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
Imagine Dragons comes out and what feels right". Drummer Daniel Platzman added that the band are critical of themselves, with "no room for external pressure". Inspired greatly by the band's travels on both their previous tours and the Night Visions Tour, the album explored world culture as a musical item and overall motif in the album. Dan Reynolds told New Orleans-based newspaper "The Times-Picayune" that there was "a lot of inspiration to be drawn from [the world tour]. You kind of realize that you're a lot smaller than you think". In addition, Reynolds stated to music magazine "Rolling Stone" that the next