Tear Jerker / Imagine Dragons

• "Demons" is about a person protecting someone they love during a dark period of time. The music video takes this a bit further, showing how hard some people have it. The music video also ends with a memorial to teenage fan Tyler Robinson, who died of cancer. The song sounds even sadder when Dan Reynolds sings it live, in a lower key.
• “30 Lives” definitely counts. It almost definitely has something to do with death, and the chorus is essentially begging for forgiveness.
• "Monster" could be interpreted as someone berating himself for struggling to meet society's standards of normalcy. The end of the live version repeats "Stronger. Stronger. It keeps getting stronger" ad nauseam to further accentuate the singer's difficulty in escaping the metaphorical monster.
  • Well, it might be metaphorical, anyway....
• "Bleeding Out" gets pretty depressing when you realize what's being said could be interpreted as a suicide note or maybe even a final speech after a Heroic Sacrifice.
• "Clouds" sounds like someone having a really hard time recovering from the loss of a loved one.^note As of 2017, this song has never appeared on an album or EP, with the only recordings of it coming from live performances.
• "I Bet My Life" sounds a little like this and a little like a Heartwarming Moment, as it has Dan Reynolds remember making life decisions his parents didn't agree with, then try to assure his parents that he still considers them important.
• The entire video for "Next To Me". The song itself is Dan's bemusement that after everything he's done wrong, the person he is singing to is still sticking by him.
• Smoke and Mirrors. The entire album has a very dark, self-loathing bent. Special note goes to "Dream", in which Dan realizes that reality is harsh and his perfect world was just a dream.
• "Bad Liar". It's bad enough on its own as a song about the failure of a relationship, but it also has heavy Fridge Horror for "Start Over" and "I'll Make It Up To You" from the previous album, implying that Dan's promises of mending his relationship were just lies. The stripped version makes it even worse by stripping away the electronic flourishes and leaving it as weak and hopeless.
• The animated video for "Birds" which will hit anyone in the feels for either of these two things: either being ostracized/bullied for being different or losing a parental figure in your life.
• "Real Life" is about someone Dan loves dearly spending far too much of her time worrying about and fearing a cruel world. He admits he has none of the reassurance or answers she wants for why everything is so fucked up and all he can do is beg her to enjoy what she has now.
• "Zero" is a very fast, upbeat song. It also features lyrical gems like these:
  Hello, hello
  Let me tell you what it's like to be a zero, zero
  Let me show you what it's like to always feel, feel
  Like I'm empty and there's nothing really real, real
  I'm looking for a way out
  Hello, hello
  Let me tell you what it's like to be a zero, zero
  Let me show you what it's like to never feel, feel
  Like I'm good enough for anything that's real, real
  I'm looking for a way out
  • It was written for (and appears during the end credits of) Ralph Breaks the Internet, in which the titular character is faced with his Only Friend/borderline surrogate daughter/kid sister leaving him to live in another game. It fits Ralph's situation almost perfectly.
  • The lines "I remember walking in the cold of November/Hoping that I make it to the end of December/27 years and the end on my mind" from Verse 1 comes dangerously close to explicitly mentioning suicidal thoughts. In a song written for a family movie.
• "Wrecked", written about Dan Reynolds' sister-in-law, who died due to cancer.
  These days I'm becoming everything that I hate
  Wishing you were around, but now it's too late
  My mind is a place that I can't escape your ghost
  Sometimes I wish that I could wish it all away
  One more rainy day without you
  Sometimes I wish that I could see you one more day
  One more rainy day
• "My Life" is a heartbreaking song about drug abuse in which the singer laments that he can't undo his past mistakes or become a different person. "I'm running out of my mind, is this really my life?"
• "Waves" is all about sudden deaths. One is a woman who's finally made something of herself but is implied to have been killed in a car accident. The second is a friend who committed suicide simply because the singer wasn't able to be there for him.
• "I Wish" is also about Dan's sister-in-law, and it just may be even worse than "Wrecked," as Dan openly laments not being a "better friend" to her in a pained, drawn-out chorus.
• "Younger" has a pretty brutal use of Lyrical Dissonance, being an poppy and energetic song in which the singer discusses the pains of growing older, like health problems and watching his friends die, and wishes that he could be young again.