Falling In Reverse premiered the video for “I’m Not A Vampire” on October 24, 2011, turning a song about addiction into a send-up of celebrity rehab television. The track had already appeared on their debut album, The Drug in Me Is You, released through Epitaph that July. Its video gave the song a setting where confession and absurdity could share the screen.
The fictional Reality Rehab clinic supplied the framework. With Radke checking himself in, the clip borrowed the treatment-center setup of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and pushed it into parody. The title’s monster imagery became part of a very human story about losing control. That tension also ran through the song: its lyrics describe the physical misery of addiction, while the performance makes room for rapid-fire jokes and an oversized chorus.
The subject came from Radke’s own experiences. “I wrote the original song, while sitting inside a maximum security prison, about drug addiction,” he later explained in a statement reported by Blabbermouth. In a January 2012 interview with the Dallas Observer, he described the debut album as autobiographical, with songs written during his incarceration addressing his past, present and future. The album’s title was personal, too. Radke told Loudwire that The Drug in Me Is You represented a conversation with himself, recognizing how much damage he could do to his own life.
Getting those songs recorded had required its own adjustment. Radke told Loudwire’s Anne Erickson in August 2011 that the album took two and a half months to record while he readjusted to life outside prison. Even sustained conversation and working with other people in the studio took practice. Producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette was a familiar collaborator: he had also produced Escape the Fate’s Dying Is Your Latest Fashion, which featured Radke on vocals. Radke told the Dallas Observer that their established friendship and working chemistry informed the choice to work together again.
Falling In Reverse also gave him room to pursue a musical idea he’d previously put aside. In the Loudwire interview, Radke said he had wanted synthesizers and keyboards in Escape the Fate, but his bandmates had opposed that direction. On the new album, he could follow it through. “I’m Not A Vampire” made that combination easy to hear, placing synthesizers alongside heavy guitar parts and a prominent solo. Loudwire reviewer Liz Ramanand singled out that mix and the song’s brisk, humorous vocal delivery when covering its release.
The response arrived quickly. The Dallas Observer reported that the video received a million YouTube views in three days. Asked about that reception, Radke recalled YouTube featuring the clip and expressed his amazement at the attention the band’s videos were getting. A track already available on the album had found a substantial audience through its video.
Radke returned to it on February 12, 2021, with “I’m Not A Vampire (Revamped).” The new recording rebuilt the song as a piano-led ballad with orchestral backing. In its release statement, he explained that he believed the composition could offer more than its original arrangement and wanted listeners to hear another side of it. The same song that had accompanied Reality Rehab’s comedy now supported a much more dramatic performance.
