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About This Author
Well, hello. I’m still testing this.
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Music Notes #1096774 added September 6, 2025 at 7:58am
Restrictions: None
Sharks, by ID
My sixth Barrel of Monkeys track is a single off of the 2022 Imagine Dragons double album Mercury Act 1 & 2. I chose this because I was getting tired of trying to find ID tracks with slightly over 25 million streams. For some reason their tracks either have a gazillion views (on YouTube) or surprisingly few. I don't have a Spotify account, and it's rather difficult to access streaming stats per song. This, obviously, has way more than the challenge requirements.
What it Sounds Like
Sharks is a spartan song, with a simple bass line and production reflective of Rick Rubin’s influence. My first impression was that it had a demo feel, perhaps because of the real instruments combined with the synth effects.
(The bass line is actually identical to another single off of Act 2, Bones. But that's a different story…)
It has a spooky sound, of course, suitable to the theme, complete with unnerving laughs and ominous popping bubbles added at the beginning of the second verse. Now that I think of it, it resembles one of Michael Jackson's horror type songs, something that kids love to be scared with.
What It Means
Thematically, Sharks reminds us that everyone is a shark. It deals with envy, backbiting, and toxic behavior, while also reflecting on the brevity of life and how one tends to become the very thing one dislikes.
For some reason, kids love this song. I've never liked real sharks, for much the same reason that dinosaurs never interested me. I would think Sharks is even a bit creepy for kids, but it's more playfully exaggerated than truly sinister, and it does teach an important lesson about human nature.
The music video for Sharks is the cat's pajamas. I absolutely love it. The evening it came out, I must've watched it a million times on loop. It portrays a story purportedly inspired by the movie Ocean’s Eleven, where some kind of carefully planned heist is taking place at a landmark casino in Vegas. As a person who doesn't watch movies, I thoroughly appreciate the effort that went into creating a mini-movie for this song. I also love how a folding smartphone is prominently featured; some people might laugh at the commercial aspect of that, but good grief, the only other time I've seen those is when I played with the test devices at Best Buy 
Personal Significance
Sharks was released in June of 2022, during a time when I was still finding myself after the pandemic and a toxic job. I found comfort in the relatability of Dan's words, seeing my own experience reflected, especially in the second verse: “don’t you let ‘em see you struggle - hiding your tears/ crisis, take advantage of your niceness… prey on your fears.”
I made an art piece for this song… Technically, it was supposed to be a birthday card for Dan Reynolds, to be posted on my Twitter page and appreciated by the fandom, but I was in the process of pulling away from social media and ended up missing the day entirely. I think I posted it a year later, but by then everything had changed and it lacked significance. I got the idea because the band released an animated lyrics video of Sharks in time for his birthday - I think it had something to do with National Shark Awareness Day - and I took a screenshot of the phrase “you're a light in the dark” and thought it applied nicely to him, so embellished it.
I must've listened to Sharks a gazillion times, between my initial release analysis and watching the music video and streaming it on my personal offline shuffle mix. Like all the tracks off of Mercury, I wore it threadbare and haven't really played it much since joining WdC. I'm glad to have a chance to give it a fresh listen with good earbuds.
Words: 640.
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