Dan Reynolds (singer) and then transferred to BYU after serving an LDS mission, where he studied communications, marketing, and music and excelled academically. While at BYU, he formed Imagine Dragons and won the school's battle of the bands competition before leaving to pursue music full-time. Reynolds was initially reluctant to become a professional musician, partially because future bandmate Wayne Sermon had once told him: "Don't do music because you want to do music - do music if you have to do music". After he began attending Brigham Young University, Reynolds found that he could not "do anything else" and committed fully to a
Next to Me (Imagine Dragons song) is some of the first times that I've really explored diving into my mind and musicality and sonicality of romance." He regarded it as "something everybody can relate to", which is the "feeling like you are going to fail sometimes in a relationship and the true value of a relationship is what happens then". An accompanying short film for the song was released on March 13, 2018. The video stars the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, and his wife, Aja Volkman. In the video, Aja leaves Dan due to his problems, leading to him attempting to sell his wedding ring. The