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 million albums and 35 million singles worldwide. In 2008, lead singer Dan Reynolds met drummer Andrew Tolman at Brigham Young University where they were both students. Reynolds and Tolman added Andrew Beck, Dave Lemke, and Aurora Florence to play guitar, bass, and piano respectively for their band. Their name is an anagram for a phrase only known to members of the group, that Reynolds stated each member approved of. The five-piece released an extended play titled "Speak to Me" that year, but Beck and Florence departed from the band's line-up later that year. In 2009, Tolman recruited long-time high school