Ryan Tedder Opens Up About Battle With 'Crippling' Anxiety
OneRepublic member Ryan Tedder shocked fans on April 27, 2017, when he published a Facebook post detailing his recent battle with "crippling" levels of anxiety.
"I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not sleeping, on meds, not happy, anxiety on a crippling level and it was triggered from sheer exhaustion," Tedder wrote. "I looked at a calendar, realized I had been gone 200 days of 2016 and still had 3 more weeks of being gone.. From my family, my wife, my kids, my friends, basically my life. I also realized that had been the last 10 years. At that moment I wanted to quit, and almost did."
He continued, "I called my manager and said 'pull the plug' ... cancel tv's cancel promo, cancel the single, cancel the album. At the time we had a tour planned for the US in February, straight into Europe and then the rest of the world. We were gonna be gone again, for ages. The thought of it literally sent me into a sweat and made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack. Crippling anxiety. It also made me stop writing songs. I didn't have the motivation or joy necessary to."
Tedder claims that phase of his life is over now. In fact, he quickly turned the post to more positive news, particularly that OneRepublic will be releasing new music very soon, if erratically.
"We will be dropping new music as often as humanly possible... monthly, weekly sometimes, and it will be VARIED and with collaborations and may feel bonkers at first," Tedder claimed. "News flash: I am ADD AF and always have been. It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to stick to one lane or one style or sound, I am incapable of it and so are the rest of the guys. That's part of my anxiety, 'what this album supposed to sound like?!!'"
Already, Tedder has delivered on his promise; the band's new song "No Vacancy" was posted to YouTube that same day.