OneRepublic’s frontman Ryan Tedder wrote an open letter to his fans on Facebook explaining his disappearance. It turns out Ryan was on the "verge of a nervous breakdown."
In the letter, he addressed his exhaustion, mental and physical, and how it ultimately caused him to crack.
Tedder said, ”We've been a band now for 10 years as of January, and in that time we have gone nonstop, album, tour, album, tour etc. On Native we toured 2 1/2 years 50+ countries and 225 dates. We went straight from that into finishing 'Oh My My', our longest and most difficult to finish, and straight from that into promo for 'Wherever I Go' in April 2016. About 3-4 weeks into the promo for the 2nd single 'Kids' I hit a physical, emotional, psychological wall. 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. 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."
It made him want to quit music, quit touring, quit everything. The thought of touring sent Ryan into a sweat and made him feel like he was going to have a heart attack. It all made him lose the motivation and joy necessary to write songs.
OneRepublic's record label allowed them to pause on everything so Ryan and the band could reevaluate their game plan.Ryan said, "Fortunately we still love what we do and love you guys immensely, and love performing live. So we are going to. But we are changing the entire scope of how we release music and approach touring.”
Now, they will be releasing songs as often as they want, however they want and they won’t be releasing albums.They're aware fans might not like some of what they release, but they don't care.
OneRepublic will have their first release in two weeks.
Source: E!