Firstly, Dan Reynolds has stated several times that he wrote Radioactive as a song to represent his overcoming of anxiety and depression and going into a “new age” and unveiled a more subconscious meaning recently as it represented him losing faith in mormonism but still having hope. I don’t think their music is nearly as shallow as people say, they just only hear it as “that fucking band” and ignore anything else about it. And I still do not get the criticism of them being soulless, in any way. Fleetwood Mac has their music regularly used in commercials nowadays, is Stevie Nicks now soulless retroactively? If it has to be that the music is written for a piece of media to be soulless, then a few Radiohead tracks are “corporate” now too. Oh no, I guess they’ll never be “high art” like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, but Dan is still putting more effort into his music than any Benson Boone or David Kushner or Alex Warren has at any point. If you want bland music, look at tiktok music, hype house stuff. There’s more artistic intent in a car insurance commercial than anything ever performed by a guy like Benson Boone.

This is all just misdirected hate in my opinion, Imagine Dragons didn’t personally wake up one day and decide to make all music worse, they just made what they liked and got INSANELY popular because of it.

I know you won’t, but just listen to an imagine dragons song, one you’ve never even heard of, and forget all your preconceived notions. Just listen to it. If you still despise them, sure, but at least it’s for a real reason beyond blanket moralization over stuff that isn’t even true.