Bastille’s Dan Smith on teenage body dysmorphia struggles: “We carry this through the rest of our life”

Bastille frontman Dan Smith has opened up on how his own experiences of imposter syndrome and dysmorphia.

The London band are gearing up to release new album ‘Give Me The Future’ in February, which looks at a technologically advanced yet dystopian world of tomorrow.

But beneath the album’s futuristic facade, Smith explained, lie his own personal issues.

Speaking to Rolling Stone UK for the band’s cover shoot, he explained how he experienced body confidence and weight issues as a teenager.”

“I think I was a pretty shy teenager, and I was a pretty heavy kid, too,” Smith said, referring to his weight when he was younger.

“When I was in the summer of my third year of university, I ended up unintentionally losing a load of weight. I think I went from about 17 stone to 11 stone over a really short period of time, which was a pretty massive physical transformation. I’d always been a large kid and then a larger young adult, so that was stitched into my identity and how I saw myself. In a weird way, it’s still how I see myself, because those were my formative years. So even after losing a lot of weight, I’ve always been self-conscious and awkward around how I look.”

Smith went on to explain how his life has been shaped by experiences of body dysmorphia. 

“I’ve not ever articulated this publicly and I think I’ve just carried that kind of self-consciousness with me. I guess I probably have a level of body dysmorphia,” he said.  

“It’s interesting chatting to other people who lost a load of weight for whatever reason. In the same way that we carry loads of stuff around from our teenage years or our early adult life through the rest of our life, I guess you carry this, too.”

“It’s interesting chatting to other people who lost a load of weight for whatever reason. In the same way that we carry loads of stuff around from our teenage years or our early adult life through the rest of our life, I guess you carry this, too.”

He added: “Stupidly, I didn’t get any help for a really long time. I always just saw it as ‘nerves’ and I think I was quite quick to dismiss it as ‘Well, everyone gets nervous and it’s strange to get up in front of people [on stage].’ Over the past eight to ten years, I definitely didn’t take good care of myself in that regard. I’ve started to address it much more in the past few years and it’s been helpful to label and normalise it.”

Now, however, he has been helped by shifting attitudes within the music industry.

“There’s been this massive shift generally in how people talk about their lived experience in a much more open way. It feels like there is so much more openness now around mental health and struggles and hopefully a bigger understanding and empathy for the huge range of things that other people have to go through. Ultimately, despite how together a lot of people look, everyone’s going through shit in their heads. Regardless of what you do and what your life is, that’s just the reality.”

In the same interview, Smith opened up on his experiences of “pandemic anxiety” and how the desire to escape reality shaped the band’s upcoming fourth album.