‘Imagine Dragons: Live in Vegas’ Finds Band Seeking Salvation In Sin City

Alongside Disneyland, Times Square, and the South of The Border motor lodge, Las Vegas is one of the holy sites of American artifice and consumption.  No light shines too bright, no decoration is too garish, it offers free drinks and all-you-can buffets while swallowing your life savings on the false promise of hitting the jackpot. Curiously, it is also the home of Imagine Dragons, one of the biggest rock-adjacent bands currently in existence, whose big-hearted appeal is based upon their earnestness and charity of spirit. Musically and lyrically, they promise understanding and community, alongside redemption, and release.

Imagine Dragons: Live in Vegas, the new concert film which premiered on Hulu this month, finds the band playing to an adoring hometown crowd at Allegiant Stadium on September 10, 2022. The sold out performance at the 65,000-capacity venue was the biggest concert by a Las Vegas band ever, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Since 1987, the year Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds was born, Las Vegas’ population has more than doubled, and while the local scene’s roots are only as deep as the fountain at the Bellagio, it has produced such acts as The Killers, Panic! At The Disco and 5 Finger Death Punch.  

Made up of alumni from Brigham Young University and the Berklee College of Music, Imagine Dragons built up a local following in Provo, Utah, where BYU is located, before Reynolds convinced the band to relocate to Vegas, where he grew up. They paid their dues playing 5-nights-a week at places like the Irish-themed O’Sheas Casino, where a dwarf dressed like a leprechaun pours shots of Jameson’s down your throat. In interviews peppered throughout the concert film, they say the experience drove them to find new ways to hold people’s attention and that the grandiosity of the Strip influenced the big bold simple hooks that would soon make them multi-platinum pop stars. 

The music of Imagine Dragons emanates from an alternate timeline, where U2 is Chuck Berry, Coldplay are Nirvana, Load was the first Metallica album, and Eminem created hip hop. There is nothing small about anything they do. Even if Reynolds plays a simple melody on a piano, the notes hang in the air, the space making it sound cavernous. At different points during their performance, the band, which also includes bassist Ben McKee, drummer Daniel Platzman and guitarist Wayne Sermon, bang big kettle drums for dramatic effect. The percussive clamor evokes not rock’s primeval tribal origins but the drum circles of the men’s movement. 

“The music of Imagine Dragons emanates from an alternate timeline, where U2 is Chuck Berry, Coldplay are Nirvana, Load was the first Metallica album, and Eminem created hip hop. There is nothing small about anything they do.”

Imagine Dragons are very much a group, with all the members contributing to the songwriting process and musically supporting each other on stage. Reynolds, however, is certainly first among equals. In performance, he has a bottomless well of energy, at one point literally running the length of the stadium. He gets choked up often. Like, really, a lot, whether remembering lost family members or thanking the city of Las Vegas for their support. He comes off like a jacked-up youth pastor, and was actually a missionary for two years while a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  

“I love to make people feel emotions. I love to unite people…I like people to feel safe and loved,” Reynolds says in one interview. The band’s faith-based overtones are so strong one could be mistaken for thinking them a Christian rock band. Both Reynolds and Sermon were raised as Mormans but have since left the church. In 2018, Reynolds was involved with the documentary Believer, which examined the intersection of LGBTQ people and the LDS Church, and helped organize the LOVELOUD charity festival, which supports LGBTQ teens in Utah. At one point during the concert someone throws a rainbow flag on stage, which Reynolds picks up and waves for the duration of the song. 

“I love to make people feel emotions. I love to unite people…I like people to feel safe and loved,” Reynolds says in one interview. The band’s faith-based overtones are so strong one could be mistaken for thinking them a Christian rock band. Both Reynolds and Sermon were raised as Mormans but have since left the church. In 2018, Reynolds was involved with the documentary Believer, which examined the intersection of LGBTQ people and the LDS Church, and helped organize the LOVELOUD charity festival, which supports LGBTQ teens in Utah. At one point during the concert someone throws a rainbow flag on stage, which Reynolds picks up and waves for the duration of the song. 

Mental health awareness is another cause close to Reynolds’ heart. Before introducing the song “Happy,” he talks about his own struggles with depression and credits his “incredible therapist” for saving his life. “Your life is always worth living,” he says, choking up for the umpteenth time. While Reynolds touchy feely emotionalism gets to be a bit much after a while, there’s no doubt he means what he says. 

Other emotional highlights include Reynolds singling out a young boy attending his first-ever concert. He tells the boy the band will now play their next song, “For you! Nobody else, just for you!” It seems a heavy burden to lay on a 9-year-old but the kid seems to enjoy it. Later, the band is joined by dancers from Cirque Du Soleil, who popped over from one of the 6 shows they perform in town. The stage sets seem as huge as the starships in Dune and the performance has all the pyrotechnics of a heavy metal show, but instead of flames, opaque gas bursts and confetti greet every climax. Watching it, one pities the poor custodial staff who had to clean the stadium afterwards. 

For all their success, Imagine Dragons have come under fire for their perceived sanctimoniousness and self-importance, the vague sloganeering of their lyrics, and the giant hooks which sound like they were produced by an AI music generator with the prompt, “Create an earworm with no more than four notes.” Some have even said they’re “worse than Nickleback.” Haters aside, fans of Imagine Dragons will love Live in Vegas as it shows the band in peak performance for two whole hours and gives flesh to form, revealing the emotional mission which powers the band and explains their appeal. 

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.