“My bishop told me that the headquarters had reached out and been like, ‘What’s his standing with the church?’ I think they check in on their famous Mormons.” Reynolds recalls the Mormon Church showing interest and inviting him to high-profile events once Imagine Dragons achieved a level of success. Some of the band members are Mormons from Las Vegas, which I knew to be common, as someone who’d lived in Salt Lake City from age 10 to 17. Imagine Dragons embodies middle America and, I’d assumed, middle American values. Their heavy-handed, hip-hop-laced verses tee up anthemic choruses that pulse over Jeep and Microsoft commercials. The first song on their new album, “Natural,” is ESPN’s 2018 official college-football-season anthem.

I’d made what I thought was a well-informed judgment about Imagine Dragons: They play mainstream, red-state rock music. His handshake is predictably firm, and he exudes disciplined normality. He’s the former high-school quarterback who blows everyone’s mind at the reunion because he’s in better shape now than he was then. His tight, brand-new, white T-shirt tucks cleanly into black gym shorts. He doesn’t have long hair, visible tattoos, or any signifiers that he’s in a band. Reynolds towers over me and I’m six-foot-one. Plenty of rock stars have nontraditional pasts, but Reynolds is different: He’s using his platform as a very famous straight man to advocate for LGBTQ rights, and in the process he’s alienating his band from its fans and himself from his own faith. Reynolds also started a band, and now, at 31, he’s the singer in Imagine Dragons, arguably the biggest rock band in the world.

He served as a Mormon missionary and attended the Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He then got married and fathered three children. I only felt emotion, never what people call the spirit.”ĭan Reynolds did everything right. “I went on a mission because I was like, maybe if I go on a mission, God will talk to me, but he never did. Or she never did, or whatever it is.

Imagine dragons who we are