concept of a rock band.