“That Koji Kondo moment was super fun and last minute,” Keighley recollects to The Put up. “It was a combo of the show being in Vegas, their hometown, and knowing they’re big gamers.”
Consider Dragons has been all over the place gaming tradition ever since. Of the entire band’s accomplishments — filling stadiums and arenas, even acting Beatles songs in entrance of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — taking part in with Kondo rest a spotlight, says the band’s frontman Dan Reynolds. He didn’t develop up paying attention to the Beatles, he grew up paying attention to the “Athletic Theme” from “Super Mario World.”
“I geeked out harder on that than when we played in front of McCartney,” Reynolds says.
Reynolds says the band’s ties to gaming hint the entire as far back as when writer Ubisoft requested to virtue its tune “Radioactive” on trailers for the 2012 recreation “Assassin’s Creed III.” Reynolds cherished the layout and gave the golf green brightness immediately.
Since after, diverse recreation firms have stored drawing near the band. Epic Video games’ iOS recreation “Infinity Blade III” featured the band’s identify and tune “Monster” (a collaboration that first stuck Keighley’s consideration, to the Recreation Awards display). In 2017, Nintendo created a Super Bowl trailer to launch the Switch console with the band’s strike unmarried “Believer.” Rise up Video games and Netflix commissioned the band to jot down “Enemy,” the theme song for the hit animated series “Arcane,” now drawing near 1.5 billion streams on Spotify.
“It’s not like we’re going around knocking on doors,” Reynolds says, guffawing. “They just started reaching out, and we said, ‘Absolutely, this is amazing.’ Look, I’m really tall, 6 foot 4, never played sports, always did music and drama, so people probably think I’m not a gamer, but it’s my bread and butter. It’s our world.”
Reynolds grew up taking part in old-school journey video games revealed by way of Sierra Leisure, after turned into a weighty fan of Snowfall video games like “Warcraft,” “StarCraft” and “Diablo.”
“Then ‘Dark Souls’ took over my life,” Reynolds says, including that the band is all the time gaming on excursion. “We’ve been late onstage because we’re playing ‘League of Legends.’” (Departure a multiplayer “League” fit early can lead to a block, so the band doesn’t chance it.)
Utmost hour, the band absolved “Children of the Sky,” a collaboration with composer Inon Zur for the foundation of “Starfield,” a marquee Xbox recreation that shall we avid gamers discover a couple of thousand planets. Once more, it took place as a result of anyone from Bethesda Recreation Studios emailed the band’s supervisor a couple of collaboration.
Consider Dragons returned to the Recreation Awards degree in 2021 to accomplish “Enemy” and a medley of songs from indie studio Supergiant Video games. Reynolds says it’s been superb to peer the development eclipse the viewing audiences of alternative awards displays together with the Oscars.
“Geoff just reached out to us and was like, ‘I don’t know how this is going to go, and I’m just shooting from the hip here, you guys want to be a part of this?’ And we were like, oh yeah,” he says. “And then it’s blown up over the last years. He’s such a kind person, so it’s made me so happy to see good people win.”
Now the band is set to let go its 6th studio brochure, “Loom,” on June 28. It options extra of the band’s signature tone: danceable anthems sopping wet in reverb and hovering choruses. The original unmarried, “Nice to Meet You,” is a a laugh, funk-inflected dance observe about Reynolds’s enjoy with a spouse’s buddies getting interested in their courting age.
“I grew up listening to singer-songwriters, Dylan, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens. But I love pop music,” Reynolds says, explaining the ethereal, upbeat really feel of the report. “I like to create big choruses and songs that I want to hear, and I happen to be in a healthier, happier place with this record, so hopefully that’s reflected in it.”
Many Consider Dragons lyrics revolve round Reynolds’s attempt with melancholy. Hype classics like “Thunder” are about Reynolds gassing himself up regardless of overwhelming self-doubt. He admits that “Eyes Closed,” the primary unmarried this hour (the refrain: “I could do this with my eyes closed”) is blank boasting and bluster that trace at inadequacies he nonetheless feels.
Complaint of the band has a tendency to concentrate on the stress between its marketability and its intended park in rock tune. The Consider Dragons tone is radio-friendly, approachable and blank, very best for advertising subject matter. And Reynolds’s choruses are so catchy and concise, it’s essential simply believe them backing an Apple product foundation. iPhone 16 Plus Max? Pleased to meet you.
On the similar day, Consider Dragons is likely one of the few too much mega acts filling arenas with a real-life electric guitar boisterous and seeing onstage. Critics of the band jeered when the group topped Billboard’s rock charts. Reynolds, for what it’s virtue, is of the same opinion with them. He owns being a pop function.
“I really think the sentiment of Imagine Dragons ‘keeping rock alive’ is kind of a silly sentiment,” he says. “When I think of rock, I think Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age. I think of a very specific genre that I love, but that’s not what Imagine Dragons has ever wanted to be or tried to be, and it’s not our influences. I didn’t really listen to any classic rock growing up!”
In fact he hears the grievance, however Reynolds says he and the crowd are proud of their signature tone. They scribble all their songs in line with non-public reviews, he says. He makes a speciality of pop hooks, bringing up classical composers like Chopin and Bach, whom he describes as “very pop.”
“I can genuinely say we’ve never created a record where we’re saying, ‘What do you want, critics? What do you want to hear right now?’” Reynolds says. “I just write songs I want to play. If I’m going to perform them for the next two years, I’d better like them. We’re trying to make sounds that feel good on the ears and make you feel something. And all I’m doing is writing about what’s going in my life. And this happens to be a happy time period.”
And lots of instances, that may heartless writing tune for the passion and leisure medium he’s cherished since he used to be a child.
“My MO from the very beginning is just following the kid in me. What would little Dan Reynolds love to be a part of?”
