Did Imagine Dragons Sell Their Souls to the Devil?

“It isn’t slander if it’s a question”

I’m not much for modern music.  I’ve talked briefly about music before, mainly in the context of albums I really like and video games I really like, but in general my taste ranges from the occasional classical piece to about 1995 when Jerry Garcia died.  Beyond that, I don’t get more modern than The Decemberists and sometimes Tyler, the Creator. So it may be a bit strange that I’m discussing a band that’s actually still active and with all members still alive, unlike almost every other band that I listen to.  But I think this is really important, because I believe that the members of Imagine Dragons, or at least the lead singer, sold their souls to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune, and now they’re trying to secretly tell everyone through their lyrics.

So, for some background, Imagine Dragons is a pop band from Las Vegas, consisting of vocalist Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee, and drummer Daniel Platzman.  I don’t like their music. I think it’s dumb and repetitive and pandering to the corporate music industry that exists only to pump as much money out of people as possible, much like Nickelback.  I think they’re basically Nickelback with some edge. To their credit, of course, they can play guitar, bass, drums, and voice, which is more than I can do. So I’ll give them that much. But they can’t play French Horn, so hah.

I first heard of them with “Radioactive” and “Demons,” and then they fell off the map for me until I suddenly started hearing their other stuff a few years later.  Namely, this was “Believer,” “Thunder,” “Whatever it Takes,” “On top of the World,” and “I Bet my Life.” I only ever listen to pop music when my mom has to drive me to my doctor’s appointment while my regular car is in the shop to get all the water removed, so my exposure to these songs is limited.  Also, a lot of the songs I’ve heard are pretty low on the Billboard Charts compared to some of their other stuff, but these are the only songs that I know so that’s the evidence I’m going with.  This is real science.

Let me lay it all out.  They got big with “Radioactive,” but that was before they sold their souls.  See, I’ll give them a little credit, they got that far on their own. But then they couldn’t recreate that level of success.  And, interestingly enough, “Radioactive” foreshadows the places they’ll go to (Hell?) to get that success.  Lyrics like “Waking up to ash and dust,” “this is it, the apocalypse,” “welcome to the new age,” “painted red to fit right in,” “Whoa-oh?”  It’s all a little too on the nose, don’t you think?  Clearly they’re drawing a picture of the afterlife, and then peopling it with the things they’ll make their deal with in their next song that I heard, “Demons.”

“Demons” discusses how the “days are cold” and the “cards all fold” and “when your dreams all fail,” so clearly something’s going on here.  The band can see their end coming up, whether from some internal disaster or corporate negligence, so they resort to drastic measures and make a Faustian deal with the devil, which is conveniently related to the listener through the song.  Because the demons now inhabit the band, you see. It’s where the demons hide.  “Don’t want to let you down, but I am hell bound,” Dan Reynolds sings.  “This is my kingdom come.” They know the end is coming, they can see it in the distance.  But maybe, just maybe they can put it off a little longer, and finally reach that great peak of success.

See, this is the point where they sell their souls to devil, and it also coincides with when MTV called them the year’s (2013) biggest breakout band.  Which is why their song “On Top of the World” is so vastly different in tone from their first two. Because they know they’ve made it at this point, they know they’re home free.  Nothing can take them down because, if something were to try, there’ll be hell to pay. They’ve been “dreaming of this since a child,” and they’ve “come all this way for something.”  And the song is mostly an optimistic, positive, generic pop romp through success. But a few lines stick out as odd to me. “I take it in but don’t look down.” “Paying my dues to the dirt.”  What dues? What dirt?  Why aren’t they looking down?  I’ll tell you why; because hell’s down there.

The rest of their songs really just reaffirm this.  Now that they’re successful, they can let go of the melodrama, let go of the feigned naivety and nervousness, and cash in on their superstar status and become self-assured asshole narrators in all their future songs.  For example, “Thunder” is maybe the most ego-inflating song I’ve heard since the Rolling Stones. “Not a yes-sir, not a follower.” “I was dreaming of bigger things.” “Kids were laughing in my classes / while I was scheming for the masses.” “Now I’m smiling from the stage while / you were clapping in the nosebleeds.” “I was lightning before the thunder.”  Yeah, we get it, buddy. You’re successful. How’d you get there, though? With Satan.

See, I could write this all off as hare-brained coincidence if weird lines didn’t keep showing up in their songs.  Like, in “Believer,” which is basically just another egotrip with lyrics like “I’m the one at my sail, I’m the master of my sea.” Sure, maybe it could be just a song about self-acceptance and the strength of one’s character if the song didn’t sound so arrogant.  But then there’s this weird-ass chorus about how “Pain!” made him a believer, and “let the bullets fly.”  The whole song is about how pain shaped his life and his success. And that could be touching, and human, if it weren’t for the last verse.  “By the grace of the fire and the flames, / you’re the face of my future.”  There’s some warning bells going off in my head right there.  Sulfur and brimstone, anyone?

“I Bet my Life,” now that I’m reading it, is just straight-up bizarre, and perhaps has some of the most hints that there’s evil afoot.  The first verse includes lyrics like “Well I’m just a slave unto the night.” And also this: “I know I took the path that you would never want for me / I gave you hell through all the years.”  What path did he take? Could he be giving her literal hell?  And he says that he “bet [his] life on you.”  But who is you? Presumably, we’re supposed to believe it’s a past lover, but what if it isn’t?  What if it’s supposed to be the audience, the listener you? What if Imagine Dragons sold us to the devil?  “Please forgive me for all I’ve done.”  What have you done?

To me, though, the most damning (heh) evidence of Lucifer’s involvement is in “Whatever it Takes.”  The whole song is about how the singer will do anything for fame and fortune.  “Take me to the top I’m ready for / Whatever it takes.”  If there isn’t a clearer statement of making some sort of deal for fame, then I’ll eat my pentagram-branded boots.  They knew they could easily have faded away into obscurity after “Radioactive,” another one-hit wonder like Chumbawamba, but they won’t let that happen.  “Everybody hoping they could be the one, / I was born to run, I was born for this.” But now they’re trying to relate to all of us how they got here. Maybe they regret their decisions, like they state in “I Bet my Life.”  They want us to know their mistakes that they made, and learn from them. But they can’t say it outright, because that would be a breach of contract, and the Antichrist would be born or something.

Sure, “Whatever it Takes” ends with “At least I’ll go down to the grave and die happily / And leave the body and my soul to be a part of thee / I do what it takes,” but how easy can your soul rest when you belong to the Prince of Lies, also known as the corporate music industry?  And sure, maybe the band regularly does charity work for pediatric cancer and at-risk LGBTQ youth. And sure, maybe “I Bet my Life” is actually about Dan Reynold’s parents, and he’s a Mormon with substantial religious background, and has suffered from debilitating chronic illness his entire life, and has battled with depression, but- wait, shit, is the whole arrogance thing just an act and they’re actually just good people overall who kind of stumbled into fame?  What the fuck? 

Preposterous.  Clearly, the only logical conclusion here, with all my combined research and carefully cherry-picked facts, is that they made a deal with the devil for fame and fortune, and now they want to tell us all.  That must be the truth, because I dislike their music and the only possible option is that they cheated since my taste is perfect and my musical playlist has no flaws. Be sure to look for their next album, How to Summon the Dark Star in 11 Easy Songs, out this Christmas anywhere music is sold.