Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds Organizes LoveLoud Festivals For LGBT Youth

Dan Reynolds, the lead singer from Imagine Dragons, made a speech after picking up the Top Rock Artist award at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards in May and offered a call to action against “gay conversion” therapy.

In an interview with Huffington Post, the singer said, “We have a long ways to go, still, as far as creating a safe space for our LGBTQ youth.”

“Terrible, awful things are happening every day, still…The whole world needs to [hear] it,” said Reynolds.

For the third consecutive year, Reynolds teamed up with Tegan Quin of the pop-rock duo Tegan and Sara, to organize LoveLoud Festival. The festival is a daylong music festival in Utah that benefits L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations and groups. The show on June 29 had Kesha headlining the show, who also joined a lineup that included Reynolds, Tegan and Sara, Daya, K.Flay, PVRIS, and Laura Jane Grace.

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The festival was featured in the 2018 HBO documentary Believer. The show explored Reynold’s efforts to reconcile his L.G.B.T.Q advocacy work with his Mormon faith. In the show, he said he is committed to mounting the annual show in Utah, which has the fifth-highest suicide rate in the country, according to Salt-Lake Tribune.

Although Reynolds identifies as straight, his work sparked some debates among fans, as well as L.G.B.T.Q rights advocates around the world. Reynolds mentioned that homophobia has “affected not just [his] closest friends growing up, but also [his] family.”