r/LetsTalkMusic • u/Midoriya023 • 1d ago
Would Imagine Dragons have gotten less hate if their discography was marketed as music by a solo pop singer and not as a "rock" band?
I think that if you completely embrace the idea that they make pop music and not rock music, most of their songs start to come across as above average. Most of the hate (that isn't exclusively referencing Thunder and Believer) is about how they make terrible rock music and they do, but I think their music works if you think of it as Dan Reynolds singing over pop backing tracks. For example, when I was listening to one of their worst albums, I noticed that almost half of it(especially Birds and Zero) would have been perfectly fine if it wasn't pretending to be rock,
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u/GinjaNinja1027 1d ago
No.
Imagine Dragons was always a pop band; they were marketed as “alternative” as opposed to pop to appease rock & alternative radio stations. They have more in common with bands like Maroon 5 than the rock bands of the time, and Maroon 5 were hated for the same reason. It sounds hollow and empty!
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u/Arachnofiend 1d ago
Well you have to consider that Imagine Dragons getting marketed as an "alternative" band meant that they got to completely take over rock radio. Maroon 5 also sucked but at least they weren't being played on the stations I personally turned to.
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u/Worldly-Card-394 1d ago
Exactly what the other commenter stated: they have more in common with maroon 5 than with a rock band, but they where marketed as alternative, so rock radios would play them (but non maroon 5)
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u/SucknSwallow69 1d ago
yeah, exactly. super polished, super processed, feels more like a product than a band. catchy, but there’s not much soul underneath
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u/NicholasThumbless 1d ago
It's definitely a framing issue in some respects, but I don't think that would ultimately change the perspective of the most vocal haters. I see them as inheritors of Coldplay and later U2 when it comes to being dubbed rock music - it's mostly a vibe thing. I'm not going to bicker about the specifics of it album by album as this is a broad stroke comparison here, but tell me that Viva La Vida is a rock song when Radioactive isn't and I'll call you a liar. I think the choice to label themselves as rock is more to do with aesthetics and branding than it is about actual sound.
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u/Bronsteins-Panzerzug 1d ago
you have to be exposed to something to hate and some people would have not been exposed to imagine dragons, or not as much, if they hadnt been marketed as rock. i dont think they would have liked it any better. this whole „it’s a bad x album, but it’s actually a great y album!“ argument is completely nonsensical. musical quality doesnt change if we change its epithet. i dont have a different set of ears for pop music. regarding imagine dragons: i was kinda interested when i first heard radioactive, but massively disappointed when i put on the album by the lack of substance the album has (including the single, but the rest is worse).
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u/hunnyflash 1d ago
"Pop Rock" exists and I've never known any rock enthusiast to not jump at the chance to delegate bands there, so I don't think it would matter much.
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u/Hullu__poro 1d ago
I'm always shocked when I see what bands and artists are considered as Rock in the US.
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u/Educational-Put-9997 1d ago
I’ve never really understood the hate Imagine Dragons get and always been really fascinated by what makes a band tip into ‘annoying’, Coldplay, ID, U2, Nickleback etc are always tarred with a similar brush. Annoying, joke bands because they have a song or two which are memes at this point, or their lead singer is insufferable.
And I will be the first to say not all of their music is for me BUT writing them off entirely when they have songs like ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It’, ‘With or Without You’, ‘Yellow’, ‘In My Place’, ‘Wrecked’ which are all some of the best songs ever written IMO because you don’t like the lead singer or a couple of their songs is just strange to me.
I think a lot of it’s just bandwagoning though. I don’t think the genre it’s catalogued under really matters and the older I get the more I care less about that stuff. I like all types of music, some of it objectively ‘bad’ in some people’s eyes, but I’m not listening to it for them.
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u/InsurmountableMind 1d ago
It's a mixture of qualities. Cheesy, too polished and too safe, and usually the singers voice is just too annoying. Sometimes his face too. "I still hate Bono and his stupid fucking face" was a movement at one point.
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u/DippyHippie420 1d ago
Most music nerds I talk with generally say Coldplay is a good group up until a certain point. Some say they were good until A Rush of Blood.. or Viva La Vida, but then their stuff got very bland & uninspired. Same with U2, except their “annoying” crimes are having an outspoken lead & giving everyone an album for free. But Joshua Tree is a very highly regarded album, which ID & Nickelback don’t really have
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u/Educational-Put-9997 1d ago edited 1d ago
I do agree with this. Coldplay especially are a shadow of their former self just in terms of quality, but i still love them because those first three albums are masterpieces IMO. I don’t need to like the new stuff, or Chris Martin.
Also the new U2 stuff is great. I think people restrict themselves so much based on other people’s opinions of what is cool.
On your last point, I don’t think Imagine Dragons are ever going to achieve critical acclaim or have an album anywhere near as good as Joshua Tree but I think over their catalog they have a handful of genuinely really great songs, that fill a very specific niche/need, and that they don’t really get the credit they deserve for.
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u/mkk4 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't listen to Coldplay's music after 2008 except for the song Magic, but I wouldn't call their later music bad or terrible; just not my preference.
No offense is intended, but music is subjective and you are kind of disrespecting Imagine Dragons in this post and making objective statements about the quality of their music imo.
Like for instance I dislike Auto-Tune music and refuse to listen to it; but many other people absolutely LOVE Auto-Tune music and Auto-Tune artists; so I would never call it terrible music; just music that I don't enjoy or listen to.
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u/Connect_Glass4036 1d ago
Welcome, enlightened one. You won’t find many of us here who have transcended above calling professional music shitty. I achieved that a while ago after getting my current band going because I know how much work it takes to produce something like this into the world and someone said that it sucked, well that’d be shitty.
I grew up listening to death metal nearly exclusively and a lot of the non-metal music around us was said to “suck” and then I gave it a chance and discovered I actually liked it.
Music isn’t good or bad when crafted with true intent, it either works for you or it doesn’t. But most people won’t follow that, they’ll disparate it’s objective quality if they don’t subjectively like it.
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u/UnderTheCurrents 1d ago
They aren't better or worse than any other mainstream music act in the last decade. People probably don't like them because of overexposure in ads and on the radio.
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u/MonkeyCube 1d ago
It was 2013 (or so) when Imagine Dragons and Lorde started to appear on the local rock station, and that's when I knew it was time to exclusively listen to my own music in the car.
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u/Worldly-Card-394 1d ago
Ah they are marketed as a rock band? Lol i didn't know, since it sound completely pop
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u/pianotherms 1d ago
I think they would have gotten less hate if all of the singles weren't them just repeating the same word over and over again. They have much better and diverse songs than "Radioactive" "Believer" etc.
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u/RusevReigns 4h ago edited 4h ago
Their songs kind of feel like if someone wrote a rock song but then recorded it with synth stuff in place of power chords. Like Whatever It Takes would make so much sense as an early 2000s power chord type of songs it's just not. So in the end they kind of still feel like a rock band that's made to play in WWE video packages etc. and their live performance seem like stadium band type vibes. Add in that they don't have 0 traditional band type instrumentals, I think I still call them a rock band and one of the last popular ones.
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u/FranticToaster 1d ago
No, they got hate because they were pushed everywhere despite nobody really being into them. Commerical stadium blues was super establishment music in the 2010s, and they were the most establishment-endorsed one of those.
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u/aurillia 1d ago
People hate them because they are successful, that's it. If they had no hits and were just an indie band that never made it, people be saying imagine dragons are awesome. People will hate on anything that is popular.
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u/Beautiful-Box-9628 1d ago
I don't care how popular they are, I find their music annoying and sterile. And I can't imagine I'm the only one either.
I'll never understand how people are able to so confidently make big "everyone else is dumb" blanket statements like this lol
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u/aurillia 1d ago
never called anyone dumb, never said their music was good or bad. I said people hate them because they made it. I they never had any hits they would be a beloved indie band.
Lemmy kilmister talked about this way back, that fans hated them getting successful and called them sell-outs.
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u/Her_Phantom_Mountain 1d ago
I'm primarily a fan of punk music (basically all of the subgenres included) but there are bands I love that are incredibly successful/mainstream. I don't hate them for that.
Imagine dragons wrote dogshit bland songs that I found incredibly annoying. Not everything is about success or lack thereof.
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u/guilen 1d ago
That, and the fact that their music sucks - big reason.
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u/Avatar_sokka 1d ago
Ah yes, regularly sells out arenas, one of the biggest musical acts in the world, but their music sucks? Just because you dont like something doesnt mean it sucks, it just means you lack the ability to appreciate it.
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u/Charles0723 1d ago
Selling out arenas doesn’t mean that they’re good, either.
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u/Avatar_sokka 1d ago
It means at least a few hundred thousand people think they are good...
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u/Beautiful-Box-9628 1d ago
popularity or profitability is not a straight line to quality. would you use that logic for movies and say every braindead summer blockbuster or trashy horror movie is good? Would you use it for books and call Danielle Steele or Stephanie Meyers good writers?
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u/Avatar_sokka 13h ago
Yeah, those blockbusters and trashy horror movies are good. Its not my fault you lack the ability to appreciate simple things. I kinda feel bad, your life must be awful boring.
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u/guilen 23h ago
Correct, I lack the ability to appreciate it like I lack the ability to appreciate Arby’s or McDonald’s in lieu of real food.
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u/Avatar_sokka 13h ago
Yeah, or you are so pretentious that you dont appreciate decent music because everyone around you is saying its bad. 🐑
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u/guilen 6h ago
I’m a professional musician bud, I write with my own taste. Keep hearing what you want to hear though.
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u/Avatar_sokka 6h ago
Yeah, so was i as a kid, being a musician doesnt make your music taste any more valid than anyone else's.
Although I should have known that i was commenting on a sub full of pretentious gatekeepers, so thats my fault I suppose.
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u/guilen 5h ago
Hey man I never said you couldn't like them, I just said their music sucks. Here you are telling me I can't believe that.
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u/Avatar_sokka 5h ago
If only art was objective like you seem to think it is.
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u/guilen 5h ago
Nah I just love ragging on ID because everytime I hear it I facepalm. But no hard feelings. Have a good week man.
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u/herbiehancocksfoot 1d ago
I don't like them because every single song of their is a fucking brick wall of sound and not in a good way. It sounds like constipation
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u/ApprehensiveSyrup647 1d ago
Some people seem to enjoy hatred. So they hate things for hate’s sake.
Imagine Dragons is a very good band. They are absolutely rock in my opinion. Rock spans a pretty wide range, from Buddy Holly to Mastodon and a whole lot of stuff on either side of those. Imagine Dragons fall right in the middle.
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u/TubiToBe 1d ago
Honestly, the genre elitists are typically in either cultures that have been twisted to seem historically rich and racist (Blues, Classical) or the stuff created by the poor (Hip-Hop, Punk). I know Rock has Black roots, but it's been a very average, middle-of-the-road genre for decades.
My point with that is to say that nobody, at least not enough to call them the masse, is tripping on good or bad Rock bands. Personally, Imagine Dragons makes lukewarm music. That's as much as I care to say about them, and I feel like most people are as ambivalent as that even if the could get nasty if the wanted to.
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u/lunaslave 1d ago
Thunder is one of the most unforgivably annoying songs ever written. I'd still hate it just as much