Dan Reynolds pulled up to Genius to dissect Imagine Dragons' latest hit, “Nice to Meet You.” The song is the third single from the band’s highly-anticipated sixth studio album, LOOM. The upbeat, flirty track is also produced by the Swedish duo Mattman & Robin. On today’s episode of Verified, Dan dives into artists being versatile, musicians making music they enjoy versus catering to their fans, his musical inspirations, and more!
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00:00I think it's incredibly important for all artists to try everything, fail, succeed,
00:06make your audience mad sometimes, push them to places they don't want to go.
00:10I think the worst thing you could do as an artist is try to make music to please your fans.
00:15You will lose.
00:17I always say, make a song I want today.
00:20Do I like this?
00:21Awesome.
00:21And if I like it, then if people hate it, love it, doesn't matter.
00:25I love it.
00:26I stand by it.
00:30It was actually the last day of the whole record.
00:36And we came into the studio and we were just like, let's just have fun today.
00:39Something about that freedom made me not think about like, what is dragons?
00:44What do dragons do?
00:46It was like, make a song that I like.
00:48This song has a certain dance tempo.
00:49Like dragons are not really, you know, and dragons are more like emo.
00:53Like I'm upset.
00:54I'm angry, angsty kid.
00:55And I was in a joyful state too, which, you know, I'm a very high, low person.
00:59So I was like, well, let's take advantage of this very high moment.
01:01During that day, we celebrated.
01:03Everybody was in the studio.
01:04The guys were there and everybody and we all, we had a cheers.
01:06We were like, yeah, we finished the record.
01:07And there happened to be a room mic that was on.
01:10When we were finishing the mix, we were like, hey, that room mic was on.
01:13Let's listen to that and get talking from it.
01:15And then we found the moment we cheers and we put that on the second chorus.
01:18If you listen close, when the second chorus hits, it's like a party.
01:20It's like, hey, that was a real moment of us celebrating the end of the record.
01:23So it was cool to kind of put it on the song in that way.
01:29I asked this girl out in seventh grade.
01:38She said yes.
01:39It was my first girlfriend.
01:40This was a big moment for me.
01:41I was so nerdy and I had these braces and I had the expander with the key and I had the
01:47rubber bands.
01:48I had terrible acne and I played the tenor saxophone.
01:51So you could just put the picture together.
01:53And her friend hated me.
01:54She was like, you could do so much better than him.
01:56God, I just was like, I just want to date you.
01:58Why do I have to date your girlfriend too?
02:00When you're dating someone, you're also kind of dating their friends and their family.
02:04And sometimes their friends are a little annoying.
02:06Or their friends don't like you.
02:08And maybe for good reason.
02:09This was not good reason.
02:10I was a nice young man, but I was a little nerdy.
02:12Let's be honest.
02:13And I was actually kind of dating someone at the time too and something similar was
02:16playing out.
02:17But it was very different.
02:18My life has changed a lot.
02:19So this one was more like, you should never date a rock star.
02:21They're this horrible person.
02:24Very understandable for most rock stars.
02:25Not everybody, right?
02:26So her friend was very trepidatious.
02:28Let's just say that.
02:29I kind of had all these thoughts playing in my head.
02:30And then I just started kind of writing from the middle school perspective till now, right?
02:35And that's kind of the birth of it.
02:46The small talk, right?
02:47Like you first meet someone and you're just like, hey, my name is Dan.
02:51How you been lately?
02:51You waking up?
02:52You sleeping in?
02:53And by the way, is your girlfriend gonna be leaving or?
02:56Or is this gonna be, you know, do I have any chance here?
03:19I wanted to establish in the pre-chorus kind of like the convincing moment of like,
03:24come on, let's just have a little bit of fun.
03:26What could ever go wrong?
03:28Let's just maybe take a little ride.
03:29Play me the music you like.
03:31She could come along too.
03:33It's like trying to have that moment of, you know, you try to make an attempt to connect
03:36with the friend.
03:48Shutting up doubters is kind of a beautiful thing.
03:50Whether it's like your family didn't believe that you could do something and then you did it.
03:54I'm not saying that I told you so is like the best thing to say in the world.
03:58Actually, the best thing to say in the world is to not even have to say I told you so.
04:01Like I have a lot of respect for people who never say I told you so and they just do it.
04:14It's kind of that idea of like, okay, the girlfriend's coming around.
04:16She's like, okay, I guess he's a good guy.
04:18Yeah, but also I miss hanging out with you.
04:20And also I loved when we were just lonely together, you know?
04:23You don't want to see change.
04:24I hate change.
04:25Especially with your best friend.
04:26You want your best friend to kind of be either miserable with you, happy with you.
04:29You want to be getting married at the same time.
04:30You know what I mean?
04:31Like you want to do it all at the same time.
04:33Sadly, it doesn't happen like that all the time.
04:45Specifically when I was writing this song, I was actually in a little bit of a fight
04:48with the person I was dating and I really actually blamed the friend.
04:52And so the idea was kind of like, sometimes, you know, they have that friend where they're
04:55like, they're upset with you.
04:57Maybe a little upset with you, but then they go text their friend about it and then they
05:00get really upset.
05:02You know what I mean?
05:02They're like, I think I'm upset about this thing, but I'm not sure if I'm upset or not.
05:05Hold on.
05:06I need to use the bathroom.
05:06They go to the bathroom.
05:07They're like, should I be upset about this?
05:08And the girlfriend's like, absolutely, you should be upset about this.
05:11And she comes back.
05:12She's so fired up.
05:13I'm like, I know exactly what just happened right now.
05:22This is very hard and the girlfriend's not helping the situation.
05:27So then I get really spiteful for the next part and then I start taking personal jabs
05:31at her, which one time I went to her house.
05:32I really didn't like the paintings on her wall.
05:35It's just the truth.
05:36I'm not going to play around about this.
05:38It's just, we went to her house, her girlfriend's house and I just, a couple of the paintings
05:42I just didn't really like.
05:44I told the friend that this song was coming out and we're cool now.
05:47So she actually could laugh about it if this happened.
05:50I'm not saying, I'm not confirming.
05:51I'm not denying.
06:12When we first started this band, it was like, Imagine Dragons and rock band.
06:16Still see rock bands are still around.
06:18I was always like, what?
06:20I don't think of Imagine Dragons as a rock band.
06:22It's not rock cadence.
06:24It is much more either singer-songwriter at times or more rhythmic and more influenced
06:29by hip hop.
06:30I still do interviews all the time where people are like, how do you feel about keeping rock
06:33alive?
06:34I'm like, we're not keeping rock alive.
06:36Go to Queens of the Stone Age.
06:39There's so many great bands, like Boothbiters and very much rock.
06:44I don't want to be rock.
06:45It's just not who I am.
06:46I couldn't even tell you rock music.
06:48I didn't listen to that.
07:00The bridge is one of my favorite parts of the song.
07:06A lot of my rhyming and singing is very much due to my love of 90s hip hop.
07:13Outkast, Tupac, Biggie, Eminem.
07:16And then they're throwing a little bit of Nirvana and grunge.
07:18And that's the hodgepodge that kind of makes Imagine Dragons.
07:47For the end of the song, I really wanted to give it a little bit of a lift.
07:52One of my favorite artists of all time is Prince.
07:54I think that a lot of my falsetto is naturally just inspired by Prince.
07:58When I hear Prince sing high like that, it makes me just feel like just ease.
08:02At the end of this day, there was all this talk, but it could have been as simple as
08:06you went up to someone, you sat down with them at the bar for a minute.
08:09Hey, nice to meet you.
08:10We exchanged some words and I hope we meet again.
08:14I love a summer fling.
08:16My favorite memories growing up is I would go to this thing called EFY, which for Mormons,
08:20it's like in the summertime, you go for two weeks and it's like, you're like studying
08:24the Bible and the Book of Mormon and stuff.
08:26It's your first time kind of away from the family and there's all these cute girls around
08:30you that are also studying the Bible.
08:31But I always was very disinterested in the Bible.
08:34So I was always like, it was just a front, you know, and I was always like checking out
08:38the girls around me.
08:39It was my goal to meet my EFY, which stands for, especially for youth, crush, right?
08:44And every year I'd go, I secured it.
08:46Two days in, at least, I would just, I was all for it.
08:49I'd, you know, what's your favorite scripture?
08:52Oh, that's my favorite scripture too.
08:55Look, I highlighted that in my scriptures too.