Background “oohs” fade in with the synthesizer texture for the second half before the whole band punches in for the final chorus. The beat drops out and all we’re left with is a lonely vocal and the lead line in the background. With that hard-hitting chorus a breakdown section is a perfect way to make the final chorus even bigger. With such a strong melody and hard-hitting production you don’t really need to add anything to make people want to hear it again.
The chorus is exactly the same as before. In the second part of this verse a Theramin or Ebow type synth sound plays the lead counter-melody from the intro. They dive straight into the next verse with the same instrumentation as the second part of the first verse. You can hear the lead line blend in quite nicely and you really need to crank up your headphones to hear how it’s played. The instrumentation all blends together in the album version but when they play it live they have one guitar playing sustained power chords while the other keeps playing a chordal melody high up on the neck. The chorus sounds like it has an army of vocals, both doubling the lead vocal melody as well as ton of “oohs” in the background. The chorus starts on the upbeat before the drums explode into the chorus, a great way to add momentum into a chorus. In the second part of the verse the delayed electric guitar part adds an additional part to the arrangement. The *GASP* moment is a very unique way to connect the two verses. The first part of the verse consists of a kick and snare beat, a filthy dub step bass and vocals. The second time through there is an additional harmony in the vocals and a filter slowly opens up a synthesizer sound that flows into the verse. The guitar chords are accompanied by oohing vocals doubling the hook. There are at least two guitars playing the intro, with one strumming chords while the other fingerpicks the main counter-melody that shows up in various parts of the song. The song starts off quietly, and knowing what’s going to happen it’s almost like the calm before the storm. There’s no “groove” per say in the song, but rather a heavy slow march pounding steadily. It’s a standard 4/4 meter but with a heavy emphasis on the backbeat. Another way to look at it would be to make the “pre-chorus” the chorus and the “Radioactive” part the “hook” but now we’d just be arguing semantics.
You could also say that the “I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones” could technically be a pre-chorus because it’s different than the “Radioactive” part but since you can’t really play one without the other I lump them together for simplicity. Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Breakdown-Chorus The structure is a familiar one and has a catchy chorus, two common traits of a radio hit. With that said, let’s look at the actual song structure before we dive into the grittiness of the arrangement. You can have all the tightest beats in the world and an arsenal of awesome synth patches but without a great melody or a catchy tune to tie it all together it’s basically a bunch of useless gear.
If a production doesn’t have a song at its core it’s essentially an empty shell that doesn’t have any emotion. If you don’t have a good song melodically, you don’t have a good song, no matter what you do to it. We’ve always felt that you have to get that right first. As they told the Grammy’s, “ All of our demos start off really basic, mainly just chord progressions and melodies. Regardless of the production of the song and all the ambient textures and dub step elements that are thrown in from time to time, their songs are inherently band-driven. With a Vegas rock band and an English hip-hop producers, something original is bound to happen. They teamed up with Alex Da Kid to produce their album Night Visions. I think that’s all irrelevant because any critic would love to have the success Imagine Dragons have had with their award performances and teamups. “Radioactive” has gotten flak for being overplayed and overrated. The only thing you can tell is that it ’ s good. It blurs two very distinct genres so that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s going on in the song. “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons is an interesting song to analyze. Writer: Ben McKee, Dan Platzman, Dan Reynolds, Wayne Sermon, Alexander Grant, Josh Mosser
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