Imagine Dragons’ recently released “Cutthroat” is by far the most daring single of the band’s career. This song, and the most animated “Follow You”, are the first teasers of a new album yet to be announced by the group, which will be their first release since 2018. Frontman Dan Reynolds explains how the producer of the new album, Rick Rubin, together with an experience with ayahuasca, helped him to reshape his band and his life.
“Cutthroat” is really different for you.
Rick intruded a lot with us on this particular song. Rick was like no one I ever worked with. With the legend of Rick Rubin, you really don’t know what to expect. In addition to the pictures you see of him lying on the couch while working with Kanye West or something. But he was so different than I expected.
As well?
I always thought of him as an independent superintendent, or as a man of few words, I think. And he was not that. He was very practical, very engaged. I think the part that lived up to my expectations was, he was very direct. This is what I liked the most. Usually, we produce our music for the most part. And sometimes this is good for us, and sometimes it makes it difficult, because you have four guys who are going in different directions. But Rick was really good at just leading the ship and being very direct and without words. If he liked anything, he liked it. And if he didn’t like it, he said it was terrible. I think we needed that.
During Covid, I sent him 100 songs that I had worked on for the past three years. And he wrote comments about each song in an email. This is when we were just talking about working together or not and getting to know each other. I didn’t expect this. I felt like he was going to say, “This is too much for me to hear,” or it wouldn’t really go any deeper. But he went into all of them and gave me very direct comments.
How did you two connect in the first place?
Well, I was very familiar with his work because I grew up a lot in hip-hop. He worked on records that were very influential for me, whether it was Kanye or Beastie Boys. I saw Rick, you know, always there. Especially with Kanye, I heard him pushing in ways that almost seemed uncomfortable. And I think Imagine Dragons needed that. I feel that one of our biggest shortcomings as a band is comfort. With “Cutthroat,” for example, he embraced the parts of Imagine Dragons that were a little uncomfortable for me, which I would normally kind of hide. I would never release that song, or ever explore that demo, because it’s too weird for Imagine Dragons or something. But he helped me to embrace it and love it in me. And it really helped in the process.
Given the references to Wellbutrin and serotonin in that song, I assume you are addressing your experiences with depression.
Yes, this song is really an exorcism of self-loathing. I feel like I’ve spent many years of my life kind of [feeling] “Woe is me.” I don’t know if depression is a genetic thing for me or if it came from a religious crisis. I was raised in Mormonism and it wasn’t really for me. It was hard for me to accept that in my brain. But for some reason, around my teenage years, I really started to deal with mental illnesses, seeing a therapist and trying different medications.
That was the focus of all my music, and [there was] a lot of focus on yourself. And this song is about exorcising, trying to cut that self-pity and embrace life and everything that was given to me. A great “Cutthroat” theme and many of the songs on the album is the purpose of life. I lost my sister-in-law to cancer last year. In fact, I was in the room with my brother when she passed away. They have seven children. It was the first time that I was actually in the room with someone who passed away, and it really hit me differently, making me think about each day differently, and how I’m spending my time. The year before, one of my best friends took his life. It just makes you grateful for your health, grateful for each day. People will listen and think that the song is angry with someone else. But you are really angry with yourself.
How did you get to that place?
Something that I explored and that really changed my life is that I did Ayahuasca. It was really transformative for me, helping me to see things that don’t matter and letting go of those things and seeing the things that matter and embracing those things. So it really transformed this whole album for me. Obviously, I don’t want to go out and be, like, Mr. Ayahuasca or something. But it was really transformative for me. This helped me make leaps and bounds in my mental health.
What were the circumstances? Did you go to the jungle or just sit in your living room?
In fact, my wife and I had been separated for seven months. We were going to get divorced. That was during To evolve, our last album, and I was on the road, and we haven’t spoken in seven months. We’re just going through a lawyer right now. And I came home, and we were going to meet to sign the papers in a room with our lawyers. And we just kind of looked at each other across the table. She texted me right before the meeting, all these things that were so revealing and really hit me on a deep level and were places that we never explored together, that were really healing for me.
So, we raise our hands. We think, “It’s not where we need to be, we need to go to lunch or something.” So we left and went to lunch. She told me that she had done ayahuasca and that it changed her life. She said, “Hey, I’m going to do this next weekend, if you want to do it with me.” So I did a little research on my own, and then we researched together and it really changed my life, man. In such a deep way that it is difficult to put into words without sounding mushy.
It brought us back, and we’ve been happily married for years ever since, and we have a 16-month-old son. This brought me to really healthy ground and self-love that I had not been able to achieve.
I’ve heard good ayahuasca stories, but this can be the most positive. I’m still too scared to try it in person, but …
It is so scary. The last thing I do is tell people like, “Hey, you should do this”. Because it is a big company. And I don’t think it’s for everyone. But it made me see religiosity that way it was so small.
Tell me about the real composition of “Cutthroat” and what Rick brought to it.
I didn’t know what he was going to think, because it’s a song with such a strange sound. When we showed it to him in a demonstration format, it was still very aggressive. But he was also holding on in some ways. It could have been more manic, I think. I definitely dealt with a little mania throughout my life, and I think I was in a very manic space when I wrote this song. And Rick, one of the things he pointed out from the beginning was, “You need to embrace those parts of the song.” Like, the song looks like it wants to be manic, but it’s not. And he wants to be angry, but he is not angry enough.
So, we disassembled the entire song. We brought Cory Henry, who is an incredible gospel multi-instrumentalist, a complete genius. Rick told us about him, and he went into the studio, we built the song with an organ, which seems so strange to me. But it was Rick’s idea. And it brought that fervor of almost religious anger. It was very rewarding for me as an artist, because that song needed to be angry – anger and darkness can be a really fantastic thing at times.
How do you usually write your music?
The DAW I have used for many years is the Ableton. I usually sit here where I am now, with a keyboard and percussion instruments and stuff. And I usually write a demo almost every day. I’ve been doing this since I was 12 or 13 years old. I have thousands of these demos. Many of them are completely terrible, but the process has been very therapeutic. Any Wayne [Sermon], our guitarist, is going to send me something he’s working on, or [Daniel] Platzman, our drummer, is going to send me something he’s working on, or I’m going to start here.
What has changed the most with Rick?
With Rick, we started with about 40 songs, and then we just tried to understand the theme of what exactly was going on, which in the past has been very difficult for me. One of my biggest weaknesses is being very metaphorical out of fear. I had a great fear of honesty in my life, fear of being honest about things in a very public way that would harm my family or the people I care about most. And because of that, I would write songs that were excessively metaphorical.
Many of the songs on our discography, the ones I don’t like or haven’t aged well for me, are the ones where I was trying to bury what I was really saying. My favorite composers, like Bob Dylan or Cat Stevens or Paul Simon, are really on the nose. Harry Nilsson, very much on the nose. So I really tried to embrace that on this album, and Rick also put a lot of pressure on me to be more direct.
How about the other new song, “Follow You”?
“Follow You” is the opposite sonic side of the record. The disc, at least in my head, is divided into two sides. Part of it is looking outside, part is looking inside, a little more organic, sometimes more aggressive, chaotic. And the part of the record that faces inwards is “Cutthroat”.
Whereas “Follow You” is very organized. It’s a love song, which we usually don’t write, because it seems redundant or unpleasant to me. I’m not very good at writing love songs. But when I came back to Aja and we came together through ayahuasca, of all things, it was such an agonizing experience for me that I was very grateful for the base and loyalty to the people I love. So, “Follow You” is about loyalty. It’s about me and Aja coming back together.
It’s inspired by the Beach Boys, which I grew up in, and it was a very playful and fun song. Again, Rick really encouraged me to embrace our sonic versatility, to embrace the extremes.
Is the album ready?
Yes, yes, the registration is complete. These two singles are kind of guiding fans on what to expect from this album, which are the two sides and the extremes of it. In addition, the name of the record type is correlated to it. I don’t think I should say what the name of the record is yet. But talk about it.
You recently donated your childhood home in Las Vegas to Encircle, a group that works with LGBTQ + youth. What was behind this choice?
I grew up in a house full of love and laughter. When my parents told me they were selling their home this year, after more than 30 years of raising nine children in it, the idea came up that it would be a perfect home to provide a place of love and refuge for LGBTQ young people in Las Vegas. I have always felt loved and celebrated in that house, so my only hope is that it will bring joy to many more people in the years to come.