“Radioactive” : A song about waking up from ADD

The World Wide Threat of Public Educa... Socialists are Lazy: Meet the new Ger...

“Radioactive” : A song about waking up from ADD

Even though I don’t typically enjoy lyrical music, occasionally one comes out that I like quite a bit. During 2013 my favorite video game was Assassin’s Creed III, and I fell in love with the song “Radioactive” which was part of the marketing campaign for that game. You can hear the song below as it was presented to the imagery of the game which allowed players to immerse themselves in the Revolutionary War of America in a way that had never been done before. The game was just fantastic, and the song “Radioactive” became one that I enjoyed for more reasons evolving beyond Assassin’s Creed III.

“Radioactive” is a song recorded by American rock band Imagine Dragons for their major-label debut EPContinued Silence and later on their debut studio album, Night Visions, as the opening track. “Radioactive” was first sent to radio on April 2, 2012[1] and again on October 29, 2012.[2] Musically, “Radioactive” is an alternative rock song with elements of electronic rock and dubstep, while containing cryptic lyrics of apocalyptic and revolutionist themes.

The song received acclaim from critics who praised the production, lyrics, and vocals, calling it a highlight on the album. Due to heavy rotation on commercials and trailers, the song became a sleeper hit, peaking at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and has so far spent nearly a year and a half on that chart. It became their first top 10 single, and also broke the record for slowest ascension to the Top 5 in chart history.[3] It currently holds the record for most weeks spent on the Billboard Hot 100 at 78 weeks.[4] It was the third best-selling song of 2013,[5] and was also the No. 3 song on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013 year-ending behind “Thrift Shop” and “Blurred Lines“.[6] The song has also reached No. 1 in Sweden and in the top 20 in several countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, becoming their most successful single to date.

Imagine Dragons is an American alternative rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada. The band gained exposure following the September 2012 release of their debut studio album, Night Visions, which peaked at number 2 on the weekly Billboard 200 chart. Following the release of Night Visions, Imagine Dragons embarked on a world tour, and performed on major late night shows. According to Billboard Imagine Dragons topped the year-end rock rankings for 2013.[1] Billboard also named Imagine Dragons “The Breakthrough Band of 2013,” and Rolling Stone named their single “Radioactive” “the biggest rock hit of the year.”[2][3][4]MTV also called them “the year’s biggest breakout band.”[5]

Imagine Dragons’ line up includes vocalist Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne “Wing” Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman.[4]

Here are the lyrics to the song:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_(Imagine_Dragons_song)

“Radioactive”

Whoa, oh, oh

Whoa, oh, oh

Whoa, oh, oh

Whoa

I’m waking up to ash and dust

I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust

I’m breathing in the chemicals

I’m breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus

This is it, the apocalypse

Whoa

I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones

Enough to make my systems blow

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I’m radioactive, radioactive

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I’m radioactive, radioactive

I raise my flags, don my clothes

It’s a revolution, I suppose

We’ll paint it red to fit right in

Whoa

I’m breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus

This is it, the apocalypse

Whoa

All systems go, the sun hasn’t died

Deep in my bones, straight from inside

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/imaginedragons/radioactive.html

Reynolds has struggled most of his life with depression and ADD and anxiety issues. He explained to AbsolutePunk that he penned this song “Radioactive,” “coming out of a pretty serious spell of depression and having a new awakening and a real vigor for life.” He added: “That’s the general thing where that song came from. There’s more specifics to it, but that’s the basic, general idea.” In a time that we currently live in where so many young people have been diagnosed and treated with Attention Deficit Disorder, and HDAD literally an entire generation of young people are becoming aware that they have been deliberately stifled mentally by pharmaceutical companies looking to make a lot of money off a made up disease. Creative people like Dan Reynolds look to have become aware of this stifling as he has a past with these public education attempts to put clamps on the mind of people with exceptional ability so to equalize them with students of less aptitude. That is the reason for ADD diagnosis. Medicating the made up disease is purely to stifle the mind of the victim and Dan Reynolds has been through this process.

His frustration is clear in the music. The subtle lyrics come out as though he were waking up from a dream—a cloud of haze deliberately inflicted upon the mind and the intense drum beats during the song are the natural impulse to action trying to emerge past the drugs and social resistance to exceptionalism. I find the song “Radioactive” to be an appropriate metaphor for our entire society, globally. We have all been subdued by intelligentsia, and we are finally waking up………slowly.

If ADD diagnosis was around when I went to school, there would be no doubt the teachers would have tried to put me on every drug known to numb my mind into something they were more comfortable with. Thank God I didn’t have to go through that fight. I have arrived to my adulthood without the struggles that the band members of Imagine Dragons have had to deal with. Works of art like their music are gifts to a free society and an inquisitive culture. The official music video, also shown here is just another subtle layer to the song’s meaning—the band members are imprisoned below a ring of death where innocent puppets are fighting out battles metaphorical to what we all face every day. The gamblers around the ring are making bets playing us all against each other until an innocent little creature arrives into the ring and destroys all the villains. Good stuff.

Not all rock music is offshoots of Aliester Crowley and the culture of destruction that are often associated with the Thelema. In a free market, like what does exists to a large extent in America, bands like Imagine Dragons have a chance to compete with everyone else—and excel. Thank goodness for that, because the song “Radioactive” is a song of great importance to our current time and the minds that hear the music and realize on a subconscious level the meaning. We are waking up; the flag we fly is red, but not the red of tyrannies from the past, but more like the pirate’s flag of “no quarter given.” It is a revolution and the sun still shines. Now it’s just a matter of time before everyone joins those already awake to hoist that flag to the next step of human evolution—and it is not conducive to the current class of dissidents who have prescribed a society to the drugs of diagnosis for ADD so to protect themselves from overachieving intelligence.

“Radioactive” is about hope………..a hope that through the tyrannies of every dominating force known, the human mind can wake up and react in a pursuit of freedom that is only known in the deepest recesses of every cell in our bodies. I simply love the song and what it is doing for a generation of young people—a quiet intensity that is ever-growing toward a social fortissimo that is not yet known. Powerful stuff. If you are currently on medicine designed to treat ADD or some other related diagnosis, get off the stuff right now–and free your mind to its true potential. Be the drum in the song “Radioactive” and beat with all the vigor that your life has the potential to produce.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com