I have been extremely lucky to get an invitation to their concert in Kiev, Ukraine, many years ago. Three of the original members still alive and kicking. It was incredibly awesome.

The concert itself was a gift from Victor Pinchuk, one of the Ukrainian oligarchs and renowned patron, to the city. Previously he also sponsored a full-blown Elton John concert on the main city square which I also attended.

The Electronic Harpsichord, same year. must have been an interesting time.

Totally Rad.

One of the things whose non-existence I'm mildly surprised by: a mash-up between Kraftwerk's Radioactivity and Imagine Dragons Radioactive. Sure, they're extremely different songs melody-wise but that never stopped people from successfully mashing up songs before, and the underlying beat is almost the same but reversed, which is kinda interesting[0][1].

Also, has anyone ever compared the cultural context and zeitgeist of both songs? Probably would be a fun high school assignment, haha. Kraftwerk's song came out in the same decade that the Club of Rome published its Limits To Growth report[2], so when fears about humanity's future really started to become A Thing that was impossible to ignore. Later versions of the song turning it into a protest song encapsulate Cold War fears for a nuclear apocalypse of the time (presumably, I wasn't really around yet back then).

The main audience for the Imagine Dragons song was a generation fully born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. One that grew up playing the Fall Out games. It also came out in 2012, right after the 2008 crisis kick-started the "oh the previous generation will leave us with nothing huh?" Doomer mentality among millennials and Gen Z kids. Remember the media going nuts over the "Ok, Boomer" expression for a while? (which still feels like the media intentionally dividing a community to stop it from actually fixing things me, tbh, but let's not get too side-tracked)

In that context, when put side by side the ID song almost feels like a Doomer generation follow-up and implicit critique of how nothing seems to have actually be done about to prevent the impending apocalypse that the Kraftwerk song's generation was supposedly so worried about, turned into a fantasy about living in that post-apocalyptic planet.

It's "vibe" is weirdly hopeful too, especially compared to the Kraftwerk song as well. Instead of fearing an apocalypse, it's set after one and embraces living within it.

At least, that's how the two songs come across to me, which probably says more about me than anything else. Apparently Dan Reynolds, main singer on ID and one of writers of the song, has said that in retrospect after almost a decade, he had realized that it was actually about him "not giving up hope after losing faith in Mormonism."[3]. Which makes sense as a personal experience of going through feeling doomed and figuring out how to survive and embrace living on in a "post-apocalyptic" world on a personal, social level.

I think that's what annoys me about the Kraftwerk song's status as a protest song, and a lot of other music from the same era: it doesn't feel like it's insisting on a better future. It's passive late 70s, early 80s pessimism.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3viBe2Q0P8

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyXeJZJUFHE

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_%28Imagine_Dragons...

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saving you a click: it's Radioactivity