Your Song Sucks: What I Don't Like About Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive"

Such excitement.

Imagine Dragons is a band that the kids like these days, and I can see why with their song "Radioactive": they got some dark brooding lyrics, poundy drums that make the song feel epic, and judging from their website and music videos, they even have a sense of humor. There are much worse acts out there that people could be eating up. But this song is painfully middle-of-the-road that it might as well be painting the line. The instrumental work might get a preteen amped, but the vague electronic undercurrent to the melody seems like an abandoned synthesis that an unambitious mad scientist is responsible for. But nothing puts me out quite like the song's lyrics.

To begin on this odyssey into mediocrity, the song is lyrically lazy. So much of the chorus consists of the vocalist singing, "Ohohohohohohoh" at least twice. I get it. It's a chorus. It should feel like an anthem, and it's easier to do that with some repetition. But this isn't a matter of the chorus being repeated--it's a matter of words being repeated within the chorus. Let's take a look:

Ohohoh
I'm waking up
I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age
To the new age
Welcome to the new age
To the new age
Ohohohohohohoh
I'm radioactive
Radioactive
Ohohohohohohohoh
I'm radioactive Radioactive 

The phrase "to the new age" comes up four times in that chorus, as does the word "radioactive." I've heard the key to repetition is to repeat something in threes, but this seems like overkill. Also, bear in mind that we haven't even reached the second verse yet. Worry not, friends. You'll get it a couple more times to let it sink in deep.

Notice that the speaker is "waking up" at least twice in the song: first in our inaugural verse, and then immediately in the chorus that follows. In each repetition of the chorus, the speaker continues still to be "waking up." The theme of awakening is not something ever addressed, unless you consider that "checking out on the prison bus" is the speaker returning to slumber. This happens twice, by the by, in verses one and two. Half of the first verse is cannibalized for the second verse. It's not repainted with any clever wordplay. We're treated to the same bland image twice:

I'm breaking in and shaping up
Then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse

Apocalypse, huh? How spooky. And it looks like the speaker's in a dystopian nightmare to boot: "I'm waking up to ash and dust / I wipe my brow and sweat my rust / I'm breathing in the chemicals." What dreaded chemicals is the poor speaker respiring? Dunno. Is this a biblical apocalypse? Dunno. In fact, "dunno" might be the answer for just about any question regarding the lyrical content of the song. Listeners are barely given a watered-down broth. The speaker is so unsure of him- or herself that no picture is painted, no senses stimulated via the imagination.

One of the lyrics' biggest sins lays this line: "It's a revolution, I suppose." The "revolution" bit fits the vaguely dystopic theme of the song, but almost never is the phrase "I suppose" acceptable in a song--especially at the end of a line. It feels like filler, especially since the line follows the phrase "...dye my clothes." They have rhyming dictionaries out there for a reason.

Lyrics provided by Imagine Dragons official website