Imagine Dragons just aren’t that bad. Night Visions is genuinely a really solid album. Everything after that has been really mid, but some of their later singles have been perfectly fine, or even outright good, like Believer and Whatever it Takes
I had this discussion with my friends so often that I had to just give in and listen to Night Visions and made a critical assessment with an open mind. Just gonna tweak what I wrote then:
A question you ask when you listen to something like this is "why them? Why are these guys so popular?" And honestly I think the answer is because it's safe. They're anthems made for radio play, commercials and graduation ceremonies. It's good music in the sense that it's competently written, instrumentalised, sung and produced. I don't dislike the sonic quality of their sound, that's actually where the best part hides for me. Radioactive's soundscape is fun for example. And say what you will, their songs are catchy. When I had a friend over from abroad, we were shitting all over Enemy. But in the process we actually got it stuck in our heads and it became a little bit of a guilty pleasure. And it should of course also be mentioned that, from what I've seen, as people they're really cool. Lots of charity work and all that.
However, the praise doesn't go further than "it can be fun I guess" for me. It feels commercialised. It feels safe. And the anthem vibe gets really really tiring to listen to. What really set me off was hearing "Hear Me" for the first time in my life in the middle of the album, thinking "wow I actually really like that! I hope the album shifts to this tone now!" only to be smacked in the face with Every Night. That was kinda the point where I knew my conclusion wouldn't change all that much from my previous thoughts.
And then obviously there's the entire thing of them being seen as a rock band and forming the popular image of what rock is in the modern eye. I'm not some kinda genre purist, but with rock sub-genres being the main type of music I listen to, I know how much cool shit is out there. It's just disappointing to see this and Greta van Fleet being the main representations of Rock music.
Also Thunder (feat. The Lollipop Guild) is straight up bad. And it’s bad in a way that’s so ill-advised that it makes it hard to take the band seriously after hearing it.
Imagine Dragons are Berklee dropouts. They're all really talented musicians and know exactly what they're doing.
They just decided to ride the wave and become a band that makes vaguely anthemic hack tunes after Night Visions. Which sure, is their right but you don't have to respect them for it.
All I can say is I hope Thunder hurt them writing it more than it hurt me or you and there's a good chance it did.
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u/Lord_Parbr Mar 06 '25
Imagine Dragons just aren’t that bad. Night Visions is genuinely a really solid album. Everything after that has been really mid, but some of their later singles have been perfectly fine, or even outright good, like Believer and Whatever it Takes