“I Felt Like a Total Fake”: Dan Reynolds Reveals the Hidden Anxiety Behind Imagine Dragons’ Biggest Hit

Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds is known for his thunderous voice, electrifying performances, and anthems of resilience. But behind the energy and optimism of one of the band’s most celebrated songs, “Believer,” was a period of deep emotional conflict. Reynolds has now revealed that for nearly a year, he battled a “crushing burden of anxiety” every time he stepped on stage to perform the song that made Imagine Dragons a global phenomenon.

🎵 The Weight Behind the Anthem

Released in February 2017, “Believer” was an instant hit — an explosive anthem of triumph through pain. Built around Reynolds’ powerful vocals and the band’s signature percussion-driven sound, the song reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the few rock singles to surpass one billion streams on Spotify, joining the ranks of “Radioactive,” “Demons,” and “Thunder.”

But as the song climbed the charts and dominated commercials, movie trailers, and sports events, Reynolds’ inner world was in turmoil. He has been open about his struggles with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that causes chronic pain, as well as episodes of depression and anxiety. The irony of singing about empowerment and endurance while privately feeling exhausted and overwhelmed weighed heavily on him.

“I felt like a total fake,” Reynolds confessed in a candid interview. “Every night I was singing about strength and transformation, and I didn’t feel strong at all. I felt like I was falling apart.”

💔 The Year of Crushing Anxiety

For approximately 12 months following the release of “Believer,” Reynolds performed the song under a cloud of anxiety. What began as a cathartic expression of personal struggle — transforming pain into purpose — became, for him, a nightly reminder of his own fragility.

“I wrote the song to celebrate the idea that pain can shape us into who we are,” he explained. “But once it exploded, once it was everywhere, I started feeling disconnected from it. I wasn’t believing the message anymore — and that scared me.”

The contradiction between public image and private emotion is a challenge familiar to many artists. For Reynolds, the pressure of representing positivity while coping with anxiety created a sense of inauthenticity that took time to heal.

🎤 When Success Becomes a Test

Despite the strain, Reynolds continued performing “Believer” — not just out of obligation, but out of commitment to his fans. “We’ve always said our job is to give people the songs they love, no matter how we feel that day,” he said.

He has spoken similarly about “Radioactive,” the band’s 2012 breakthrough single, which he admits is his “least favorite” to perform — not for emotional reasons, but simply because of its vocal difficulty. “It’s so high, and it’s always at the end of the set when I’m tired,” he joked.

Still, Reynolds sees both songs as essential to the band’s identity — reminders that even an artist’s most personal work takes on a life of its own once it belongs to the world.

🌈 Reconciling the Artist and the Man

Today, Reynolds looks back on the “Believer” era as a paradox — the year of his greatest professional success and deepest internal struggle. Through therapy, time, and the support of his bandmates and family, he learned to reconcile the public anthem with his private reality.

“The hardest part of being in this band,” he reflected, “is realizing that people see you as this symbol of strength. But what’s kept me going is honesty — learning to admit when I’m not okay.”

✨ The Truth Beneath the Noise

For millions of fans, “Believer” remains an anthem of resilience, a song that turns pain into purpose. For Dan Reynolds, it represents something more complex — a year-long journey through anxiety, authenticity, and the uneasy intersection between art and identity.

In confronting his own feelings of self-doubt, Reynolds found something arguably more powerful than perfection: the courage to be honest about imperfection. And in doing so, he transformed the very message of “Believer” into something deeper — not just surviving pain, but learning to live truthfully through it.