Imagine Dragons released a new song late tonight – right as I was about to watch “The Walking Dead”. For Imagine Dragons, I can hit pause. There have been reports the band has been working on the follow up to their album “Night Visions”, this is the conclusive evidence of it.
We had Imagine Dragons in about two years ago, when they had just released an EP. They popped in to record some stripped down tracks in our old studios in a production room that was suited for anything but recording music. The guys were extremely gracious, giving us multiple takes while being crammed into this teeny tiny room while we worked out technical problems. Needless to say, they no longer play in teeny tiny rooms.
In that time Imagine Dragons have grown into something much bigger. You can literally be hard pressed to get though a day without hearing their music. From the grocery store to pumping gas to television…this band has reached so many people in so little time it is nearly inconceivable.
How do you follow up that kind of success? Imagine Dragons went big, my friends. My first listen to “I Bet My Life” was surprising. I was expecting something more pop. It may be referred to pop in time, but I wasn’t expecting a track that will rack up Paul Simon comparisons. The African-influenced drums and the grand choruses will make for a huge crowd pleaser when played live. This is quite different from “Radioactive” and the comments in the YouTube feed are already throwing down old vs new Imagine Dragons comments. This band hasn’t released their second album, so these comments boggle me. That kind of sentimentality doesn’t make you a fan of music. It makes you a scenester: the final stages of hipster, which there doesn’t seem to be a cure for at this time.
