"If I Lose Myself" is a song recorded by American pop rock bandOneRepublic for their third studio album, Native. It was released as the album's first official single on January 8, 2013. The song was written by Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco, Brent Kutzle and Zach Filkins. It was produced by Tedder and Blanco while Kutzle served as the co-producer. The song peaked at number 74 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 6 on the Media Control Charts in Germany. In early 2014, the single was re-released in the UK after the huge success of "Counting Stars".
Writing and inspiration
OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder told Billboard about the song's lyrics: "It's actually about my buried, latent fear of flying and going down in an airplane, having that moment of sheer panic, looking out the window, seeing your life pass before you and somehow finding comfort in the fact that the person next to you is experiencing the same traumatic event."
Composition
"If I Lose Myself" runs for 4:01 minutes and has a tempo of 140 beats per minute.
Live performances
On March 28, 2013, OneRepublic performed "If I Lose Myself" on American Idol with former Idol contestant and NBCSmash star Katharine McPhee. They also performed on Good Morning America, The Ellen Degeneres Show and Rachael Ray, as well as several other concerts and festivals.
Music video
In an interview with fuse.tv, Tedder said, "The original concept was borrowing from the opening scene of Garden State—the plane's going down and all the oxygen masks drop out and everyone's going crazy... We chased that for a minute but realized... It's one thing to watch that kind of video once, but you don't wanna sit there and hit repeat on watching a plane crash." The music video was released on January 24, 2013. In the video, a group of people are sent a text from Ryan Tedder, of a picture of a wolf and the numbers 11.11.11 at the bottom. The camera follows the group around the city chasing clues that are spray painted on fire hydrants and street signs around the town that will help them guide their way to a secret concert that OneRepublic is holding. The video cuts to scenes of the band performing the song in a dark, smokey room with colored lights surrounding the room with a bunch of fans dancing. There are pictures of owls and foxes being projected around the room which are allusions to the album cover for Native. At the end of the video, there is a fox being projected on Tedder's face. The video was inspired by the movies 12 Monkeys and The Matrix. The video has over 82.27 million views as of May 2018. It is one of the top ten most viewed OneRepublic's music videos.
A progressive house version of the song remixed by Swedish producer Alesso was played for the first time at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida on March 24, 2013 and was released in certain countries on March 30, notably Netherlands and Sweden, charting with a version credited to OneRepublic vs. Alesso. "If I Lose Myself" was promoted and released in the United Kingdom and Australia in February 2014. This remix was later featured on both the UK and US reissue of the group's album, Native, as well as Alesso's debut album, Forever. The remix was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. Alesso explained:
