There's a difference between singing about feelings and singing with feeling. On the titular track to the aptly titled Smoke + Mirrors, rare contemporary alt-rock phenom Imagine Dragons' follow-up to its 2012 multi-platinum debut Night Visions, frontman Dan Reynolds sings about how he wants to believe in things, but he doesn't seem to know what it is he's yearning to believe in. "I'm feeling far away, I'm feeling right here," he croons, "dream maker, life taker / Open up my mind." A track earlier, the 27-year-old singer bellyaches about the "curses of diamonds and rings" — the tragically consequential rewards that come with overnight rock stardom, "when everything, everything, everything you touch turns to gold, gold, gold."
In Imagine Dragons' case, everything turned to double platinum. On the strength of the chart-dominating mega-hit "Radioactive" — a dubstep-y ode to toxic waste that spent a record-setting 87 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 — Night Visions was one of those rare modern rock records to sell more than 2 million copies, making the band the top rock act of 2013 and elevating them to arena-headliner status by album cycle's end. And in classic form, such overwhelming commercial success dovetailed with critical scorn.
Let's be clear, critics hate on Imagine Dragons because of their success. And as you'll see, this critic is no exception. The reason isn't because we're all envious failed musicians who recoil at a sight like that of Imagine Dragons debuting Smoke + Mirrors' third single, "Shots," during the 2015 Grammy telecast, via a non-awards-show Target commercial the big-box retailer reportedly shelled out $8 million for. The reason isn't even that Imagine Dragons' pan-genre, painfully unironic, tropes-by-numbers, millennial-targeting arena anthems add up to an empty spectacle of broad-stroked bombast that aims for the heart with Nerf arrows and hits heavy like a whack to the back with a Wiffle Ball bat.
Actually, that is why critics hate Imagine Dragons.
The band seems almost purpose-built to be shat upon by critics who recoil at over-cooked, bait-and-switch EDM hooks masquerading as rock 'n' roll and overly intense "Lose Yourself" choruses about nothing, loved by kids who've never seen Cirque du Soleil or heard any of the good U2 records. Critics take shots at Imagine Dragons because the band is empty calories and it works. And it works so well that attention must be paid.
Critics hate Imagine Dragons because the utter existence and overwhelming success of a band that, like an anti-Seinfeld episode, blood-lets about nothing while sporting faux hawks and beating on auxiliary bass drums and floor toms seems as much like a bad joke as an evitable success. Critics hate the band because their for-fences-swinging stadium-sized savvy presents them like a focus group that can sing and play instruments.
Critics hate Imagine Dragons for their bad joke of a name, a name that the band revealed in an interview with Walmart Soundcheck is an anagram for some other name that is a shared secret between its members.
Critics hate Imagine Dragons because they're from Las Vegas, where good bands are almost never ever from. Seriously, when, as a city, your biggest rock 'n' roll export is Diet Rite-to-U2's Coca-Cola The Killers — a band whose best song boasts the lyric "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier," you've got problems. And compared to Imagine Dragons, The Killers might as well be The Clash. Could a safer band ever come from a more dangerous town? Panic! at the Disco, Hemlock, Slaughter, Falling in Reverse, the aforementioned Killers — all these bands are from Las Vegas, and all but one are more tolerable than Imagine Dragons. That said, no band better embodies the soulless, family-friendly dazzle of Sin City. Cruise the Vegas strip and you might see towering billboards offering entertainment from the likes of Cirque du Soleil, the Blue Man Group and David Copperfield. Critics hate that, like Cirque and Blue Man, Imagine Dragons are drowning in drums and only-kind-of dazzling, vaguely arty aesthetics, and listening to Smoke + Mirrors is like watching Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear — it's impressively elaborate as an illusion, and painstaking in its quest to come off as magical.
Critics hate Imagine Dragons because, like a PG-rated cut of Eyes Wide Shut, they're totally safe and they don't rock. Smoke's biggest single is "I Bet My Life," Reynolds' weepy, anthemic Mumford & Sons-meets-an-iPod-commercial-in-a-Starbucks apology to his Mormon parents for pursuing rock 'n' roll instead of, like, missionary work or something. And he's apologizing after he sold 2 million records. First World much? And how can you rock when all the guitars are buried in outsized, bells-and-whistles production that makes the band sound as zeitgeisty as they sound dated on delivery. If wearing ironic vintage band T-shirts is still part and parcel to hipster-chic fashion in 20 years, surely an Imagine Dragons shirt will be a hot commodity.
Critics hate the band because their apologies are too little too late. Smoke's "I'm So Sorry" sounds like Queens of the Stone Age, neutered and filtered through some low-rent Max Martin production, cut for a placement in a K-Swiss commercial.
Critics will hate the band's stop at Bridgestone Arena Wednesday night because the best song you'll hear at the show is a cover of Alphaville's "Forever Young," and many in the crowd will inevitably mistake it for a Jay Z cover.
Critics hate Imagine Dragons because they released an album called Smoke + Mirrors, and even that's understatement.
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