Disturbed released “Voices” as a single on November 21, 2000. Listeners who owned their debut album, The Sickness, already knew it as the opening track. Its move into the singles campaign gave the Chicago band another opportunity to reach rock radio after “Stupify,” with a song whose disturbing subject matter concealed a deliberate sense of humor.
Singer David Draiman explained that tension in Billboard’s February 2001 coverage. His interest in serial killers had helped inspire the lyric, but he described its central struggle more broadly: recognizing an impulse that could cause harm and fighting the temptation to act on it. Addiction and difficult personal choices were among the examples he gave. Performing the song meant confronting those feelings himself, an experience he described as demanding but rewarding.
The music was intended to complicate that subject. “If you listen to the music, it’s not a very dark song,” Draiman told Billboard. He enjoyed putting unsettling words against a backing that could make someone feel energized. That mismatch was part of the song’s personality, rather than an accidental byproduct of writing a heavy track with a memorable refrain.
The weight behind that approach also involved careful studio construction. In a 2020 interview with Vintage King, producer Johnny K described building the guitar sound for The Sickness from tightly matched performances through two different amplifiers. A Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier supplied one of the tones; doubling both sounds produced four performances spread across the stereo field. His account concerned the album’s production approach, showing how much precision went into a record built around forceful riffs.
The “Voices” video placed its conflict in an ordinary workplace. An office worker listening to a Walkman imagines hostile responses to the people around him, while the band appears both in his working environment and in performance footage. He eventually leaves the office for a Disturbed show. The story gives the song’s internal argument a visible setting, with everyday frustration feeding the character’s increasingly aggressive fantasies.
Getting that material onto radio involved a more practical adjustment. Giant’s American promotional CD paired the album version with a “Restrained Edit.” AllMusic’s William Ruhlmann described the latter as a clean version that removed repeated profanity. Stations received an edited recording alongside the original, allowing the song to enter the radio campaign without replacing the version listeners knew from the album.
By February 2001, Pollstar was reporting that rock radio had moved from “Stupify” to “Voices” while Disturbed maintained a heavy touring schedule. The single’s reach extended overseas: it entered the UK Official Singles Chart at No. 52 in April 2001 and spent two weeks in the Top 100.
Disturbed revisited the song’s visual presentation in February 2025, releasing a 4K upgrade of the official “Voices” video as part of the campaign surrounding the 25th-anniversary edition of The Sickness.
