Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds says he probably wouldn't perform 'Radioactive' live if it weren't a fan-favorite song

• We asked Imagine Dragons to rank their diamond-certified songs from most to least fun to perform.
• Frontman Dan Reynolds put the band's breakout hit, "Radioactive," in last place.

For over a decade, Imagine Dragons has reigned as one of the world's biggest bands.

The group's staggering success can be traced back to "Radioactive," a single from their 2012 debut album, "Night Visions." The song smashed chart records, won the Grammy Award for best rock performance, and was hailed as the "biggest rock hit of the year" by Rolling Stone.

In 2015, "Radioactive" earned Imagine Dragons their first diamond certification from the RIAA, meaning the song went platinum 10 times over.

Today, Imagine Dragons has more diamond-certified songs than any other band in history. "Radioactive" was followed by "Demons" and "Believer" in 2021, and then "Thunder" in 2022.

Naturally, all of these tracks are staples in the band's live setlist. Their new Hulu documentary, "Imagine Dragons Live In Vegas," available to stream Friday, shows how a crowd needs only a whiff of each — the ominous drum beat of "Believer," the funky bass line of "Thunder" — for their screams to surge like a storm flood.

So Insider asked frontman Dan Reynolds to rank these four songs from most to least fun to perform live.

Reynolds immediately crowned "Believer," the lead single from the band's 2017 album "Evolve," as his favorite. The earnest arena-rock anthem "Demons" took his No. 2 spot.

Then, perhaps controversially, Reynolds ranked "Thunder" third and "Radioactive" in last place.

"'Radioactive' is a song that a lot of fans want to hear. And if it weren't for that, I probably would veto that song," he said. "It's probably my least favorite to play."

Reynolds is far from the only musician who's gotten smash-hit fatigue. Radiohead famously refuses to play "Creep," Liam Gallagher has said he "can't fucking stand" the Oasis classic "Wonderwall," and Ariana Grande was relieved to remove "Bang Bang" from her Sweetener World Tour setlist.

"It one of those things where it's like, first of all, it's just length of time," Reynolds explained. "We've played 'Radioactive,' I don't know how many times, but let's just say a lot of times. It's a hard song to sing just vocally. It's very high. It's always at the end of the set, so I'm tired at that point."

Indeed, "Radioactive" usually takes the penultimate slot in the band's energetic set, which features an onslaught of pyrotechnics, confetti cannons, and theatrics. In the doc, it's clear that Reynolds throws his whole body into each performance. As guitarist Wayne Sermon tells the camera, he's "larger than life" on every stage, no matter the size.

However, despite the exhaustion and vocal challenges he associates with "Radioactive," Reynolds clarified that it'll remain on the setlist as long as fans want to hear it.

"There's a lot of bands that are like, 'We don't play this song live anymore. We don't care that everybody wants to hear it. We don't care it's our most popular song.' And that's fine. I get it, respect. I'm not hating on those bands. But that's not what we do," he said.

"That's just not our ethos. It's not who we are," Reynolds continued. "Our fans are paying money to be there and they want to hear these songs that they want to hear. And they're the reason we have a career and we're going to play them those songs."

Reynolds also made a point to praise Sermon for arranging the setlist, writing poetry for their live interludes, and mixing the songs.

"It haunts us and tortures us to no end, the fact that someone could come to our show and feel like they didn't hear their song," Sermon told Insider. "So we do tend to make sure that we always play the most popular songs at every show just for that reason, to fill some neuroses in our head about making sure as many people enjoy the show as much as they can."

"We have a few spots that are just open that are kind of for us, and maybe for the OG fans," he added. "We like to surprise people from time to time, too. We always want our shows to be an experience."

"Imagine Dragons Live In Vegas" focuses on the band's special concert at Allegiant Stadium last September.

Before they rocketed to fame in 2012, Imagine Dragons got their start in Sin City by playing small shows across the Las Vegas Strip.

Reynolds said they would "beg" casinos to let them play on their cover band stages — late-night gigs for audiences who were there for slot machines and cheap beer, not live music. If they were lucky, the bandmates would take home a few hundred dollars every night.

"We've played through fights, and drunkenness, and people running on stage, and taking your instrument from you while you're trying to play," he recalled. "We would play on stages that were 10 feet by 10 feet or something, so tiny that we're on top of each other."

Many bands have humble origin stories, but not many go on to play stadium shows in their hometown with a 65,000 person capacity — a mind-boggling scale for any kind of entertainer.

For bassist Ben McKee, playing for a sea of people actually alleviates some of the pressure.

"There is something about a large crowd that allows you to just play to the energy of the space," McKee told Insider. "It becomes a back-and-forth — the energy from the music feeding the crowd, and the energy from the crowd feeding the music."

"It's not something we're bored of," he added. "It's not something that's become regular, a normal nine-to-five job or something. It's something that we love doing. And whether or not there were people there, whether or not the crowds of 50,000 people were there to see us every night, we would still be doing it just out of the love for performing and for creating music."