Night Visions Live

Background

In 2012, Imagine Dragons released Night Visions to critical and commercial success. To promote the album, the band set out on a year-long concert tour beginning in early 2013 and ending in mid-2014, dubbed the "Night Visions Tour". The tour spanned for over 170 dates, and visited North America, South America, Europe and Oceania.

Recording

Night Visions Live was recorded during the band's performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver, Colorado on the May 16, 2013 date of their year-long Night Visions Tour. The venue, which holds just under 9,500 people, had sold out for the performance, which was held for one night only. The show's setlist, however, did not reflect the track listing of Night Visions Live. The show's setlist, for example, opened with "Round and Round", the usual opening song during a set list on the Night Visions Tour. The show progressed with "Amsterdam", "Tiptoe", "Hear Me", "Cha-Ching (Till We Grow Older)", "Rocks", "Radioactive", "30 Lives", "Bleeding Out", "Demons", then a cover of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me", then "Underdog" and "On Top of the World" before ending the show with "It's Time", and staging an encore with "Nothing Left to Say", the usual set list closer for the tour.

The video, however, followed the setlist in chronological order, but omitting the performances of "Hear me", "Radioactive", "30 lives", "Bleeding Out", "Stand By Me", "On Top of the World" and the encore with "Nothing Left to Say". The performance itself lasted under two hours, and had been described by A.H. Goldstein of Denver-based alternative weekly newspaper Westword as "a well-honed, big-budget stageshow that would have fit neatly into any stadium or any glitzy room in its native Las Vegas". The recorded performance became the second live album by the band after Live at Independent Records, which was also recorded in Denver, Colorado. Lead singer Dan Reynolds was also notably suffering from a broken hand during the performance, having broken it after punching a drum during a May 2013 performance, making it, coincidentally, the second live recording during which Reynolds was suffering from a medical condition; Live at Independent Records was recorded when Reynolds was recovering from throat surgery.

The show was one of many that were recorded during the Night Visions Tour on audio-visual for a potential release during or after the tour, before the end of the Night Visions release cycle. The performances recorded include the opening night of the Night Visions Tour on December 30, 2012 at The Joint in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was later used for a live video of "Radioactive" and parts of the music video for "Demons", which, in part, was combined with footage of the February 9, 2013 performance at the same venue.

Track listing

All tracks written by Ben McKee, Dan Platzman, Dan Reynolds and Wayne Sermon, except where noted.