Music Notes

Take Me to the Beach, by ID

My 16th track is a deep cut (at least I think it is… there isn't a music video, but apparently it's one of the band's favorites. I am not familiar with radio, so I don't know if it's present or not…) anyway, it's a track from the Imagine Dragons 2024 album Loom.

This song was heavily criticized by the critics, as most ID content is. I think they called it a cross between Jimmy Buffett and hip-hop, or something like that. It seems amusing at first, but the message runs deeper than one might assume.

Sound:
Take Me to the Beach is "weird," as are all the songs off of Loom. Credit goes once more to the Swedish producer duo Mattman and Robin, who purportedly have a distaste for plain old guitar lines. This one originates out of a strum and a bass, with extra elements such as synths, whistles and layered, modified vocals added in for fun.

When I listened to it for the first time, I laughed in childish delight at Dan's lyrical melody. There's something so playful and funny about this song, from the quadruple stacked rhymes to the distinct sound of a can popping open at "gonna spend my days telling them to can it…"

When the second chorus begins, you can hear a new, high-pitched sample in the background, which Dan said is one of the highlights of the song for him. He calls it "spaghetti western" and says it reminds him of Tarantino movie soundtracks. This cultural reference goes totally over my sheltered head, but seeing his goofy exuberance about that one stringy little sound makes me smile.

You can hear him talking about it and hear the sample by itself here ▼

if you have time to poke through the forty-minute Amazon Music Songline acoustic performance, which includes the band's commentary (while wearing their jammies in the studio )

Theme:
Underneath its sunny facade, Take Me to the Beach is at heart an introvert's theme song. Dan Reynolds declares his preference for solitude rather than hanging with the wrong people who will waste his time and energy and bring him down.

At the end, he says "I don't have no friends—ask anyone/ I've got me till the end—my favorite one." He's mentioned this apparent self-centered attitude before, particularly in a deep cut off 2021's Mercury Act 1, called #1. "I know what I'm meant to be… when it's all been said and done, I'm still my number one." It's a matter of valuing himself enough to draw the line where he would otherwise be too much of a people pleaser.

As one who feels like "peopling" is generally more trouble than it's worth, I deeply identify with this desire to be alone with oneself, and consider Take Me to the Beach a favorite off Loom for its unabashedly inward facing theme.

Speaking of "inward facing," I remember being concerned when the Loom tracklist dropped and I saw this title. I didn't want it to be another slightly flirtatious "outward facing" song about Dan's evolving relationships, as the single Nice to Meet You is. Luckily, Take Me to the Beach is nothing of the sort.

Significance:
Apparently, the Dragons like Take Me to the Beach as much as I do—so much so, they've collaborated with no less than four different international artists to create remixes of it! The only one I can tolerate is the Baker Boy remix, featuring an Australian Aboriginal rapper singing partly in his native language. The others either sound hideous or completely mangle Dan's introvert theme.

I especially like watching the Amazon Music Songline acoustic performance of the song. It's one of the only songs performed there which is officially available by itself on YouTube, which means I can download it to keep offline with good audio quality. The rest of the setlist is only available individually as "bootlegged" videos, which are rather slipshod.

Enjoy this amusing and multifaceted song. I'm afraid I'll have to embed three different versions of it to plague you with

Words: 700.