Trivia / Imagine Dragons

• Chart Displacement: "Radioactive" is their most successful single, yet "Demons" is their only Mainstream #1. Also, "I Bet My Life" reached the Top 40 but hasn't had the durability of "Monster" or "On Top of the World".
• Creator Breakdown: Dan Reynolds admittedly experienced depression while writing the songs for Smoke + Mirrors, which shows in the tracks' disillusioned and apologetic tones.
• Creator Couple: Two of the founding members, drummer Andrew Tolman and keyboardist Brittany Tolman, had married prior to joining the band, and eventually left to focus on starting a family.
• Creator Recovery: Almost two years after Smoke + Mirrors, Dan Reynolds proclaimed through "Believer" that he overcame the depression.
• Fan Community Nickname: Firebreathers.
• Follow the Leader: After Imagine Dragons became successful with inspirational, electronic-influenced alt-rock songs, many other pop and rock bands started to make similar songs, such as post-hiatus Fall Out Boy.
• In Memoriam: Imagine Dragons dedicated the song "30 Lives" and the music video for "Demons" to fan Tyler Robinson (namesake of The Tyler Robinson Foundation), who died of cancer during adolescence.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a few years, most of the EPs the band recorded before Night Visions seemed impossible to find aside from websites like YouTube. Twelve of the songs from the EPs made it onto the standard and/or deluxe versions of Night Visions (two are available only on Target's version), but the other 20 had no such luck. There are also a few pre-Night Visions tunes that didn't even make it onto those EPs. In 2021, many of these songs finally became available on their website on the compilation album Deep Cuts, but many were still inaccessible until Imagine Dragons released expanded reissues of the EPs later that year.
• Missing Episode: Many of their EPs prior to Night Visions are impossible to find. Their song “I Wish You Well” also counts as outside of an excerpt, the song has never been given a release on any EP despite the song being performed live on rare occasions.
• The Pete Best: Andrew Tolman, Brittany Tolman, Theresa Flaminio, Dave Lemke, Andrew Beck, and Aurora Florence all left before the band became famous. The Tolmans remained on good terms with them, though, and they produced several songs for the Mercury albums.
• Promoted Fanboys: The group loved Transformers and League of Legends, and eventually became hired to make music for those franchises. The Transformers gig also allowed them to work with two of their favorite composers, Hans Zimmer and Steve Jablonsky. They also got to play an arrangement of "Great Fairy's Fountain" at the first-ever The Game Awards (successor to the Spike Video Game Awards), accompanied by Koji Kondo himself at the piano.
• Referenced by...: Ash from Both Can Be True has an Imagine Dragons T-shirt, although they note that they're not as much of an Imagine Dragons fan as they used to be.
• Similarly Named Works: The first track of Smoke + Mirrors, "Shots", shares a title with an LMFAO song, although they both use different meanings of the word (shots of alcohol in the LMFAO song, gunshots in the ID tune).
• What Could Have Been: These two links excerpt several songs that Imagine Dragons recorded as an independent band, but didn't include on any of their EPs (except for "Pantomime", which appeared on It's Time).
  • "Radioactive" was supposedly originally written and produced for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Makes sense, honestly.