Wayne Sermon on the “Less Is More” Approach To Imagine Dragons’ Latest Album ‘Evolve’
Imagine Dragons is buzzing about its pair of nominations for the 60th GRAMMY Awards, which were announced on Tuesday (November 28).
The Las Vegas troupe is up for Best Pop Vocal Album for Evolve, while the hit “Thunder” got the nod for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.
Guitarist Wayne Sermon tells us that the nominations are a kind of reward for experimenting and stepping out of the band’s comfort zone on the album:
“I think that can probably be summed up in a lack of instrumentation, versus more. I think generally in the past, we’ve subscribed to the more is more principle, or the Phil Spector style of production, the wall of sound type of thing. That’s what we’ve always kinda wanted to do. But this album, we wanted to pare everything back, rather than having ten kick-drums on a track, just having one that sounds really good, or rather than recording a bunch of different drums, record one take and make sure it sounds right. One or two guitar tracks per song, one bass track per song, and that pretty much is just it. We wanted to make sure the melodies and the vocals could shine through without it being cluttered. It was a new approach for us, and I think it was really nice.”
Imagine Dragons has been nominated for GRAMMYs twice before, winning Best Rock Performance in 2014 for “Radioactive.” The GRAMMYs will be awarded on January 28 in New York City and broadcast on CBS.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
