SINGAPORE - American band Imagine Dragons might be successful chart-toppers, but they get a lot of flak for releasing what are seen as songs that pander to the masses.
Frontman Dan Reynolds takes all the criticisms in his stride.
"I think it just comes with the territory. As I get older I feel like... I just care less," he says in a recent Zoom conference with South-east Asian media from his home studio in Las Vegas.
The 33-year-old singer, who is behind global hits such as 2012's Radioactive (2012) as well as 2017's Believer and Thunder, adds: "I think when you get to a large enough level of success, more people are going to hear your music. And with (that), there's going to be more people who don't like what they hear."
Imagine Dragons were once described as "the most-hated band in music", but Reynolds does not want people to feel neutral about their songs.
"My favourite thing in the whole world is to just play music for someone who has a real reaction to it. I either want someone to hate the song or I want them to love it. The middle ground is not an interest (for) me."
The pop rockers are not afraid of poking fun at themselves, as evident in the music video for their new song, Follow You.
Starring Rob McElhenny and Kaitlin Olson from television sitcom It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005 to present), the video was the idea of Reynolds' wife, singer Aja Volkman .
In the video, McElhenny's character openly derides the band and mocks Reynolds' stage moves.
Reynolds says: "We woke up one day and she was like, "Okay, I have this idea. What if there's a couple that goes to an Imagine Dragons show, and the wife is a big fan, but the husband doesn't like the band.
"I think it's important in life to self-deprecate a little bit, it's healthy for everybody."
The band has also released another track, Cutthroat.
The two songs, their first new ones in three years, are the lead singles from their upcoming fifth album. Their last album, Origins, was put out in 2018.
Reynolds says the new album is in its final mixing stages, but declines to reveal when it will be released.
Follow You taps into how he and his wife, who have three daughters and a son, bounced back from a near divorce, while Cutthroat dives into how he has been suffering from mental health issues since he was a teenager.
"I took three years off and went through dramatic life changes. I went through a separation with my wife, I had a new baby. I had a spiritual awakening and explored Ayahuasca (a South American traditional spiritual medicine), which really changed my life," he says of the inspiration behind the songs in the new album.
Burnt out from the rigours of touring for Origins, Reynolds took a break from live shows and focused on writing songs.
The group, which also consist of guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman, also engaged band therapists to help strengthen their relationship.
Reynolds recalls: "They came to our band studio and we sat down with them for a series of days and had group therapy and we solved a lot of issues. So yeah, it was really helpful," .
A big fan of gaming, he reveals that he has been secretly working on releasing his own video game.
"I started taking a course on coding, Unity, and have been working on a game very seriously with a team of people for over a year," he says while seated on a gaming chair by Singapore company Secretlab.
"I'm so excited about it because it's really coming together and I should be done with that, hopefully, within the next few years."
