Dan Reynolds: Imagine Dragons | Lex Fridman Podcast #290
when you imagine a song is it the opening you imagine no it's it's kind of a just i never think opening i never think final i think soundscape of how i'm feeling right now so it could be the middle of the song for all i know when i'm you know when i'm when i'm doing that but my process for me is very much lyrics and melody and music really come at the same time like i by same time i mean i'm uh as i'm expressing maybe you know i'm feeling like like it's not that simple but it's like i'll i'll hear it like it's like here's all the orchestra and you're kind of just pressing all the buttons at once and melody and my voice is just one of those instruments the following is a conversation with dan reynolds the lead singer of imagine dragons one of the most popular bands in the world with over 75 million records sold and with four songs being streamed over a billion times on spotify given all that dan is one of the most down to earth kind thoughtful and fascinating human beings i've ever met grounded in part by his lifelong struggle with mental health the darkness the love and the creative brilliance are all there in this one humble mind for this reason and many others we became fast friends plus he recently started his journey in programming which funny enough is where we start this wide-ranging deeply personal and fun conversation this is the lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's dan reynolds so we were talking offline that you're not just getting into programming what what's uh the most beautiful program you've ever written something that brought you joy there's something i really love completion it's the reason that i'm addicted to songwriting i like there being nothing and then having some blocks or tools and building them into what you want it to look like and then i find it incredibly rewarding to stand back and and look at what you did at the end it could be anything for me it's it was as simple to begin with that's just you know because it's object-oriented like making a cube move like that as simple as that understanding that and knowing that i built that and made it do that is really rewarding and i think it's the thing that drew me into to wanting to learn more but as far as what is some grandio like some big piece of code that i've done like absolutely not it's more i'm still a level where it's more like what is a tutorial that i followed right and and got you know and and then you know yeah so i couldn't say i'm at a level where i've done anything beautiful at all in code but you're also interested in potentially like your heart is drawn to creating games creating anything um and completing it yeah that's the good the feel good is this done yeah i've i mean i've been working over the last two years um with actually a team out of kiev uh on and and we can get into that as whole another story but on a computer game and really have kept that kind of under under wraps but yeah we're kind of getting to a point now where we have a prototype that we can play and it's a lot of fun and and uh thankfully all the team members are in safe places now things have obviously been on hold for a little bit but you know when that started is when i really decided okay i need to understand base level coding in c sharp so i'm not an idiot talking to these people and and uh so it's you know we've been doing that for a couple years is there any parallels between the final completion that you feel with programming which i think is a little bit more definitive like there's debugging the code doesn't work it's messy and so on there's the early design stages you're not sure like how to have functions in classes how it's all going to work and then it comes together and it's really done because it works and there's a cube moving on the screen right right uh is there any parallels between that and music because are you really ever done done with a song it's it's exactly the same thing for me just in that it's art um i really believe that we have not fully encapsulated artists like when we say art i think most people think okay the medium must be painting or drawing or music or writing but i really believe anytime you're creating some things engineers instance you're creating something with tools that you have and it can be incredibly beautiful um and so yeah i think and it's never done i feel like i look at songs that i've done and i never felt it you have to let go or i have to let go and that's all i've i'm just continually making myself let go but i look at songs that i've done and wish i had done more or kept going down that road and what would have happened and i'm really contained to because of what our band is and and what our fans expect and there's so much more to it that it's like i'm fitting in a box always um you know it's like this song shouldn't be longer than three minutes and 30 seconds and i don't know if i remember the chorus after i heard it maybe i need to hear the chorus three times instead of those two times it's like there's there's certain especially in pop music it's really hard to um yeah it's you there's con it feels like there's confines even though people are like well there's no confines but still everybody's writing a pop song it's a few minutes and are those explicit in your mind or are they just kind of yeah the gut is like you said chorus should you have of course once twice or three times is that a gut thing or is that a rule thing you know i think it's a rule i mean it's obviously a rule i impose on myself nobody's nobody's in my house saying hey dan if you don't do this i'm gonna punish you there's no major label president that's like imagine dragons needs to make pop music dan you know what i mean my manager doesn't even tell me that i i do it because it's what i perceive to be enjoyable i i grew up listening to a ton of pop music and then i ended up being in what is quote unquote a rock band which i've never perceived it as that but that's kind of what the world has called it and that's fine but um so you're a prisoner of a prison that you yourself constructed there you go well i'm not confident are you happy i guess what i'm trying to say is i'm a happy prisoner of the prison that i have created for myself and i made that prison thinking that it was a mansion so you worked with rick rubin what does rick think about your prison rick uh rick was rick was you know it was interesting to hear his outside opinion when we first met because my biggest focus for so much of my life my biggest fear was and i this stems from i think middle schools when it started but everyone being in on a joke except for yourself i re like the thought of thinking you're good at something and really you're terrible at it and you're surrounded by people who are saying yeah you're good at it and then by themselves they're like he's terrible at this just kind of and not just in regards to music or art but anything in life and i think maybe from having six older brothers it stems from that too like always feeling inadequate and like the annoying younger brother you know um but anyway so rick's and that's something i've learned to let go of as i've gotten older and and and had life experiences but one of the things that rick said really early on that has stuck with me was he said yeah you know we were resuming the first time we met he said i'd really like to work with you because i feel like you don't you're not confined to a sound you've done a lot of different sounds and so it's exciting because i feel like your fans are forgiving more than other rock bands or bands because most people when they hear you know when they hear a band it's like there's a very specific sound with it it's like they do folk music oh they do like california rock or they do surf or they do you know like there's and your fans kind of want that like they want them to do that thing and then they don't do it and sometimes that goes well but a lot of times it doesn't and people you know critics and everybody is like go back to the thing that you did good and do that rick was felt whether he was right or wrong that we could we could do we hop genres so much and that's been to our benefit and detriment i think um why detriment uh because people want you to to be something it's more you can believe it more i you know it's like uh it's more authentic if you if you never change i guess i don't know i mean it's certainly it's not uh something i subscribe to because i create music that but but i also grew up listening to a lot of different genres like cats i would listen to like kat stevens and the next song would be like biggie and then the next song would be nirvana and it was like i like a lot of and then billy joel and then enya it was like you know what i mean i was a product and i was a product of the 90s which if you listen to 90s music it really was all a lot of reason that people say well 90s were terrible like a lot of people say that i love the 90s for my favorite decade of music um was there was a lot of genre hopping and and i don't know i i i love that she had the 90s had the boy bands and it had pearl jam and nirvana and it had a lot of like women of the 90s was pr is probably my biggest influence um like kind of that like angry rock women of the 90s like alanis morissette jagged little pills one of my favorite records of all time the the lyrics were so uh intimate and um i don't know if she was angry or not sorry if she wasn't um yeah but there was an anger to it there was angst yeah it was like angstiness and that in hip-hop of the 90s influences me and then my dad so anything my dad listened to which my dad didn't listen any of that my dad listened to like harry nelson the beatles cat stevens bob dylan paul simon billy joel it was very much like singer songwriter do you mind if we throw out this listen to a few songs because you mentioned here in nissan and i was actually um yesterday and the day before listening to a lot of his stuff and it's just like damn he's good and not as known as he should be like um i was getting uh do you mind if i play no please yeah i don't know not to not to open this conversation with a love song i would like that actually alex but without you is an incredible song oh man that's yeah and the heartbreak and the and the [Music] he's the best to do it in my opinion in my opinion he's the best to do it the vocal range and just the sadness [Music] there's something uh i i don't even want to talk over him because this is one of my favorite songs too but i think people have a really good bullshit indicator and music in my opinion whenever i meet a young artist and say well i'm trying to make a new band and i want to do something like how to be successful i really think understanding that people have a really good bullshit indicator is the most important part of being an artist and i'll explain what what that means at least to me i think that in order to have success or or be a leader or or whether it's an art or anything people need to believe that you believe what you're doing um i think the best actors really when they're doing their thing it's like they it's not acting they're they're in it and it's how they feel and they're expressing that sorrow or joy or whatever it is harry for me harry nelson he ju i just believe it he could he sings that and i i feel it and whether he's the greatest bullshitter of all time or i don't think that's the case i think he probably was seeing that song and he he just could transport himself to wherever he was it's what makes a great live act it's what makes a great song and someone could be the best actor and sing that in the same timber same eq same compression same everything and there's some unknown there that i you know i don't i think hopefully it will be known at some point it's some scientific thing but there's something there that the energy or something that people can perceive it and say true or false and if it resonates is true it's so much more meaningful and it lives on and if it doesn't that for me is what is good art or bad like for people to dispute over like well sonic should sound like that's silly to me it's like it's a song or or even a painting like it's just the truthfulness of it yeah the the truly great art ghost has to go to that place where you really are feeling it like you forget that you're being recorded if you get there's an audience you really are feeling it yeah which i totally agree with you one of the things that i love about the internet is it's uh brought the bullshit detector of the masses um to power which is beautiful because then the masses uplift the really authentic right and even if you didn't write the song i think it helps a lot probably if you wrote the song but you know i was i was i was a little bit maybe a lot since we're in vegas a little heartbroken that to find out that elvis didn't write his songs uh but i like for example rocketman belt and john like to find out dale and john didn't really know where the words of rocketman came from meaning like the depths of it it's interesting but nevertheless he's super authentic because for el and john and for elvis there's something in the in the fun and the darkness and the entertainment of it like he goes to some place in his mind that might not be deeply connected from where the lyrics came from but he really likes it he relates it to whatever is in his mind uh and and goes to that place emotionally yeah and and that's what i think it is and that's why an actor like i said can be completely honest to me maybe they didn't write the script but i i write like i've always written all my own lyrics it's a really personal thing to me but i will say i see people all the time who are performers like elton john for instance who didn't write the lyrics that i believe that they it means just as much to them as what i wrote because they find the meaning in it for themself at least the greats do and i i think that that's the difference maker and i think you can perceive and i'm sure you've seen art that doesn't move you and maybe it moves someone else but for you for some reason you perceive it to be uninteresting to you and i feel like a lot of the time i'm saying that it's of course sonically maybe it's uninteresting too but i think the majority of the time for myself i can find inspiration in any sonic value or painting as long as i see it and i feel truth from the person that created it yeah but and for me the lyrics maybe not the entirety of the lyrics but a few words can can can do wonders to take you to a place and sometimes those words don't need to be connected with the other words that's the beauty of music they're allowed to float in the space of mixed metaphors yes they're allowed to just jump around and somehow it paints a picture without actually um what is it uh glycerine by bush right but it's also how the person says it right it's like it's the it's the feeling of exactly and the same person could say that word ten other ways and you don't care but someone says glycerine or whatever it is and it's like oh you know what that i feel that for something the way he said that he meant it to me [Applause] no i can't forget this evening or your face as you were leaving but i guess that's just the way the story goes you always smile but in your eyes your sorrow shows yes it shows um let me ask you to analyze the song do you uh so there's a there's a lady possibly who's leaving him do you think he's leaving her or she's leaving him if you want to [Music] i should let you know and then the course is i can't live if living is without you can't live i can't give any more [Music] he's got a voice on him yeah he does and if you really there's been some incredible documentation on his life and the end of his life and so my answer to this is probably skewed based on what i've seen about his life too but he he was a real alcoholic at the end of his life and it destroyed his voice and ended up killing him as well um and so when i hear that i perceive it as someone who is destructive and in a destructive place in life and can't love someone properly and so they can't live with them but they can't live without them type thing which is really something i i really identify with and i think is you know one of the struggles of life is loving yourself enough um forgiving yourself for for things and and letting yourself love someone else and you know at least when i listen to that i hear harry being like and maybe i'm wrong but this is how i perceive it at least is not loving himself and feeling like he's deserving of this person like i have to let you go i hear that of course and people say oh well he's breaking up with her but there's so much more complexity and nuance to relationships than that and i and my wife and i went through really difficult separation and that's you know story for another day or a different question or something but the nuance of it makes me think of this when i hear this which is there's just more to being with someone or not being with someone then hey i think that person's really attractive or hey that person makes me laugh or not or i love them and now i don't love them love is such a complex nuanced thing that it a lot of times there's just more going on behind the scenes i think yeah uh on a small tangent on that just a as a curious question have you paid any attention to the johnny depp and eberhard trials i have uh watched quite a bit of it because my wife really loves it and she watches it in bed at night um so it's raw like to me it's really because you you've mentioned how complicated love can be and it's i've never seen i don't care about the celebrity nature of it i don't care if it was i don't care who it is yeah but it's just laid out in such raw form the uh for the world to see it for the world to see the toxicity but also the passion and and the clearly sort of uh the drugs and the drinking but also like the longing and the dreams and i will always be with you i will die for you the the the place is the the roller coaster of love and it's all there at the end past the end so it's like um i've also recently re-read the rise and fall of the third reich about hitler nazi germany it's the rise and the fall and it's interesting to look at the entirety of that process after it's all over many many decades after it's all over that book in particular written by the person that was actually there and so here we're seeing two people in the context of the courtroom analyzing this rise and fall of a love affair it's fascinating you know the truth is i was telling my wife this actually just the other day because she was asking me what i thought about it it makes me really sad it's it's humorous don't get me wrong there's a lot of parts in it that are just really funny like but yeah i look at it and i also see the internet and you know someone's always the villain and someone's the hero which is such a funny thing and we we talked about a little about this offline before we got on this but i have a real firm belief in life that it's just more complex than you think always always and we in johnny for instance is very charismatic and and you you love him and he's funny and this the way he does things and he looks certain ways and he says things he he's just you really love him and i feel like and maybe i'm wrong on this but it looks like the internet has really been like johnny is the winner amber is is the villain and i kind of look at it yeah and i kind of look at it and i feel like were any of you in their bedroom like were any of you there for these things and i'm not saying one way or the other like the all i see when i look at that is two people with a lot of deep seated hurt anger and that anger is so poisonous to both of them and they're and they're getting through it in the way that they only know how and i'm not saying we should you know we shouldn't be able to look at parts of it and laugh about it and stuff and and be virtuous or something but just that there's not a hero yeah complicated yeah i think uh unless you're you've been living with amber and johnny you don't know just because one seems more charismatic in the moment or funnier or more believable even doesn't mean that their truth is the truth and i i feel like there's still love there too which makes oh that's the hardest part he won't even look at her he looks down the whole time and maybe people say well it's because angers or or hurt or whatever but i s the way she looks and stuff it feels it just feels like there's so much hurt there that it hurt it hurts me to watch it i just feel like oh my heart just like aches for them and and for both of them and i don't know either of them personally and you know i don't know it just hurts but it's i've never i've never seen sort of love laid out in this raw kind of way it makes me uh feel better about like it almost gives you seeing people have gone through a struggle in this sort of mundane kind of way gives you room to struggle yourself about the messiness of life so true like you're supposed to like relationship is supposed to be simple and whatever but this like oh man this it's like a heart yeah and and for the record like i don't feel like it shouldn't be shown like i think it's actually really beautiful art and i agree there's gonna be a lot of people who walk away from it and are changed in certain ways or look at things different i'm not saying it's changing the whole world the johnny depth but it's art it's just like you would look at a painting and it might affect you um my only commentary is more that there's not i think it's silly when people say who's right and who's wrong and who's the clear villain and who's the like we love as human we have to have an answer for every we have to put everything in a box and it's like well we're looking at this and we're deciding you're right and you're wrong and and i just think it's it's silly unless it's your life so speaking of heroes and villains and highs and lows you grew up in las vegas and you said that vegas is a performing town a town of high stakes drama and eccentricity it's a town of high highs and low lows and i'll be damned if my therapist didn't point that correlation out to me personally a long time ago uh so to me vegas from the outside is romanticized by certain movies the lows define the beauty of this town and uh certain movies so timmy casino uh with robert de niro joe pesci and sharon stone um leaving las vegas with nicholas cage if you're unloading in las vegas with uh uh with the chinese thompson first of all what's your favorite representation of vegas from a darker side and do you draw any wisdom insight from the the the darkness the lows and the highs from in those movies or is it over romanticized so i i grew up in a really conservative mormon family and vegas was established by the mormons and the mob those were like the two very different worlds that created what vegas is and if you live in vegas it really shows in a lot of ways because vegas has the you know the strip and the parties and the craziness but it also has very like neighborhoods and and big families and conservative people and and and liberal people living together in a really interesting way and for me growing up here for instance was a lot of like driving on the freeway and my mom being like children close your eyes there's a naked woman on that billboard and everything okay mom on our way to church you know what i mean it was like but also being like whoa this is crazy this is you know anything like taking in whatever i could when i could yeah yeah um so i saw and i'm grateful for that like i really love that i didn't grow up as a mormon in for instance like utah or something like the typical place because i i saw both sides and i appreciated something from both sides and now as a person now who's not religious but just spiritually minded you know i i i i i'm grateful for that divergent character that juxtaposition dual edged sword that vegas is and i try to apply that to everything in life which is like johnny depp in the amber it's like there's two sides to every story there's always two sides to every coin there's always and there's something to be said for both like i try to see people and and even if you know it's just yeah i try to apply that to life as far as a movie that personifies vegas or or something and that medium that personifies vegas in a way that that resonates with me don't say hangover no no yeah i i also like i wasn't even allowed to watch pg-13 movies growing up so i a lot of the movies that you're saying like i i didn't i either didn't see i didn't have cable television you know i wasn't like a pilgrim but i had a really really conservative upbringing so it didn't define your intellectual like development no no i just uh i can't think of any movie that comes to mind where i'm like that's my vegas movie you know what i mean like i'm sure i've seen some of the movies you've said now but i don't i can't think of one that i'm like actually personifies vegas in a way that feels honest to me like or or like wasn't there a chevy chip was there a chevy chase yeah yeah i think that's maybe the only one i thought of that came to mind where i was like because i love chevy chase so much that maybe it's one of his uh vegas vegas vacation or something yeah so but that's more like light-hearted yeah surge that kind of stuff right it's not like i guess what i would say is there's no truth pers that has been that i've seen of vegas because what i see at vegas is uh there's obviously like the parties and stuff in the nightlife which i'm not a big party person so i haven't really experienced much of that but i've also there's also drugs and i've i have a strange relationship with drugs i've lost a few friends to drug overdoses and so i don't roman that's not romantic to me but there's also like uh yeah i mean you asked for a dark reflection of it i could i guess i certainly see a dark reflection to vegas and i don't i feel like vegas is typically personified as like at the tables never exists but it's also like i have like friends who've lost all their money to gambling addiction and and so it's like what i guess yeah somebody maybe needs to make maybe that's an open spot there needs to be a dark side to vegas well it's about mormons in vegas that's just dying drug overdose or getting shot by the mob yeah uh so you mentioned your spirituality you've um you said that having a crisis of faith or just the the philosophical question of asking who is god does god exist or in thinking of the flip side of that of mortality what happens when we die those kinds of things were extremely difficult uh deep um things for you in terms of your development the whole process of figuring that out why does it hurt so much to lose faith in god yeah i would say that the seeking of god let's say that is an obsession for me and has been since i was young i i really feel that i'm a deep deep deeply like committed to finding answers in life and there's some answers that i don't think there's an answer to and i'm also very ocd by nature so i just don't give up to that i'm like well there must be somewhere in tibet there's some teacher or there's there's somebody out there that has the answer or maybe it's yet to be found i'm gonna find it um i'm really my life has come been to date probably unhealthily committed to finding answers about god or the lack thereof and um mortality it's all i sing about all our records have been about who do you think is god have you ever gotten a glimpse you know i will say the closest i feel like i have been to experiencing god is uh and this sounds so uh maybe i don't know i don't know how it sounds but it's through ayahuasca for me that's that's my honest answer for you i feel like i had pretty much given up all hope of there being anything greater than you know us being you know evolving and being here and then dying and you're gone and that's it and nothingness and from nothingness we came and nothingness we go to where i am now which is there are answers to be found i don't know them like i don't know what god looks like or if god is anything to do with the word god in the way that we say it but i do believe pretty fervently that there is more to be uh found is it motion sensor or no i don't know what that was look like they've all died actually do you know which one is it is it this one right here how many people does it take to what is that on school light bulbs it was hot too like i was doing like the two-finger like technique yeah i'm glad you survived that thanks that'd be pretty ironic if we're talking about mortality and then this would be it for you i've never done ayahuasca so it's a mixture of two plants one of them is dmt but a lot of people i really respect very very intelligent people had profound experiences with uh with ayahuasca what is that what where do you go where does the mind go what the heck is up with that i'll first say that i am like i can't even smoke weed i really do not enjoy it uh because i hate to let go of control like if i feel out of control in life it's like one of my biggest weaknesses it's like very scary for me i don't and and some people you know really enjoy letting go in that way i really don't so i was pretty terrified to make the jump then to ayahuasca but my wife who i deeply respect um made a profound change through ayahuasca and i saw it she led the way yeah and it wasn't a strange like i think most we have a thing in america that's very like a misconception a stigma on psychedelics where you know it's like it's a drug and it makes some people crazy and then you're gonna be on the street you're gonna be out of your mind or you're gonna become like you know a crazy person basically and i think i really bought into that notion because again i was raised i wasn't even raised with cable tv you know i mean like ayahuasca is very like i didn't you know you can imagine what that was like for a mormon kid i didn't know anything about it and never touched drugs at all and never even touched a cigarette you know um anyway so i think we have this misconception about it where americans are quick to go to their doctor and take any medication or drug um but you know whoa when it comes to like psychedelics anyway that being said i so i had that trepidation going into it but i really love and respect my wife and i saw it make a profound impact in her life where she suddenly was able to heal from a lot of trauma that she had she had a really she went through a lot in her life and it really helped her heal but it also set her in a new path spiritually that seemed really like a place that i wanted to be so i did it and i did it twice the first time it didn't really have an effect on me which happens to a lot of people i guess um i drank you know this little thing and there was like this shaman who came over from overseas that was really had been in in the plant you know world for decades and was a really incredible um i don't even know if he likes to be called shaman but they're supposed to be like 30 60 minutes to take effect and a few hours uh the the the journey lasts about four four hours four hours yeah so the second time i took it i took took it in i would say 20 30 minutes in exactly i started to i started to feel like i was like the dimension of what is reality the curtain was pulled open and there was a lot more to discover and it really blew my mind in a way that i think it would probably blow anybody's mind if for instance god descended or some christian god or whatever it is we all think it'd be this beautiful thing but in reality it would probably make people super fearful and think that they've lost their mind um like i've always yeah i've always liked joked that if the mormon god came down and told my mom like if god himself came down and told my mom mormonism is incorrect she would say satan yeah you know we're never i think our minds are just not prepared for a lot of of uh of anything that's really extreme and it was very extreme it was like the curtain of life was was cut open which scared me but then i felt very much and a lot of people that i talked to have a similar thing where i felt very much like i was either communicating with something that was perceived as god to me or highest sense of self or mind or mother earth or you know it's called so many different names but it's really it's very a lot of people have a very spiritual similar experience with ayahuasca and just in that it's like this kind of profoundness it wasn't like there was nothing uh at least for me that was um that felt like just like my like psychedelic funny cartoons or something it was like i'm about to go on a journey and it's and i'm going to communicate i'm communicating with something that feels incredibly wise showed me a lot of things in my life kind of almost like from a bird's eye almost like i was looking through a video camera a younger me there was a particular thing that it communicated to me um i really have a hard time with with accepting success and not feeling um like feeling undeserving or something i can't quite put it into words but of of my position and what i've been given i've been given so much um and it showed me this thing from when i was young and explained to me why i am where i am now and and i i to this day like it did not feel like myself telling myself that that's the only way i can explain it like and there was a lot more that it showed me and that was incredibly healing for me but just to be like to put it into a short thing because there's so much to this it felt i walked away feeling very convinced that there is more to be known for sure and a lot of my deep like things that were traumatic for me didn't feel traumatic anymore specifically crisis of faith i was very angry at my parents and my community for raising me in what i perceive to be falsehoods and that and and that uh i felt like the bedrock of everything i believed was ripped out for me in my 20s and then it was like good luck in life but really my parents had given me everything that they could and they believed that very much so still but a naive young me was angry and felt like they had been duped and thus i had been duped but ayahuasca really showed me this road map of like this is truth and you're concerning yourself about a grain of sand which is mormonism or whatever it is and there may be some truths in that tiny grain of sand and there may be falsities but so is all these other grains of sand like focus on the truth stop focusing on these little details that are meaningless and forgive and let go of people believing in those things to begin with i don't know if that makes sense but that was like the core thing i was taught and to let go of control stop needing to control everything and it felt like the wisdom was coming from elsewhere like really i do not believe at least in my current self i don't have that the the mindfulness that i believe that exists in me to to reach a lot of the conclusions that i did and there was a lot more to it that would be for like a late night conversation with you but it's so hard to put it into you feel like a crazy person any at least anytime i talk about ayahuasca to someone who hasn't done it i'm like i don't even know where to begin like how do you explain to someone that you felt like that a multiple dimension type thing happened in a way that like putting it into words is and none of it was words by the way that was communicated to me it was like you know people talk about um telepathy and if it if it existed it would be like i could communicate to you in such a deeper way i'm so confined by me having to articulate these words and put them in a sentence to you lex and then tell you like if only i could just be like yeah and emotions do that sometimes right you could see my emotions and be like oh that communicates a lot so that's what it felt like to me with ayahuasca as it felt like it was communicating to me very clear things but it wasn't like daniel it's me yeah mother earth yeah let me let me relax sit back let me show you but but it very was very clear to me what was being said and no it did not feel like me uh but maybe science smarter people than me who've done it would say well it was you and blah blah blah like i don't know but yeah they're very convincing there's a lot of stuff in that subconscious that we haven't explored like we haven't explored the depths of the ocean we haven't really figured out what's that the younging shadow what's going on underneath the surface of our conscious mind right and what is that connecting to is that is that just inside our mind or is it some kind of is there some kind of collective intelligence going on where all humans are connected to one kind of uh greater organism like what is consciousness we have a lot of hubris in thinking we understand any of it like how the mind works yeah at all like what is it uh like where what is the origin of consciousness what is the origin of intelligence there's a lot of hubris about this we we give each other phds and nobel prizes and congratulate ourselves as if we figured it all out but humility is helpful here nevertheless that is the question that humans have been asking for um ever since humans were humans which is the question of mortality the question of god um so whether it's hamlet to be or not to be i think that's the hardest the most important question um albert camus asked why live so in terms of crisis of faith in terms of your search for truth in terms of some of the dark places you've gone in your mind what's the good answer to this question so for camus with mythic sisyphus it was the question of suicide is what's the purpose like what's the good answer to why keep going especially when you're struggling especially when you're not um when you're feeling hopeless you're feeling like a burden in this search for truth where you feel like you're surrounded by lies what's a good answer to where i live i think you ever found one well it's the simple answer right now is to say for it's very easy once you have kids to say the right answer is you just of course you brought these kids into the world so you have a responsibility that i feel deeply as a father to them to always be there for as long as i humanly can and to take care of them and protect them it's the most innate sense in me i'm just you know it's that it's wired in my animal my animal existence so if i take that away right because that's kind of cheating let's put that aside because it is cheating it's cheating there's still you're still there's still some fundamental way in which you're alone yeah and to that um that that actually has been a real struggle for me from for many years i had a real turning point early in my career where we were flying somewhere overseas and we're in a really small plane and the lights went out and like all these red lights were flashing and the plane just started to dive completely like scariest plane experience i've ever been in my manager was next to me who's my brother he was crying and texting his wife a goodbye that's how like crazy this moment was was it real like genuine that's genuine like genuine engine went out plane is going down pilots looking like crazy in the front and it was a really tiny jet and and like i said my brother next to me crying typing a text to his wife really really scary and i felt nothing i genuinely genuinely sat there and i was like this might actually be nice like i i really felt like this goes down and like oh man life sucks it's hard and that sounds so ridiculous i know to say because i again i like i'm in a different place now and i see my life for what it is but at that moment i did not so life was primarily defined by suffering it was a burden and it was it was well lifted i was incredibly depressed i had been on trying different medications since i was young and i just had not found anything that was working for me and then i was in a faith crisis lost all my faith um started a band that just became i wasn't ever thinking that this band i was like when you call your band imagine dragons you're not thinking that's gonna be big okay it was like i was like this was like a side project that was fun for me it was like art in college i was at in school and i was like man i hate this biology class i'm gonna write down band names like you know what i mean like it was not hey put everything aside this is my career let's go like it just it happened and i'm an introvert by nature it's i'm really not an extroverted person who likes to go out and like i like to be at home with a couple friends and have a late night conversation over good food like that to me is a perfect night read a good book listen to a podcast go on a walk you know those are things that i really really enjoy and suddenly i'm in this life where i'm like supposed to be something that i really don't want to be except for on stage which is a really fast like strange thing to me which is on stage i feel so free and exuberant and like an extrovert and then i come off and i just feel like shrivel back into a show like it's a it's i like music does that for me and performing on a stage does that for me can we take a small attention on that yeah yeah of course what's the high can go through that the introvert that wants to cuddle up and read a book you're the front man of one of the if not the biggest rock bands today uh playing in front of huge crowds what's the high of that and how can you land back on earth the high of it is it's incredibly beautiful to walk on a stage sing these songs that you wrote and see it resonate with people around you and sing with them different cultures different places celebrate life it's suddenly the world seems like a fantastic place it feels like we're all on the same team right like one big hug yeah it's like everybody in that room gets it and they all like it it just if it feels like what you want the world to be which is just like this co-existing unit of people and it's not even about like you know i i just it's incredible it's for sure it's incredible and i love it and i wouldn't do it unless i loved it and then you walk off stage and you turn on the news and it's like you see you know we're all against each other everybody hates each other and it feels that way in the world so music really that's why live music is so important to people that's why music is so important to people because even if it's just you and that person that wrote the song you're listening to it and the two of you feel connected you know it's like you're hearing tracy chapman sing like fast car or something you're just like oh my gosh like yes i get it and you feel connected that person you don't feel alone like so that's the high of it for sure and then you get off stage and then you know as my like my uncle's a heart surgeon incredible heart surgeon who like writes the book like he's like the guy that the heart surgeons talk to he's out of nashville tennessee he's just incredible genius man he um always worries and always reached out to me is like musicians die all the time the reason they die you know is because you're getting on stage and your heart's doing this and your cortisone levels are doing this you're getting off stage and then you're just doing this and it's a really real thing like you get off stage and you feel like you need drugs because you're like i the world feels like oh incredibly daunting and it's also i'm sure it has to do with like some some like health things in your heart and the cortisone levels that are so crazy and then you come off and it's like i know people are like well then nothing's enough except meth yeah right nothing's enough except heroin yeah and that's why a lot of artists turn to that stuff and and i don't say it in a preach i don't say it in a preachy way like i've struggled with drug abuse in my life and i really i understand why artists turn to it um but also the fact that you're an introvert so the other side of it the fame that's something that you also said as a double-edged sword for you the interesting thing about fame is that you also mentioned this is something you can't take back yeah so it's a thing you can't just like go on vacation in hawaii and it's like consider do i like it or not no you're staying in hawaii for the rest of your life and you've never been there before whether you like it or not right so um what's that like being you know loved by millions and millions and millions of people which is um perhaps the best kind of fame in terms of if you have to choose the kinds of fames there are and still being an introvert and all that kind of stuff so what um do you do you feel alone more alone being famous is there a loneliness there's yeah i mean it's so it's such a funny thing because for okay if you had asked if we were having this conversation a couple years ago i'd be incredibly guarded about this because the last thing i want to ever do is sound ungrateful or unaware of how much i have and woe is the famous celebrity with money oh is your life hard is it really telling me about how hard it is but i'm also at a place in life now where i just like i'm gonna always just speak my truth because that's the only reason i'm here is i'm here to speak my truth to you so i'm gonna tell you my truth whether it's whatever it is but you're human and feelings are real and so and right that's the interesting thing you win a lottery what's that going to feel like it's not about complaining oh it's so hard to win a lottery because you get a lot of money no it's still you're human you get to experience these feelings and it's fascinating you put humans in different situations right and and it's also fascinating because a lot of people think well i would like to be famous that's a big thing now on social media on instagram so the world wants to be famous or rich or famous and it's very interesting to think all right well once you arrive are all the problems solved no yeah so uh so i will tell you according to me what the pitfalls are whether it's fear or not and there are certainly some pitfalls one it's once you're there you can't go back whatever maybe that's fine because maybe you love it yeah but the real pitfall for me is that you're now you're lex and you're what everybody's perception is that lex is and that's what you are now lex is probably a lot more complex and complicated and has a lot more to lex than the lex that is the celebrity yeah so but anybody who meets you that's who you are to them and you may you may not feel this way but you may feel confined to actually have to be that person to that person like i've early in my career for a long time anytime i met someone i suddenly felt like i had to be dan reynolds from imagine dragons anytime i met someone including my family now who are also like whoa this is crazy you're like dan reynolds from imagine dragons yeah and i wanted to just be the goofball that i have been my whole life with my brothers and family but suddenly i found myself feeling like no i i have to be this like because that's who that's who this is so you're almost like playing a role and it's like i've heard a lot of actors talk about this while they take on a role and then it's like they feel like they have to they like become that and it's a really scary thing like you you alter who you are almost to fit the notion of other people because especially if a lot of artists are empaths it you know a lot of people get into art in a deep way are empaths and so you feel a lot of what people are feeling and you're never wanting to burden people and you're always wanting to deliver to that person you know what they want it's like people pleasing is very goes hand in hand with a lot of like these famous people and they get to where they were because they know how to do that they know how to be in a room with someone and look them in the eye and make them feel like they're the only person in the room and then now they got that role in that movie because they sat with the casting director and they were like oh you're so funny anybody like put on the charisma do it all and it's like anyway i'm like i'm going on a different tangent here but long story short there's a lot of things that are really unhealthy about it and then a lot of people who want the fame and the second starts to go away then they're like who am i anymore like that was everything and now i'm like on the down and now i'm not a famous person anymore and now i hate myself and i'm gonna do drugs and it's like it's like this vicious cycle like you could never be famous enough you're always gonna get like there's just so much to it that i've just and i and and again like i've i've lost friends in this career to do that for sure um and there's a certain element to sort of just on the the losing fame i've interacted with a lot of folks um especially young folks like on youtube so fame is a thing that has levels you're always trying to be a little more famous a lot of folks who are chasing fame it doesn't matter how famous you're trying to chase more and we start to lose it interesting things can happen if you're not self-aware which is like like you mentioned you might be trying to grasp back at where you were by leaning into the formula that got you there and so the the the constraints of the image that you mentioned becomes the thing that you're now trying to lean into like and that that's actually walking away from who you really are like you lean further into being that person that's true for acting that's true for um even on like youtube which is people acting they have a role they got them to the table somehow yeah it's uh it's dark but i think those are that's just put for everybody to see um but that's a very human struggle even when you're not famous you're finding yourself of being yourself of uh not letting not doing the people pleasing at any scale yeah and being trapped by that yeah and and also feeling like it's never enough i think that's something all he like it very not it's not just a famous thing but it's like in the whole like everybody deals with feeling like when i'm here i'll be happy yeah when i get that job i'll be happy when i have that money then i'll be happy when my when i get that surgery and my nose looks like this i will be happy then it's like an a constant chase of happiness instead of happiness like it's like the opposite it's opposite of self-love it's the opposite of of happiness uh it's there's no presence to it you're constantly you're never going to find it you're never going to arrive and you're just going to live your life and then you're going to be on your deathbed and be like i was chasing the wrong thing my whole life you know i should say that podcasts are interesting in that way so for me personally because you just talk a lot you can't people that meet you they know you and they know the evolution of you and that's the same thing for like you right now a dad of imagine dragons just being on a podcast like long form reveals a side that liberates you more to be yourself to like people see oh there's a human because they you know music they have a deep connection with you they have experiences with you the way they experienced it and that's who you are with them through the songs but now you get to see oh that's a that's a human being he probably gets angry he gets sad he's excited he's hopeful you know and there's a core that's a good human being but the whole roller coaster of emotions out there it's a giant beautiful mess and podcasts reveal that that's why i love podcasts like long form right you get to get to hear some artists and actors and so on and some of them you get to see oh you've lost yourself in the um in the surface that's a tragedy with some actors some great actors if they've they've left so much of themselves in the roles they've played that they can no longer be the thing they were before those great roles that's for sure it's it's hard it's hard to see so you get to see that with johnny depp with i don't know pirates he was talking about that with pirates of the caribbean that was a shift right like he's not that guy right he's he's forever forever that guy but the point is to remember that you're not and to your family which is interesting you said with your family um when i see people close to me they also there is an element like that while you're that they start treating like the famous person yeah you know i i'm fortunate to have my manager who's my brother my older brother and my lawyer is my other older brother and that's been helpful because the mat like it's weird it gets weird with everyone no matter what one of the best advice i was given was by uh charlie sheen you got advice from charlotte yeah we were playing uh the wise sage of our generation yeah why say h charlie sheen but he it was it was really wise i was sitting next to him and we were we were playing some late night television he said this was right at the beginning he just said boys just mark my words your life is about to get really weird that's all i said but it stuck with me forever as charlie sheens of course it sticks with you and i remember being like right okay charlie you know i'm not charlie sheen it's not gonna get weird like you know um but it got really really weird really quick because suddenly you've existed your whole life in this way where everybody just everything you get you achieved it was because you got it and and every conversation you had like if someone liked you at the end of that conversation well it's because they liked you if they didn't like you because they didn't like you and you could make complete peace with that at least i could my whole life i was like life is a challenge and be myself and i want to go through it and find some people along the way that i connect with and others know and that social integrity is so important to us and we think it would be nice to have this and this is going back to the the pitfalls of fame we think it would be nice to walk into a room and have everyone be like yeah and you could be like dumpster fire and everybody's like oh my gosh dumpster fire is amazing you said dumpster fire was amazing it's like it's incredibly incredibly lonely and it just breaks everything that you knew about humanness yeah and it sucks so then you're seeking out people who that it doesn't exist with and family is the closest you can get to that for sure but even your family it's going to take a little bit where they're like oh this is a little weird like all my friends at work are now asking about you and you're my young stupid brother but now you're suddenly like the young stupid brother they want an autograph from and stuff and it still makes like they have to get over that and figure that out and and um and then you meet people too who know about this whole concept and they're like well i'm gonna be an asshole to him to show him that i don't subscribe yes and you're dealing with like people who are like dumpster fire the person who's like you know you could say something actually profound and nice and they'd be like that's stupid and you're an idiot yeah because it's like an actual attempt to like show you how much they don't care so you live in this very like this still nevertheless even when nobody knew you you were seeking for deep human connection with a small number of people and now when a lot of people know you you're still looking for deep connection with a small number of people the struggle is the same yeah uh can you can you speak to because you mentioned some of the dark moments uh what advice would you give to people who are struggling with depression and maybe for the people who love the people who are struggling with depression so what i have found to be most successful for me um [Music] it's it's back to the basics of everything that the therapist or psychologist will tell you psychiatrists will tell you right when you meet them which is exercise every day eat healthy for sure find time make time every day to do something that you love whatever that may be whatever brings you joy and you might and when you're really depressed that actually feels like nothing because the things that brought you joy don't bring you joy anymore when i'm really in the thick of it but um for me all like this is the cycle that i i'll go through is i'll i'll look at my life and i'll say okay what what what can i clean up all right well for me it was cutting out alcohol actually helped me a lot i know that sounds like big i'm not like not judging anybody for that and i still you know drink on occasion but i felt like alcohol has been very unhelpful to my mental state i feel less drive and less happiness the next day for things that i want to do i feel like it plays a lot with your serotonin so look for stuff to change clean living yeah clean living but also understanding that that sometimes it's just it just is and you just keep breathing and and it will get better with time this too shall pass this past like i i really think that uh in the winter you know i i'm pretty sure i mean i've had a lot of i've seen a lot of therapists and all of them say the same thing which is like you have major depressive disorder and this is what it is but it's certainly worse for me in the winter months so i know there's like um i can't think of the term for it but there's a term for like seasonal depression there it is um so i'll get to the winter and suddenly i'm like geez everything really sucks on a deeper level and then you know so it's like this too shall pass is another thing it's like just practice those things absolutely see a therapist that's my big like my biggest emphasis of life is to like on stage like my goal like i have a few things that i really really care about one is is is mental health health and destigmatizing therapy because for me i didn't go to therapy for a long time because i felt that it would be admitting that i was broken it'd be admitting that i was weaker than lex who doesn't have to go to a therapist because lex is stronger so be strong like lex you know i would like look at all my older brothers and i looked up to them so much and they're all these incredibly successful people plastic surgeon an anesthesiologist a dentist two attorneys stanford nyu like just like incredible high standards eagle scouts you know like they valedictorians like they just did it all so for me i was very really did not want to admit and none of them went to therapy so it was like what are you gonna be the are you oh you're broken are you like the weak one who can't hack life and i think that's incredibly dangerous um and i feel like it almost cost me my life because i took so long to finally go to therapy so i really want kids to know hey like the great people that achieve great things that are doing amazing things they probably have help almost all of them it's like going to the gym but it's a mental gym what um so i unfortunately i wanted to be a psychiatrist when i was growing up uh maybe maybe that's why i like podcasts maybe that's i think you'd be a good one maybe i would i would i think you are a psychiatrist pretty much right sounds like you're a psychiatrist i think i need more i think i i think actually to be a good psychiatrist you also need to be seeking therapy from the like you also need to be have some stuff to work through in your mind right i think uh yeah you have to have gone to some dark places um empathize the the empathy it's this ability to empathize and especially if you've directly experienced it you can you can go to those places in your mind like you said it's with the music to be authentic you have to really go there what um why did therapy help so much what is the process of therapy if you can just educate a little more is it are you basically bringing to the surface and talking through things that you because of the the momentum of life you just never allow yourself to speak through to think through is that what therapy is or is this a more systematic thing so i've been to a lot of strange different kinds of therapies so i'll tell you my first therapist if i could sort of corrupt uh how hard is it to find a therapist that connected with you it is it's actually pretty hard i think i think i think uh it for well actually i have a skewed view of that because going back to the beginning of my therapy was with a mormon therapist so it was very much like well are you reading your book of mormon and are you praying at night you know what i mean like that was a big focus of my therapy to begin with and you're having yeah a faith crisis in the distance yes i was like well and then you're making it worse yes the next therapist i went to was uh a scientology therapist i met my wife and she was a scientologist at the time and she's not anymore she's like it's such a funny thing to like to look back on because we met and i was like this mormon missionary who just got home from his mission and i met her and i was she's a scientologist i was like wow that's bad shit crazy like and like that stuff's crazy and she's like what are you talking about that's your crazy mormon that's bad shit crazy and the two of us were like huh maybe there's something to this to both of us here yeah the tension actually forces you to think through like oh well what is true yes yeah and we really fell in love through that which was like maybe that we're both on the wrong track let's figure this out but before that happened we went to uh a scientologist therapist who that therapy consisted of what have you done wrong to asia and they asked they would ask me that question over and over and over and over until i'm like thinking of the deepest darkest things that were in the recesses of my mind this was a therap this was marriage therapy anyway i'm not gonna get into that but it was it was scientology therapy so that was a different thing and then i went to therapy therapy like no not attached to any religion and that was a really great experience for me and and since then i've been through a couple different therapists but that was more because where i was and moving and things like that so is it that hard to find a great therapist probably not but maybe don't go to your mormon therapist personal psychology therapist or maybe that's maybe that's the route for you maybe it's around for you i don't know yeah but what is so is it bringing stuff to the surface basically oh yeah so i didn't even answer your question what's the effect why is it so effective just um is there something you could put words to yeah i mean i think it's obviously there's the common things you would think of which is like oh i've been holding these things in and i don't want to tell anybody and then i tell this person and there's relief in that but that's really not where the real work comes from i think the real work is meeting with someone who is well-versed and educated and understands it's like it's like coding it really is it's like someone who like they listen to you and they're like well that was a trigger and then this became this trigger and you're probably every time you're hearing that thinking of this thing that happened earlier in your life and they just will walk you through scenarios and maybe some of them aren't right but some of them you'll be like it'll resonate sometimes you're like wow i am feeling that because of that and that did happen and maybe if i call my mom and say this to her it will make me feel better hey mom this happened it's like work you you put in work and you have hard conversations and do difficult things and if so if your therapy is not difficult i actually think that's that's not good therapy good therapy is it's going to be a little difficult it's work like um during and after yes like i had this incredible therapist who was who i told him when i was going to do ayahuasca he was like jesus you know he had actually was a doctor before and a really well-educated studied person who had uh walked away from uh brain doctor what's the word for that brain doctor a brain surgeon neurologist oh yeah neurologist yeah and he uh and he said well basically his belief was that uh ayahuasca was like basically doing therapy like 50 sessions he was like it's it's like really intensive he's like you i don't know if you want to do that if you do you can you can make you know some big steps forward but i prefer just to do one once one session at a time and um so yeah it's hard work and and that i typically like it's really hard for me to talk about ayahuasca by the way going back to that because i'm not looking to tell everybody to go to ayahuasca it's incredibly hard it was the scariest experience of my entire life it felt like i went to heaven but it also felt like i went to the darkest deepest hell that was incredibly scary um incredibly scary yeah she told the story of uh how you wrote the the song believer or like um your your childhood friend i guess donald like like bullying and that kind of stuff for this song i mean a lot of your songs are super interesting sort of um in terms of percussion super interesting super interesting lyrically just how it flows and also pain is at the center of it i mean a lot of like you said the crisis of faith some of these existential questions are basically behind a lot of your songs funny enough um maybe they're covered in metaphor so it's hard to see uh but it's there and this song is really it's really interesting in that way that it puts uh you know pain you made me a believer you break me down you build me up believer that's so interesting um maybe can you tell this the story of how the song came to be i'd love to listen to it too i have some questions musically about it too yeah yeah i mean um it's exactly what we're talking about with therapy i just feel like the greatest things in my life have come from the deepest hurt like losing someone you know that you love is maybe the hardest part of the human path for me at least thus far like i i when i think of okay what was the hardest thing there's like okay you know there's like you think of physical pain or maybe like going through financial pain or whatever i think losing someone that you really love to death is what is one of the hardest for me i would say it was the hardest and um but it also makes you look at your life completely differently and alter your life at least for me in ways that were really healthy um being more present letting go of things that were meaningless trying to control what other people think about you like wasting your time on things like that and you suddenly see like wow like time i got small amount of time like how do i want to spend it i'm going to spend it in the best way i know how and that's it so yeah i mean that's it's a basic comment concept that's been said a million times over in a million different ways but that's pretty much what i was trying to say with believer which is like i've lost face and faith in everything uh at that time period and you know or previous to that time period and then i was rebuilding my faith or my my spiritual thought process and it was after ayahuasca and it was like you know finding being a believer and that and that's not necessarily like a believer in god or a believer in heaven and hell or anything like that but a believer in more believing in in goodness believing in that there is some light like and again those words like they're just words and i wish there were better words to formulate the thought that i'm trying to express but just more uh like the thought of me dying for me i don't fear it i don't fear it but actually i i really fear not seeing my kids again i'll say that that is fearful for me i feel like i love so deeply these children that the thought of like leaving them for me is this is a a scary thought or something they're they're kind of good reminder how much you love life actually yeah and you don't always remember that yeah and uh i think having kids is not for everyone for absolutely for sure but for me and especially you shouldn't be having kids to give yourself a reason to live i mean like i feel like dying i'm gonna have a kid like you might feel more like dying after having a kid actually you know it's pretty stressful uh but it is a place to like i've changed a lot of people that i've known that it gave them a new intensity of gratitude for life for sure god do you mind if we i'll return to the the pain of the believer you might if we listen to it a little bit did you write the music first or the words first the same time which is very typical for me but uh just the way it opens like how you know intensity of openings you ever think about like what the first few seconds sound like is that something that um like when you imagine a song is it the opening you imagine no it's it's kind of a it's just a i never think opening i never think final i think soundscape of how i'm feeling right now so it could be the middle of the song for all i know when i'm you know when i'm when i'm doing that but my process for me is very much lyrics and melody and music really come at the same time like i by same time i mean i'm i'm uh as i'm expressing maybe you know i'm feeling like like it's not that simple but it's like i'll i'll hear it like it's like here's all the orchestra and you're kind of just pressing all the buttons at once and melody and my voice is just one of those instruments you know i mean it's just utilizing one instrument so you're seeing the landscape and that landscape includes melody includes percussion lyrics yeah a little bit or literally it will be words to begin like a word here and there and i'll be like you know i'm like what's a word that i'm thinking of when i'm feeling this soundscape and uh i always create with no theme in mind i'm never for for better or for worse just my process is i'm sitting down and i'm writing a journal entry simple as that it's like when you sit down to write a journal entry are you sitting down and you're like okay i've had all these words here that i'm going to put on the page and i'm going to order it in this way and my theme for my journal entry today is going to be this maybe some people do but i don't my journal entry is i don't know what i'm going to say oh how was today well man today was this and i'm feeling this and now that i think about that i'm really angry about that that hurt my feelings when this you're like you're formulating it as you go and that's the joy of it and for me that's what music is so i'll sit down not thinking hey i've been wanting to write a song that has a hard beat or i've been wanting to write a song that's anthemic or i've been wanting to write a song that's it's like how am i feeling right now and it's joyful is it feeling joyful to you or is it struggle because you just made it sound like it's i think uh joyful um or at least yeah fulfilling is the word i was kind of looking for but there was there's a lot of artists talk about really strong like you talk about writers cathartic that's the word it feels like having a good moment with a therapist where you're like okay i'm expressing this thing that i just need to express for whatever reason i need to express this the majority of the songs i write for the record are never heard i write over 100 songs a year i release 20 songs every three years so i don't know what's that percent 20 out of 300 come on lex less than ten percent less than jefferson or something yeah um anyway so it's and then like getting together with a band and like getting them selected down is really what uh the process have so you're really writing a song per one to three days kind of maybe a song that you can't quite figure out the puzzle of that's going to last a little a little longer is it worth it for every idea yeah you finish every idea i do i finish every idea so it's not just like laying completely unfinished i could open my computer for you right now and i would show you hundreds and hundreds of songs that you would listen to and think that sounds like a song it's like there's rhythm there's melody there's multiple instruments there's lyrics like i it's the same thing as is for coding for me which is music which is yeah i can't walk away until i've completed it but it's finished my well finished is finished yeah but it sounds like a song i certainly do a lot more with it after with the band where we should pull it all apart but it's a song it'll be like you know it's you'll listen to it and say okay that was a song i get you understand what what it is for sure do you think this is a painful question from a fan perspective do you think there's genius on your computer that you walked away from that you just didn't notice it like do you think there's truly great songs that you've written that you just didn't notice how great they are i i think greatness is something that i feel i'm i'm i don't feel like i've achieved greatness genuine i'm not saying that to you in a way of like humility michael jordan no genuinely i feel like i am on a journey right now to find who i am and i'm 34 and it's like i don't even i i haven't begun that journey i feel like i'm just starting that but that being said i certainly don't know the right answer to what songs are you know beloved or good to the masses like imagine dragons is such a massive entity it's like there have been a i will say this there are a couple times where i fought really hard to decide on the single really hard or i always fight for what goes on the record always i always put the record together and that's the record that i wanted to be and me and the guys come up with that and it's nobody else has influence no manager no label the single everybody wants to have a saying your label wants to have a say in it your manager wants to have a say in it and i have fought really hard over that and i've been wrong before and i've been right before um but as far as songs that i haven't put out i mean you can imagine so many songs you think you think of so many beatles songs that are like some of their grace while my guitar gently weeps right let me i'm trying to imagine weird sounding not that interesting possibly songs the majority of what we honestly they may it may be our best stuff is that we don't put out for instance because our band is such a it's such a complex question i really don't know actually i don't know maybe one day i'll die and people will look and be like i hated imagine dragons but now i listen to that song i really like that i wish they would put that out or maybe they'll be like oh it all sounds like shit i don't really know um well that's that's sorry it is a tragic thing that's why i asked it which is like it could be some [Music] great incredible things that that will take you a long time to rediscover to realize how great they are and it's it's also the tragic aspect of being an artist is you don't know if you get fame or all that kind of stuff you don't know what's going to really move people because ultimately what you want is to to connect with people and you don't know what that's going to be it's hard i mean to me it's to me it's tragic just as a fan of yours to see maybe i wonder if there's like incredible stuff there just as it is tragic to see great artists throughout history who didn't get recognition until they died it's like because they basically held on you know uh franz kafka was extremely self-critical a lot of these folks had an idea of what's good and not and they were wrong right they were gene they had genius they weren't entirely wrong because they became sufficiently popular but it's interesting i try to genuinely to release the songs that move me the most i'll say that you're an audience you're your own audience yeah i try to put out the songs that make me feel the most like i fee i feel that that's my only gauge because it's so subjective of like what is good what's this nobody knows the song the masses are gonna like nobody knows that formula nobody knows it so for me it's always what makes me feel something one of the main lessons rick rubin taught me when we worked with him on this record was he would say he would his his main point that he would continually bring up when like because he he's not the type of person be like that's a bad song or that's good it's just not who rick rubin is it's more like there's more nuance to it he would say i don't really believe you on that song that's what he would say he would say and i knew that was like that song's a no-go you say and i and i would genuine there was a time he said it and it was about a song that i really like i really felt it and meant it when i said it but he didn't believe it when he heard it and that was enough i was like man well the end of the day like i can believe it all i want but if the listener doesn't feel the honesty in it just like we were talking about earlier i think the most important ingredient is is this truth perceived as truth to someone else and if it's not the bullshit indicator goes and you're like i don't care i don't throw it away i don't care about it well he you said that he made you go through like line by line the lyrics every example that was excruciating for me why was that excruciating well first of all it's rick rubin so you're in the room with like rick rubin who's done a lot of the greatest of all time and um so i had to first just put that aside and be like okay well you've done a lot of my favorite records but still you're you're human and not everything you say is gonna be right you know i and i'm a strongly opinionated person and so is rick and so when the two of us were kind of together it was you know um but the lyrics which is interesting so it's not every entire composition but just like let's look at the lyrics yeah i mean here yeah oh yeah because he would look over every there was like um [Music] and there was there were battles he won battles that that that he didn't win and maybe he was right i don't know i mean there was for instance i'll give you an example there's a song on the record called number one okay rick will probably laugh when he hears this um because this was a big one that we kept going back and forth on but this will give you a good insight of what it's what it was like what it was like and there's a line in it that says um i don't know the course is i don't know what i'm meant to be i don't need no one to believe when it's all been said and done i'm still my number one and he was like ah just makes me cringe when i hear that he's like i just like do you have to be like can it not be like you're still my number one i was like no it's not about anybody else like you know it's about like self-love he's like yeah but like do you need to like talk about self-love like that and i was like well i can't i feel like i need to it's like oh but you know there's something else we could say there like we just kept you know we kept coming back to this song okay i was like i and i changed it i tried changing it like what did i change it to it was like it wasn't you're still my number one because it just made no sense it wasn't about some love thing or like someone else i changed it to something else and it just it was the one thing that i was like i'm really sorry rick like i get it and if it sounds cringy to you it's definitely sounding cringy to other people too and that sucks but i don't know how else to say this in a way that i want to put that song out anymore but there were other songs for sure where rick was like that or this that word feels a little trite you already said that once can you say it in a different way it was really helpful and that yeah it's really interesting because uh you're trying to say something so simply and yet not make it cringe that's really hard that's that's like a that's a strange art form because you want to say some of the greatest love songs we i mean we looked at the the without you song i mean that's the whole thing is cringy if you just read it on paper like i said like like it's a court report or something but yet it's not especially when sung maybe but no there's something about yeah maybe sung in a way you believe it when you believe it but also written in a way that's singable in the way you believe it so it's like right and then it rolls off it just comes out in a way that just feels like silky no word catches your mind is cringy yes just but then music um i think great speeches are like that too or just you know conveying communicating ideas simply that's the that's the art form is to not be cringy so interesting and then yet because like when you're raw and real it might at first feel cringey so the the battle there and that that's where you see people fail like just regular artists like um i don't know open at open mic i go to open mic so i just listen to musicians like when they write songs like they they fail that test they write simple stuff but it's cringy why i wonder what was that like what is that i i'm telling you like i tried to explain this to my brother the other day because it's the same thing with a live performance if i'm not in my right head space and i walk on stage and i walk up and let's say i say something and i do this yeah hey cause i'm like this is the move right i'm like this is the move the crowd doesn't care yeah in fact the crowd's like that's cringy when you did yes but if i wasn't thinking about doing this and i went up there and i said something and i really meant it and my body was like i can't explain this to you yeah it's so silly to say out loud but it's people will resonate to it when it's real and when it's acted it doesn't you could do it the exact it could the motion could look the same your eyes look the same but there's something about the energy that people know they know if it's real or not yeah people are like you said incredible bullshit detectives 100 percent i'll go on a stage and if i'm not in the right headspace to be real it won't be a good show if i'm real then it's a good show as simple as that let's go through the song like i said great opener so you had this in your mind this landscape yeah yeah [Music] the beat was first on this what about the first and the second and third like first things first seconds the first line i wrote was first things first second i don't know why it just was like and then i was like oh that principle of you know great line don't second things second don't you tell me what you think that i could be i'm the one at the sale i'm the master of my seat i'm the master of my seat dad had that in his office he had this um saying uh that was something about the sailor and being the master of a sea that i always loved there you go simple statement yeah zero cringing it it's so powerful that's so simple i'm the master of my this whole song is just trivial but uh in terms of lyrically but extremely powerful and original unique sounding something about the words just even you don't have to actually sing them you just read them and then and then raw i was broken from a young age tucked myself into the masses writing my poems for the few that looked at me too took to me shaking me feeling me singing from the heartache from the pain taking my message from the thing i can't why am i reciting your words to you but the the the the percussionist throughout it the uh and and that that was there percussion is almost in the lyrics yeah and i'm a very percussive singer because uh i was a drummer first before i i think same with dave grohl probably a similar thing which is i think in percussive uh sense a lot when i'm writing because i and i also was before i could play an instrument i would beatbox and i think michael jackson did this too actually i've heard in the studio that he was very similar but a lot of what i do is percussive um because my brain thinks in it percussively first a little more because it's almost like a drama and then you lay words on that [Music] it's all building to the chorus [Applause] [Music] what about the word pain when did that come to you um pain you made me you made me a believer yeah i just the idea of um i just wanted to i i really one of the things that a lot of the songs that i like i like divisiveness for instance not always but there's times where i want someone to hear a song and i want them to either love it or hate it i really don't want them to be in the middle ground a lot of the songs that like a lot of my favorite songs are divisive songs um and so for instance with pain i wanna i want you to hear that and almost like it's like whoa you know what i mean it's it's uh it's something either somebody's gonna hear and they'll be like man i just don't want to hear that like that or it's like oh i felt that so deeply when he said that in that way because it sounded like this and and when you think of the word pain it's like that's that's a that's a when i at least for me when i hear that word i it carries a lot of weight carries a lot of weight so i wanted to sing it with a lot of weight and to come into that chorus with like like it's a striking moment um and i'm also a tenor singing as sorry i'm a baritone singing as a tenor so that's where that natural like gruffness comes from as i'm singing out of my range really up in my head voice and it carries a lot of weight with it because of the baritone i can ask you a specific sort of the the pause before the pain it's really interesting because like a double [Applause] what is that is that how much work does that take to get that right that's that's incredible because it's like a so so you're you're kind of seeing the beauty through the and then that whatever that sound is the right the bass being rolled off yeah yeah yeah i i actually when i first uh was approaching the chorus it was actually see took him and finally missing the heart egg from the pain taking my message from the vein speaking my lesson from the man seeing the beauty through the uh seeing the beauty through the pain you made me uh you like it came in on one i'm not seeing it right right now but it it did not wait yeah and it felt like it didn't hit in the way that it was supposed to hit because the the uh you predict that right you're like you're waiting to see the beauty through the pain you made me uh right it was yeah the beauty through the pain you made me made me so i wanted to feel a little more like striking like again it's like that thing that makes you kind of do this a little bit you're like huh but once you hear it a few times you're like ah ah and you predict you know what i mean it's like i'd rather someone hear our song the first time be confused by it so they play it the second time and then they're like oh okay you know what i mean like i really don't want you know i'd rather turn some people off along the way and then the people who come along for you are gonna feel more committed i think it's just an interesting like it feels gutsy to insert silence you know yeah that's what makes it you know it's like the greatest speakers of all time are like and i told you right you would know you're like oh yeah what is that yeah that's so interesting to do that just at the right time and then pain right uh man this is it's a it's a brilliant song did you know it was a good song when you when you wrote it out of the thousands of songs you've written you know i it's always the same thing for me which is like oh listen if i want to listen to the song and i want to listen to it a lot of times than than those are the songs we put out and i and i only want to listen to the songs that make me feel something whether or not it's like our single that did the very worst of all our singles was the song that i wanted to listen to the least but it made the most sense as a single which was all the wrong reason to choose it right it was this it was a i bet my life is the single off our second album and that song was originally written it was just a guitar and a vocal and it was very just quiet and laid back and we were like well let's try to dial it up let's try to produce it and we overproduced that song we self-produced it as a band and we over produced and that song i mean it's it did good you know in terms of a song but for us it did not do good um compared to our other songs and i've really looked back at that and learned a lesson from that it's like i don't want to listen to the song that's a sign already if you don't want to listen to your own song it's probably not a good song yeah um you you said your dad um elsewhere and today just said that your dad early on was a kind of uh the early rick rubin so when you were starting out he was um he gave you feedback he listened um what did you learn about music about life from your dad my dad is a really quiet farm grew up on a farm very humble um i think he starts every sentence by saying this is just my two cents pretty much you know i mean it's like like take it or leave it like you know what i mean he's that that kind of a sense like there's humility in everything and it's real for him it's not like false humility he really i really feel like when he's saying things he really is like maybe this isn't any worth to you son and he means it but here it is and it's always gold and i'm like wow dad that's incredible you know so what in those early days if you like so you were like 12 or something like that like starting to write 12. i wasn't showing my music to anyone i started writing right when i was 12 and i probably wrote for at least let's say six months or something and i'd written probably i don't know like a lot of songs during that what was the topic by the way love it was all sad no the first song i ever wrote went [Music] all by himself no other one around and he stood all alone when would he be found did he want company or was he fine on his own everyone needs a friend so why was he all you know days like but i was like a 12 year old with i just felt like depressed for the first time and i was and i just was like he discovered the blues as the 12th yeah right right it really was like my sense of the blues at that time for sure like bad version of the blues but it was like 12 year old kid with a bunch of acne and like i just like i hated going to school i felt like that i i just had not found myself that's like a great song by the way but anyway i wanted to keep looking i forgot i was i don't know about that but um yeah what was your dad at which point did you begin to share it with your dad a lot of the songs i wrote in the beginning were very much like bobby mcferrin like that because we are our mic was in a part of the house where i couldn't bring over the piano and the only instrument i played at the time was the piano so i would do everything with my voice but then i started teaching myself the guitar in those in the beginning like six month period just watching my brothers play in their garage bands in the in the basement and then i started to write songs a little more like enya vibes like stack my voice like 20 30 times and like enya meets like jared which is who my dad would listen to a lot john john michael jarvis incredible synth genius but anyway so i finally got my my like gall up enough to show it to my dad one day after work and i got very little of my dad because there were nine kids and he worked from 8 a.m till 6 p.m we'll come home very tired and here's nine kids that are like dad you know and you're the young one you're not you're just gonna miss i was in the middle kind of too so it's even you know middle child thing but i sat him down i was like hey dad i just want to like can i show you a song and he was like oh you know he didn't know i was writing anything and i showed it to him and he listened and he took it off and he really looked at me and was like that was really good he was like i real i thought and this when you said this it made me feel this he was like and that did it i probably would have given up music like i look back that was a very pivotal moment for me i was like in a place where i was like is this good bad i don't know maybe it's so embarrassing and terrible and i was already writing lyrics that were a little like overly metaphorical to hide that i was dealing with faith crisis because i thought okay i'm gonna show this to dad i don't want my dad to know i'm like questioning the truthfulness of joseph smith so i'm not gonna be like it's joseph smith a real prophet is mormonism true i don't really know like you know i was like writing way overly metaphorical but because my dad really validated it and he was a no bullshit person so i knew when my dad said that i was like you know what at least my dad really actually thinks this is cool and i really trusted my dad's taste and and thought everything he listened to was cool so i was like wow i keep doing this and i just showed it to my dad for years and years and still to this day i send every song to my dad so he underneath it with the feedback is always like oh i like this idea like this it's just a positive like a not always positive no but like underneath it do you sense the positivity because i think always never never mean never malicious uh you know there's like there's two types of criticism there's like criticism that's just like you're looking to be hurtful to someone and then there's criticism that's like really important for art it's the type of criticism that's like you see the value and what's happening and if it's honest then you can you maybe communicate with that person like i s i see what you're trying to do with that you know it's not even like you have to say that or whatever like butter it up but it's like my dad would just give me the this honest criticism that would be like you know it certainly wasn't always good but i knew it was always well-intentioned i guess that's that's how i would say so you mentioned made me re-listen to it i'm a big fan of cass stevens you made me re-listen to father and son i'd probably all sons have issues to work through with their fathers this is and you said that you connect with this song in particular i think uh so you're a father now uh what is it about the song that connects with you for people let me let me play it let me play a little bit people should educate themselves on cat stevens oh my gosh right in the piece the best the best pizza right on the v street you think this is a hopeful a sad song i hear it was hopeful i heard is a loving father saying just what his son needs to hear it's not time to make a change just relax take it easy [Music] your fault there's so much you have it's like that calm wisdom yeah this time it wise if you want you can marry look at me i am old but i'm happy and just the way says i like that should be a corny line but it's not corny at all it's like you are now look at me i'm older but i'm happy to become when you found something going on yeah i mean the the simplicity there and it yeah but it's such a contrast with um what's his name um harry chapman with the cats in the cradle uh which is like the sadness of so this feels like there's a a wise calm connection between father and son right with uh with casting the cradle i don't know if you remember that song um he learned to walk while i was away and he was talking before i knew it and as he grew he'd say i'm going to be like you dad you know i'm going to be like you and the idea of that song is that he does become like his dad which is funny not something you said but in a different way you become too busy to make that connection his dad was too busy making connection with his son in a in a not a dramatic way in a very kind of calm not strong way like you don't right you just don't have time uh you're you're busy at work you're it for the family and so on there's connection but you don't really get to form that like depth of connection and then the father when uh when the son shows up from college and all that kind of stuff he doesn't spend any time with the father he all that and just the calm sadness of that that we we live we can live parallel lives and never quite connect and there is a little bit of that in father and son with cat stevens too you know like when this when the sun is saying um from the moment that i could talk i was ordered to listen yeah i always i always remember listening to that line feeling like that really moved me but the beauty of that song is it shows it's kind of like the theme of what i feel like we've talked about since the second you got here which is something i really like i don't know why it's such an important theme in my life right now but the duality of just understanding that you don't understand someone else's situation and there's truth to both sides like there's truth to what the father is saying to the son he's like saying these things and he's like i'm looking out for you i love you take your time with these things if you want to get married you can like these things will bring up and then the son saying listen like i i want to pave my own path i want to do this like why are you telling me this like the son's not wrong because there's a lot of parents who tell their kids what to do and they're wrong and that you know what i mean like and they don't let the kid form the path that they need to but should you not be a parent like you know there's just two yeah there's a there's a thing it is annoying when you're older you get you get to see people do all the same things you could say well this is um this is a phase and you'll see that this actually will um end up in this way you can like predict how the life unrolls and it's very annoying for young people to hear especially because it's probably going to be true it's like no it's not going to be like this no i'm going to be different but then you become that person but that doesn't mean they also let them live that life right let them make the mistakes uh but they're not mistakes actually they're they're like beautiful deviations from the from the path that they end up on and those those those make the path um do you have advice for young folks today you've had like an incredible dark journey and a successful one a loving one and one of the most successful artists in the world is there advice you can give to young people today that would like to find themselves to that way especially if they're struggling i thought you said device at first and i was like honestly i feel like that device is not helping like maybe everybody should get away throw away their devices um advice um i would just say like what i emphasize to my kids is i really really want my kids to just learn to love himself it's it's easier said than done it's really easy to pick on yourself in life it's really easy to look in the mirror and wish you looked different wish you were more successful like that person over there wish that you know wish a lot of things and people that i see that really succeed at life really succeed truly and that doesn't mean they're making money necessarily or they're succeeding and you know they're talking to a lot of people like their success success to me is like happy and real they have real self-love you meet you know when you meet someone you meet rick for instance you meet rick rubin rick has a calmness about him and it's funny because everybody sees him as this like zen master like rick is just a really loving person who also loves himself and has self-confidence because you just see it and it resonates and that's why he draws people and that's why he's so great in the studio because you know his intentions always as an artist when a producer comes in you're like whoa whoa what are your intentions what are you trying to do are you trying to get a hit out of me for the label or you're trying to make me something are you trying to like make me this so you can prove this about yourself like there's a lot in that dynamic and the reason that rick is so good is because you know his intentions and his intentions come because rick has that self-love so for me find the things about yourself because they're there that you love and really focus in on them and it's not selfish like i feel like i was brought up in a family too where it was like never look inward like be selfless like serve serve serve which by the way i'm is a true principle of life i think you love yourself more when you serve more i think that's really evident in life but also spend time doing the things that make you happy take time every day to go on that walk that you need to go on listen to that book tape that you need to listen to like for me that's something i need i know if i do that i'm going to be a better dad because i did i did i gave myself some some love back in life and uh and i just forgive yourself i think forgive yourself because everybody messes up everybody hurts others everybody says unkind words at times everybody everybody fails all the time and if you think that you're going to not you're wrong and you're eventually going to and you're either going to punish yourself for it every day and be a lesser version of what you could be or you're going to forgive yourself for it and if you've learned that that's not something you want then try not to do it again if you do it again then and you're probably going to do it again whatever that is you're gonna you're gonna gossip about that person you're gonna feel bad because then you gossiped about someone like is there something you could say in terms of self-love is there a role for being critical and you're like that that those demons of like self-criticism do you need a little bit of that tom waits talks about i like my town with a little drop of poison right you need a little poison or is it is that silly or romantic no i mean it isn't look my my biggest thing in life this has been like the thing that i've worked on the hardest for the last few years is to not be overly critical um [Music] and to let go of control i i think um it's really easy to kill an artist it's really easy to kill an artist like if my dad would have sat down with me that day and even if he would have just sat down and been like good job son okay it's not silly right like i don't i didn't not everybody has a dad who's gonna ever do something or put in the time or whatever but that would that might have altered everything for me like my dad taking the extra time to just give me a thoughtful response opposed to kids know kids know when you're when you're just like trying to get out of the room or whatever i knew he wasn't and that did a lot so yeah but is that is that a huge is not what makes the artist it's the fragility of it that like uh would you have it any other way no no i i agree with you i think that that's what that uh that's the beauty of art but i think also on the same token it's like i went to i went to music cares recently which is a charity for musicians that are down on their luck that maybe were successful at one point or i've never been successful and they can't build and pay the bills on this charity contributes money to these artists aspiring artists or artists who've had drug issues and like there's a lot that they do but and there was a statistic that they told it was staggering to me which is i think it was 75 percent of artists musicians say they struggle with severe depression that's really high i don't know what the national average is but i would guess that that's higher than national average per occupation so i just think there's a tricky balance there's a tricky balance in in art um so yeah of course like it's it's a necessary thing the fragility of it all but um yeah i i wonder because i'm extremely self-critical and i sometimes ask myself the question i've romanticized it or rather i've learned to be for it to be productive to channel into productivity but i i wonder if there's better ways to do that and i also wonder if it's eventually the thing that destroys me like if long term if it's a healthy thing it might be useful when you're in sort of actively fighting the battles of the day the for me it's engineering challenges and all that kind of stuff right but then when you're sitting back and enjoying life with family and so on is that going to be like do you need to find that self-love like ability to kind of um silence the voice of criticism in your head you know what i i really there's a you're making a good point and i think that the middle ground is you need you need self-doubt to push you to be better i do believe that like for instance if i if i believed i've had my like when you're like is there a song on there that you think is genius if i think i've written a genius song ever i think i'd probably stop i think i'd be like you know what i did it i wrote um uh what's that perfect song [Laughter] imagine imagine yet okay if i'd written imagine i'd probably be like that's it did it all right perfect song has been written that's the best thing i'll ever do yeah so the fact that that there is like self-criticism and criticism outside i think is necessary 100 100 for sure it pushes you it pushes you it pushes you it's just finding the right middle ground for that young aspiring artist to also not feel squashed and to be heard and to love just not even to feel squash just to love themself so that when they're in the room playing the song they'll believe it because they believe themselves they love themselves enough that they believe it and then they'll do a great and then the song will come out great and they'll do a great performance i i have to ask it's one of the very interesting aspects of your life of of the of the way you put love out there in the world uh what is at the core of your support for the lgbt community a couple things so one growing up in from a young age in the artist community a lot of my closest friends were lgbtq starting in middle school um [Music] and i think a lot of the best artists in the world are lgbtq and that's just no it's not a secret like it's just it's like the artist community is filled with lots of lgbtq people so i think being raised in that community in that my friends struggled with their faith and their sexuality really opened up my eyes to how incredibly hard that path is for instance okay when i was in high school there was someone who went in front of who was lgbtq and was mormon and felt like there was not a place for them in the church uh they felt like the past you know when when you're being told that that's evil and you believe it because you believe in your faith and you feel like it's unchangeable you're putting a kid in a situation where there's really no good resolution it's either be alone for the rest of your life or marry outside your sexual preference which i don't want to marry a man like if i was forced to marry a man i'm like i don't want to be married to a man because i'm heterosexual so you're forcing a kid into a situation where it's very dangerous long story short this kid went in front of the las vegas mormon temple and shot himself killed himself that impacted our community like and not just that but it was like severe bullying to to lgbtq kids in the 90s it was especially different like they're still bowling don't get me wrong but man like bullying in school i don't really know actually what it's like in schools now maybe the bowling's just as bad as it was in the 90s but there was like it was like i would hear all the time like the f slur being slung out at people who were lgbtq all the time and i wasn't even lgbtq so i you know it's just seeing that i think that every um [Music] any social justice issue takes all sides it takes all pieces of the puzzle if only the pieces of the puzzle contributed are from the side that is affected i don't believe that we'll ever have resolution we're doing a shit job and we need to do better and that's just uh that's that's the reality of it so that's part of the reason i also have family who's lgbtq and and it's just something that's been part of my my path and i i feel like i'm i'm a big believer and take the path that is presented to you and this was just something that came up in my life a lot when i met my wife she was living with her two best friends who are lgbtq who really didn't want her to marry me because i was mormon and at the time it was prop 8 which was mormons were fighting against lgbt gay marriage and so that then they didn't come to our wedding and that really broke my wife's heart um so it was just like because mormonism represented everything that that was against um their community so so you felt you had to say something yeah i felt like by not saying anything yeah i was saying everything i felt like by not speaking up and being like hey dan reynolds is mormon singer here's this new band magic dragons and they're mormons it was like okay well what do mormons represent they represent prop 8. what does prop 8 represent bigotry towards the lgbtq community so what do i do okay i can speak in every interview and be like well that's not me i don't believe that too or i could just be more active about it and especially when it's affecting my family and friends throughout my entire life it was like all right this seems like a path that you need to go down so long story short is a path that just presented itself through through things in my life so just on that topic so religion and god give a lot of meaning to a lot of people it gives a tradition that brings people together um across the generations but it also can hurt people what do you uh make about that tension so a source of meaning but also a source of pain for people the reality is at least to me again this is just my reality i feel like i'm doing my dad's thing every time i'm talking to i'm like i don't really know my two cents here's my two sets you have become your father yeah um the reality and it's my reality and it is the reality for sure there's i think that religion has brought a lot of hurt and pain to a lot of people absolutely it has that i don't think anybody can dispute that on it on either side um whether it's war um you know whether it's slaughtering of entire peoples like it's there's been a lot of pain and suffering that has come from religion um so my little thing that has been hard for me is a faith crisis right i had religion and then i i lost and then i had nothing so that's for me i was like well religion did that to me right like but then at one point it's kind of like how much of my life am i just gonna complain about like being raised mormon or being depressed like you know as i get older i'm like okay so what like okay it's really hurt me but were there any good things that came out of mormonism well yeah there's a lot of good things that have come to my family through mormonism closeness we're really really close mormon culture is that you live together forever right the teaching is that you're in your families are forever we die and then we go to heaven together and we're together forever my family really believes that principle all of them do and that instills a certain way of living that's kind of beautiful even if it's naivety there's something kind of beautiful about believing that we're forming these bonds together as a family and that like we're gonna be together forever it brings a lot of comfort to a kid too when i was little i was like wow it's gonna be okay if i die because i get to see my mom again you know i mean i like i really believe that is the right answer that you tell that kid actually when you die you're not gonna see your mom again maybe it might be i don't know and everybody's gonna anybody who has a kid is gonna face that that moment i've already faced it where you sit down and my kid was like hey dad when you die am i gonna see you again that was actually a really hard moment for me because i was suddenly faced with okay do i give the answer that i thought was bullshit or do i give the answer of what i think it is or do i give the real answer which is i don't know and that's what i chose which is a father that's not always the easiest answer because your kid it's a wonderful thing that you feel like you can give your kid the comfort of like hey your parents are going to take care of everything we know everything we've been around my kids always like are you the strongest i'm like yeah i am the strongest we're stronger than everybody yeah everybody so when you're faced with that moment it's like it kind of sucks to tell your kid like you know what i don't know if you're gonna see me after i die but that but i hope that's why i said i was like i don't know but but i hope i really hope because that would be awesome if we can hang out forever and if there's any way for it to happen i'll make it happen you know what i mean that's kind of what my answer was so long story short sorry i know that i'm being lengthy on this is there like what is my thought on religion it just is it's gonna it's been here forever it's coping it maybe it's i can't say whether it's true or false how the hell am i supposed to know i mean like i've lived 34 years on this planet a lot of people have been around a lot longer than me and they really believe very deeply and a lot of them are smarter than me you know what i mean like i look at my older brothers for instance who are very practicing mormons these guys are hyper intelligent my my younger sister hyper intelligent all of them start smarter than me they all believe it still so what am i supposed to say well you're all stupid you know what i mean like you're all wrong i don't know like maybe it's the south park episode where everybody dies and then they're like well the right answer was mormonism oh i mean like mormon mormons love that moment in south park they're like hey that day may come that day they come yes so maybe maybe i don't know is the honest answer for everybody around the table uh but the biggest question for which the idea knows is the right answer is uh what's the meaning of this whole thing what's the meaning of life now you're not allowed to say i don't know okay um you can be just like your dad and say let me just give my two cents take it for you whatever it's worth take it or leave it it's probably worth nothing piddle on the ground um uh do you i mean what why are we here is it it's just busily creating all these kinds of things worrying about things having kids i my purpose at least right now is to wake up and try to bring light love to the world light love to myself and have integrity that's my purpose the ultimate purpose of life that i guess that's my ultimate purpose of life i i i don't know what happens when i die ayahuasca gave me some sense that there's more to be known i'm sure there are other things in life that would give me that that i'm and i'm lurking i'm looking for it i'm a seeker like i'm i'm always looking for the next something to give me hope in something more even if so i could just not bullshit my kids when they asked me that question and be like you know what i really don't know i i want to not know more if that makes sense i don't want to like i want to see things that make me confused that make me question what i already knew like i am like when i meet an atheist who comes up to me and they're like atheism atheism atheism it's just as laughable to me as when i meet the mormon who comes up and they're like mormonism mormonism mormonism i'm like how do how do anyone how do you guys know that like like and you know so you feel like you're doing some through all your travels to all the people you meet you feel like you're still keeping your eyes open and your heart open to sort of discover discover something new like the ayahuasca experience that there might be there might be deeper truths out there yeah and and i want to find them and i want to surround myself with people who are just looking for it i'm not i'm not interested in people who are just looking to point fingers at each like i life is so short i'm looking for it's one of the reasons that i want to meet with you is i was like wow lex really seems like he's on a journey to find truth and that humility for me is same thing with rick it drew me to rick it was like i really i i see that and i identify with it and that's what i'm looking for there's the final song on our record our new record that's coming out the chorus goes um and this is like the this is my best answer to white to what you're asking um the course goes take it easy on me i need some lullaby they tell me heaven's just a lie well i'm not surprised tell me that you know no you don't yeah you're just like me can we just hope for the best take it easy so that's it for me it's like i'm in a place like where i'm like i don't know tell me you know i don't i'm not gonna believe you maybe you do i'm not gonna believe it but like just be easier on each other and like try to find truth wherever it may lie but above all know that we don't know jack shit i think that's the mic drop moment dan thank you so much you're an incredible human i love that you share with the world the darkness of your mind of your life experience and the in the beautiful light that you've shown to the world so it's a huge honor and thank you for spending your valuable time good luck on the tour thanks man thanks for having me thanks for listening to this conversation with dan reynolds to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from aldous huxley after silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music thank you for listening and hope to see you next time