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