Too Natural by Arrested Dragons 1️⃣4️⃣

Imagine Dragons x Arrested Development

Song	Natural	Natural
Artist	Imagine Dragons	Arrested Development
Year	July 17, 2018	March 24, 1992
BPM	100	116
Part	Acapella	Instrumental

Final Cut

There is something crazy similar about these two songs besides having the same name. Check this! When the chorus starts, it flows to this rhythm:

• “Na- Tur- Al-, a beating
• Heat- Of- Stone-, you gotta
• Be- So- Cold- to make it
• In- This- World-. Yeah you’re a…”

Now go listen to the opening bass guitar of Natural by Arrested Development.

• Ba- Ba- Ba-, badada
• Ba- Ba- Ba-
• Ba- Ba- Ba-, badada
• Ba- Ba- Ba-

Same rhythm, same hymn, it feels too much of a coincidence considering they have the same track name as well! Tell me I’m not reaching here!

Okay, it’s possible that the similarities between the two songs are coincidental, but it’s also possible that Imagine Dragons was inspired by Arrested Development when creating their song of the same name. If so, then were they paying tribute or is something else going on here? It would be nice if Imagine Dragons could comment on this.

But back to mix, this one took about 3 hours to create. Since AR’s track doesn’t have an official instrumental version, I had to chop it up from the original track, which nicely has a lot of lyric-free segments.

Regarding the tempo, in a lot of my mixes I tend to meet the tracks BPM in the middle. But for this case, the acapella lyrics sound super silly when sped up from 100 to 108. It feels like Daniel is rushing through it too hard, making it sound really unnatural. So I settled for 103 BPM. This drastically slows down Arrested Development’s track, like it’s screwed (southern style). Thankfully it sounds just as good!

I especially enjoy the chorus when the piano track kicks in. The mix goes from very ominous to overly playful. While it sometimes makes me think this could be something that “There I Ruined It” would make, I honestly welcome the snazzy vibes of this mix. Lastly, I added about a 5% hall reverb to the instrumental track.

In order to make this mash, I had to use the following software tools:

1. Windows Media Player to rip the track from the CD, probably about 20 years ago.
2. My HP laptop running Windows 11.
3. Nero Downloader Ultimate to convert the acapella track from YouTube to MP3.
4. Magix ACID 11 to arrange, Beatmap and mix all the audio files.

Fun Fact: Arrested Development is still very active in the music scene! Find them doing shows on tour or producing new tracks! You can follow them on Instagram and other social media platforms.