Imagine Dragons / Evolve / 2017
Whatever It Takes
defiant but anxious, adrenaline-fueled
A pump-up anthem about grinding toward success while admitting the self-doubt and body-image anxiety underneath the bravado. The narrator frames ambition as a kind of self-destructive thrill, wanting to be broken down and rebuilt rather than simply rewarded.
ambition and self-destruction fear of inadequacy body image and self-scrutiny fame and cynicism self-mythologizing
Who's speaking
First person, addressed to an unspecified 'you' that functions as both lover, public, and internalized judge; the voice is driven and self-aggrandizing but undercut by confessions of insecurity, making it only partly reliable as a straightforward triumph narrative.
What happens
The song opens with a sense of free-fall and paranoia about a hostile, opportunistic world, then pivots to a declaration of destiny. The choruses repeat a willingness to sacrifice anything for success and the thrill it brings. The second verse turns inward, revealing body-image insecurity and a fear of being ordinary, while the bridge spirals into contradictory self-descriptions -- symbol, product, masterpiece, disease -- before settling into an acceptance that even death would be fine if the striving was real.
How it's built
Conventional verse-chorus-verse-bridge pop structure, but the chorus is the engine: its repeated phrase anchors the song while small variants in the surrounding lines shift its meaning from external validation-seeking to internal defiance. The bridge breaks from the galloping rhythm of the verses into a denser, almost spoken-word cascade of self-definitions before the final chorus returns unchanged, suggesting no real resolution -- just more running.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song begins mid-crisis, with imagery of falling and a crowd of circling, opportunistic onlookers. This sets up ambition as something pursued in a hostile environment rather than a neutral goal.}, {
Pre-chorus
“Run me like a race horse”
The narrator asks to be used and pushed to the point of breakdown, framing self-destruction as the price of transformation rather than something to avoid.
Chorus
The hook repeats a pledge of total commitment, tying ambition to a physical, almost addictive sensation rather than to any specific goal like money or fame.
Second verse
“feeling miserable”
Body-image anxiety surfaces directly here, recontextualizing the earlier bravado as partly a reaction against private shame rather than pure confidence.
Bridge
“a catastrophe And yet a masterpiece”
The narrator stacks contradictory self-descriptions, refusing to resolve whether their drive makes them exceptional or merely a product of external pressures, before arriving at an uneasy peace with mortality.
Craft
- anaphora
- Repeated 'everybody' openings in the first verse create a sense of a watching, judging crowd, establishing paranoia before the narrator asserts individual destiny against it.
- extended metaphor
- Horse-and-ripcord imagery casts the self as an instrument to be driven and detonated, equating ambition with controlled violence done to one's own body and will.
- paradox
- The bridge piles up contradictory self-images—symbol versus product, masterpiece versus disease—refusing to settle the question of whether the narrator's drive is noble or hollow.
- wordplay
- A string of near-rhyming '-ical' and '-stance' words in the bridge mimics racing thought and self-interrogation, speeding up the song's internal monologue.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a portrait of ambition as compulsion rather than celebration -- the narrator doesn't claim to enjoy success itself so much as the adrenaline of chasing it, and the verses suggest that chase is driven by fear of being ordinary or unseen. An alternative, more surface reading treats it as a straightforward motivational anthem about hustle and self-belief, which is likely how it's used in commercial and sports contexts, even though the lyric itself is more conflicted than that framing allows.
Context
Released on Evolve in 2017, a period when Imagine Dragons leaned into bigger, more athletic arena-pop production; the song was used in prominent sports and promotional contexts, which has shaped its reception as a pure hype anthem more than its lyric content strictly supports. I don't have reliable specifics on the writing or recording process beyond this.
Listen for
- the shift from paranoid crowd imagery to declarative self-belief between the verse and pre-chorus
- the galloping rhythmic drive underscoring the horse/ripcord imagery
- the bridge's denser wordplay and faster cadence compared to the verses
- how the final chorus repeats unchanged, offering no narrative resolution
About Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons are an American pop rock band formed in 2008, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The band currently consists of lead singer Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, and bassist Ben McKee.
2008 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue