Oh the Misery - Matthew Boyle

With the whole world against you, what better way to celebrate than burning it to the

ground. “Enemy”, by Imagine Dragons, is the soundtrack to their destruction. This was one of

my most played songs on my Spotify Wrapped for 2022 and for good reason. “Enemy” was

released alongside the animated series “Arcane” on Netflix. The show was based on the

characters from the hit game “League of Legends”, which made the show jump to the top of the

charts, and the song along with it. When I saw the show, I instantly fell in love with it. The song

only made it better.

In this song, Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons uses a very off-tempo

melody, moving much faster than the backing track. He pitches his voice up at the start of a line,

and it comes back down at the end. His voice is flowy and clear, letting us hear his words

perfectly. In the chorus, Reynolds vocal range is enormous, he goes from space down to the

bottom of the ocean like nothing. But he isn’t the only singer in this song. JID joins in for his

own verse, with his own tempo and feel. His voice is more airy, and his flow is much faster.

While Reynolds goes slower and gets the point across, JID speeds up and doesn’t seem to take a

single breath for his whole verse. The backing track is synthetic, with hints of drums and guitar.

The song is very lyrical, and contains some strong verses that are pretty hard-hitting. All of these

aspects come together and create a work of art.

In a press release, Dan Reynolds told us what the song was truly about. “Enemy is about

reconciling internal conflict in a world where it feels impossible to trust even yourself”. We see

this conflict in the first verse “when my back is to the world, that was smiling when I turned”.

There is also the bridge, “once you turn they hate us”. When we are dealing with problems in our
life, we like to think the whole world is against us and there is no hope. When this happens, we

need to find something to latch onto, and hold tight.

There are so many good things in this song, it’s hard to put it into words. The song just

feels good. Whenever it comes on in my playlist, the volume is going all the way up. When I

watched Arcane, it was a great show, the song made it even better. I would recommend this song

to anyone that loves Imagine Dragons, as I think this is one of their best songs.