I am always looking for a positive
Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds tells ALEX GREEN how grief inspired their new album, and how he finds the strength to perform it live
DRAGONS are one of Las Vegas’ greatest musical exports, so it felt fitting that they would use the music video for recent single Sharks to pay homage to the city.
But frontman Dan Reynolds, a fourth generation Las Vegan, was shocked to discover what his creative team had in store.
“The hardest part was surfing the Bellagio fountains,” he says with a laugh. “That was terrifying.”
In the madcap video, the 34-yearold skates across the surface of the famous hotel’s 8.5-acre man-made lake on a self-propelling surf board surrounded by sharks – computer generated ones, that is.
Las Vegas runs through Imagine Dragons. You can hear it in their music, a mish-mash of genres designed to please the masses. You can see it in their performances, in which Dan leaps across the stage.
“I love that city. My family was there. I still live there,” he offers. “I’m going to die there. We wanted to personify Vegas in the way that I know it, and give love to the city that has given us a career.”
For all their high drama and camp, Dan and his bandmates – Wayne Sermon, Ben Mckee and Daniel Platzman – have also always explored the darker side of life. Their new release, Mercury – Act 2, is the second part of a quasi-concept album exploring grief and loss.
“It’s all dealing with death, which sounds very morbid, but it’s also dealing with life – and the recovery after losing someone you love,” he says.
Dan video calls from his hotel room in Stockholm, where the band is in the midst of a European tour. “When you lose someone that you love there is the shock.
“There’s the next day. But then there is the next year... the following two years.
do you memorialise this? How does it affect you? Especially when it’s a family member or someone that was very close.”
The album covers of Mercury illustrate this. Act 1 shows a man in free fall, while Act 2 has him rising upwards on some mystical current.
Before the pandemic, Dan lost a number of people in the space of three years. His best childhood friend killed himself and his sister-in-law, business manager of 10 years and ex-girlfriend all died from cancer.
“It was just like, when it rains it pours,” he observes. “I feel like this happens to a lot of people.
You meet those people where their dad dies and then the next year their mum dies. It changes the way that you see the world.
“It really changes the way that I live every day.
“Mercury – Act 1 really focused on the shock and the songs were written right in the moment of those things. Act 2 is more of a look at life after and post-grief. You are never going to forget these things but how are you living in a better way, hopefully?
“I’m always looking for a positive because I feel like my mind gravitates towards darkness and DEPRESIMAGINE sion. My therapist is always like, ‘It’s all perspective’ so I am always trying to find the positives,” he adds with a chuckle.
Mercury – Act 2 continues in the vein of Imagine Dragons’ previous albums but deviates enough to keep fans guessing. Part of this is down to working with Rick Rubin, the legendary American record producer and co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, who has worked with the likes of the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy.
“Your fifth album, we were at a point where we wanted to change,” Dan reflects. “So we thought, well, let’s try something new. And who’s our dream producer? We unanimously said Rick Rubin and reached out to Rick and he wanted to take it on. It was an arduous task, but it was very rewarding, and the right choice of producer for sure.”
Dan first met with Rick, 59, over Zoom and they instantly got on. “We immediately connected on a really deep level with music and just life,” he remembers. He now describes him as a “mentor of sorts and a dear friend”.
As suggested, the subject matter on the album is tough, with Dan pulling no punches about his men“how tal state on tracks like Crushed and I Don’t Like Myself.
But he has a talent for taking the downbeat and repackaging it into stadium-sized choruses, like on their 2012 megahit Radioactive.
But how does he stand in front of thousands of fans and sing about his demons every night?
“When I was on stage last night I was thinking about this,” he explains. “It was one of those nights where I was feeling just taxed. The intro music was playing and I couldn’t quite get myself in the state of mind that I needed to be in, and I was like, ‘Come on Dan, you have the best job in the world’.
“I was like, ‘Come on, get yourself going’. I was thinking, ‘Why do I feel this?’ And it’s not a ‘woe is me’ story. The truth is what I think about every night is... I don’t know how to sing songs other than [by] going to these places that I was in when I wrote it. That’s how I perform.
“I think that’s how a lot of actors act, right? You go to wherever that place is, then it becomes real. So when I am singing I’m going to the place that I was when I wrote these songs. And a lot of those are heavy, so every other night you’re going to this heavy place.”
Dan says the band want to turn their concerts into a celebration, especially after the isolation of the pandemic. “I try to turn the focus to the opposite, which is life and being present and appreciating the now,” he offers.
“It’s a tricky tightrope and I don’t always walk it perfectly. Some shows are better than others, but it’s about finding that nuanced part of the story and focusing on the now.”
A lot of [the songs] are heavy, so every other night you are going to this heavy place.
Dan Reynolds, pictured above
Mercury – Act 2 by Imagine Dragons is out now.