Following the Crowd Even Though You Don't Really Get It
Have you ever felt your opinion on something change simply because of what people around you thought? Not even because they made good arguments. It’s just that you subconsciously didn’t want to be different from everyone else.
Growing up, there came a point when knowing music suddenly began to seem important, socially. Everybody had iPods all of a sudden. How’d that happen? I didn’t figure I’d get an iPod myself anytime soon, but I did feel the need to start listening to music intentionally. From what I can remember, this caused me to start paying more attention whenever I heard a song somewhere. Like I’m pretty sure I first heard the song “Move Along” by The All-American Rejects from a Bionicle commercial (and this was when watching Nickelodeon was still a huge part of my life, you gotta understand). Anyway, without trying to recall every detail from that stage of my life, the point is that this is when I started trying to be “a guy who’s into music” to some extent. And if you had asked me what genre I was most into, I would’ve said rock.
As I got a little older, I started listening to alternative radio a lot. I think part of why I knew which station that was is because I saw one of their stickers stuck to the ceiling of a school bus. 93.3 FM in Denver became probably my main source for music discovery for years. During my freshman year of high school, when I was in a class working on a computer, I would often go online and listen to it, if I wasn’t using Grooveshark (a short-lived website). Kind of an unusual thing for a kid to do. Anyway, there were plenty of songs played in those days that time has forgotten by now, but I also got acquainted with so many of the classics from the 90s and 2000s.
In 2012, I was driving somewhere listening to the radio, and I heard a song from a new band called Imagine Dragons. The song was “It’s Time,” and I didn’t like it very much. I didn’t like the dude’s voice. I didn’t like the line “I don’t ever want to let you down/I don’t ever want to leave this town” because it just seemed…too simple? Really, the whole song was pretty simple. It just didn’t appeal to me.
But in time, it became clear the song and band would be sticking around. And that was fine. The song certainly wasn’t annoying enough to get me to change the channel. And I grew more fond of it before long.
The best thing I can say about the song, speaking from my current perspective, is that the change in the harmony on the final chorus is pretty interesting. I always love that sort of thing.
Anyway, at the time, certain friends and acquaintances seemed to like the band—and frankly, back then, if the right people like a band, who would I be to argue?
Then I heard the song “Radioactive” and I think my initial reaction to it was even worse than “It’s Time.” And yet, the song wasn’t bad enough for me to hate. It was just mediocre enough for me to give it more chances and learn to like it a bit more.
I was riding the bandwagon for the band, but I didn’t even understand why. The songs were inoffensive, I guess? But apparently if people were gonna hype the band up, then I was fine to go along with it.
The thing is, I wasn’t just listening to alternative radio stuff back then. I was also listening to The Beatles. You know, Abbey Road. Sgt. Pepper. Revolver. All these classic, innovative albums where they were reversing tape recordings (which people hadn’t really done in music before) and playing the sitar just because George Harrison got really into that instrument. You know what else I was listening to? MGMT. They had two albums out at the time, and in early 2013 I had their second one Congratulations in the regular rotation after listening to their first one a lot just a couple months earlier. So what I’m saying is, I think when I was getting into all this music that had a lot of instrumental layers to it, it was going to make plenty of other music seem basic and uninteresting. That’s not something I realized at the time, of course, but in hindsight, I do think my music tastes getting more varied and stretching beyond exclusively radio-friendly stuff was probably a factor in my lack of enthusiasm for Imagine Dragons.
Around this time, it was my senior year of high school, and there was one day we voted on what would be our class song. One of the choices was “It’s Time.” I still didn’t love the song. But in my mind, a win for any alternative music was a good thing. So I voted for it. Apparently a lot of my classmates liked the song (or had the same strange logic as me, but I doubt it), so it won. I don’t remember if there was really a better option , but either way, kind of weird reasoning on my part.
Eventually another single appeared on the radio: “Demons.” And I…actually liked this one from the first time I heard it? I thought the melody of the chorus was pretty nice! Are things changing for me?
Well, at the end of 2013, I had some iTunes money and didn’t know what to do with it, so, apparently, still assuming that I more or less liked the band and that the people who really liked them knew something I didn’t, I bought their album Night Visions.
>And after listening to it a couple times, I thought, “I don’t want to listen to this anymore. And I’m mad at myself for buying it.”
That wasn’t actually the last time I listened to it—you gotta remember, I wasn’t paying for Spotify Premium back then, so aside from the radio, I only listened to stuff I bought (unless I was on a computer). I can honestly say that I know the album pretty well, and some of the songs do get in my head randomly every now and then.
There are some songs on it I would consider pretty good. “Amsterdam” is one. The guitar part is kinda nice, and the emotional singing in the chorus actually hits pretty well.
It’s followed by a song whose name I don’t remember right now, which would be a fine song except I don’t think the chorus sounds good (“can nobody heaaarrrr meeeeee”). Actually, the part after the first chorus reminds of The Killers’ “Smile Like You Mean It” for some reason (there’s a Las Vegas connection there, too).
I don’t think “Bleeding Out” is particularly good but I like the energetic start of just loudly singing “I’M BLEEEEDIN OUT.” Very different from the Linkin Park “Bleeding Out” isn’t it?
And the hidden track “Rocks?” I like that one.
Overall, I should have just accepted that even though I felt I was “supposed” to like a rock band (who doesn’t really lean into the rock part) who was trying to be thoughtful with their lyrics… they just weren’t for me.
I remember watching the Grammys in 2014 and I think that was when Kendrick Lamar performed with Imagine Dragons? I didn’t even know who Kendrick Lamar was back then, because I was ignorant. The Grammys also had this other event that was a Beatles tribute. I saw Imagine Dragons play “Revolution” there and they made the song so… boring. I mean, are we playing “Revolution 1” here? Except even then, “Revolution 1” still is kind of funny and has some energetic electric guitar parts. So I continued to be unimpressed by the band.
However, in the second half of 2014, the saga continued. I spent a lot of time driving for half of that year, and I usually had the radio on. One day, it was announced that Imagine Dragons was doing a special acoustic concert in a small venue (I believe it was the Bluebird Theater) for charity. And for some reason, I felt like I had to get tickets. I think what largely motivated me was the exclusivity of such an event. A lot of people like the band, and if I go to this unique show, it gives me bragging rights! Apparently I forgot about my lack of enthusiasm for Night Visions. But it’s for charity, man! A good cause!
So I tried to buy tickets. I did not succeed. Oh well.
The band also put out a new song towards the end of 2014: “Bet My Life.” And man, I wanted to like it. But this song… it just doesn’t work. The chorus has this weird sense of timing, which, in many cases, might be something I’d praise, but for the chorus of a pop song? I don’t think it’s a good idea. You want people to sing along on the chorus, not be like “Oops I came in late.” I think the production is what really hurt the song, though. I remember when I was driving to work and hearing the ending of the song where there’s this electric guitar being all crunchy alongside this random female singer and I just was like, “Blah.”
I guess that song didn’t really take off though, because I haven’t heard it since 2015.
From the end of 2014 to 2016, I was on my mission and didn’t really listen to normal music much, so I went home with my attitudes on music sort of reset—it was like some of the snobbiness left me, for a while.
Coincidentally, in early 2017, there was a brand new (insert dramatic pause here) commercial for Nintendo!! And that’s relevant because it had a new Imagine Dragons song with it called “Believer.” I thought this song worked pretty well for this commercial. Did that mean I actually liked the song? Well I don’t remember going out of my way to listen to it, so I’m gonna say the answer was: not really. But the drums were good at least.
But 2017 is also when some of the band’s worst ever songs came out.
I mean, “Thunder?” It has a chorus I like to sing ironically (except I just change all the words to “thunder, th-th-thunder” though it’s not like the other words that are actually there add much) because it’s just so… not creative. And then the squeaky voice comes in? And there’s the bridge with just the falsetto vocals sounding far away? This song just doesn’t sound good, I’m sorry.
“Whatever It Takes” sounds fine in the verses, but I really hate the chorus. I don’t know if I can even explain why, but it just grates on my ears. Part of the problem, I think, is that it just feels very low-energy compared to the quickly sung verses. You don’t want the energy to go down on a chorus! You want the opposite! And I don’t think it’s just because of a slower rhythm; it’s also the melody. The monotone phrase “Whatever it takes” just isn’t fun to listen to. Ya shouldn’t’ve built a song around it!
One thing that bugs me about this band’s music in general is that they have the guitar in the songs, but it’s usually kind of just in the background somewhere. It comes in at the end of “Thunder” to play a really simple riff—but hey, you’re hearing a guitar so that’s how you know this is meant to be a climactic part! Mostly, their songs rely on sounding big. “Radioactive” had that fat drum machine sound going on, “Believer” had drums like you’re going to war or something. Don’t get me wrong, alternative music as a whole was moving away from rock sounds from the very start of the 2010s, so it’s not like it was only Imagine Dragons. It’s just that when I do hear a guitar in their songs, it sounds sad.
Before long, Imagine Dragons would become, to many people, a punchline in the same way Nickelback was (I remember there was an “Imagine Dragons sucks” joke in the Disney+ series Hawkeye in 2021). Which really vindicated my early reluctance to like them—but also made me wish I had trusted my gut more and gone against the crowd. Not that doing so would have mattered at all, but it would’ve become a point of pride.
I’m not bandwagoning on some sad Internet trend, and I’m not blindly hating, because I truly did try to like the band. But there’s always going to be stuff that doesn’t vibe with you.
I think it’s interesting that, for a while, people sort of grouped Imagine Dragons and Twenty-one Pilots together. I guess this is because they’re two alternative groups who had big breakthroughs into the mainstream. But to me, the two groups are vastly different. When I first heard “Holding On To You,” maybe I thought it was a bit goofy, but it had energy. It sounded different from other alternative acts. “Car Radio?” At first I was like, “uhh, ok bro,” but I got into that song back in 2014, man! “I have these thoughts/so often I ought/to replace that slot/with what I once bought….” See, while Imagine Dragons was pretty vague with their lyrics so that they sounded like they were saying something without actually saying anything, with twenty-one-pilots, you knew exactly what they were saying—and it could come off as super corny! But corniness that comes from genuinely trying to say something, as long as it’s personal and not trite, is always going to be more interesting than playing it safe.
I’m not gonna lie though, some of the production on Blurryface (2015) is really hard for me to stomach now. But Trench (2018) is actually a good album I will recommend without shame (though I think it would be improved by cutting a song or two).
Anyway, moral of the story is: it’s good to trust your gut. I don’t want to say “Don’t bother listening to other people’s opinions.” Sometimes when you give music a chance even if you don’t think you’re gonna like it at all, you might suddenly have a moment where it clicks and you understand why people like it. Maybe Imagine Dragons will someday release music that I am forced to admit is actually really good. You never know. But either way, if you hate something other people like, you don’t have to be ashamed of that.
Now don’t rub it in their faces all the time either, because that’s just annoying.
And if you like what other people hate, you should never feel bad about that, either. You think I’m gonna be offended if you disagree with my Imagine Dragons hate? You can like whatever music you want. Believe in yourself, man.
Because I do think that, often, a person can place too little value in their own sensibilities. “I have an opinion, but I’ll wait to see what everyone else thinks.” That’s not a good way to think. You gotta believe that you know a thing or two. Otherwise you’ll end up like I was and spend all that time on music I was convincing myself to like. Smh.