Is Imael Angel a Real Person? 'Bad Times' Leads to a Reiki Master

Two numbers arrive before any name does. The official upload of 'Bad Times' on YouTube stood at 34,189,166 views when we first read it on 21 September 2026, and at 43,522,598 when we read it again on 6 October. On 21 September, Shazam's page for Imael Angel said the artist's songs had been identified 10,073,578 times. That page carried no biography.

The searches that follow are as plain as the numbers. On the same day, Google's suggestions after the name asked whether Imael Angel is AI, whether Imael Angel is a real person, whether Imael Angel is Hungarian, and what the real name is. We checked each of those against what can be read and dated: Shazam, Official Charts, YouTube, the artist's own website, Wikipedia and the comment section. This piece sets out what held up, what is only claimed, and what nobody has shown. We went back over all of it on 6 October and found that the artist's own pages answer more of the first question than we reported.

Who is Imael Angel?

The artist's own channel gives the clearest answer. The YouTube channel that posted 'Bad Times', with 178,000 subscribers on 6 October, describes its owner in the first person: someone who makes deep house meant to carry intention and spiritual energy, with new music every week. It names one website as its own, imaelangel.co.uk. That site is a Reiki practice. Its page title names Imael Angel as a deep house producer, Reiki master and teacher in the UK, and it sells one-to-one healing sessions and online courses.

The Reiki site links to an Instagram account, @imael_angel, in Instagram's musician and band category, with about 64,000 followers on 6 October. Its profile line reads deep house producer and Reiki master, and it gives the same management address as the music website. So the four are tied together: the channel names the Reiki site, the Reiki site links to the Instagram account, and the Instagram account gives the music website's management address. Where they describe anyone, they describe one person.

Other public listings add only names and dates. Imael Angel is also the name on a Shazam artist page and in the UK Official Charts database. The streaming release of 'Bad Times' lists Imael Angel Records as its label, with a release date of 30 March 2026 and a running time of 2 minutes 48 seconds (Shazam and Soundcharts).

The music website, imaelangel.com, is still a single landing page. On 6 October it advertised more than 13 million Spotify streams, 4.5 million monthly listeners, radio play on stations in France, Italy and the UK, and a number one on Beatport's Top 10, none of them dated. It also announced a live show for stages worldwide as coming soon. It has no biography, no nationality and no mention of AI. Shazam's artist page had no biography either, and Official Charts lists titles and chart runs and nothing else.

When we first published, on 21 September, we left the artist's profession out because we had not tied it to the artist's own words. The channel and the Instagram account tie it. The rest that circulates on social posts and aggregator pages, a gender and the software supposedly used, still traces to nothing the artist has published, so we still do not repeat it. Taken together, the artist's own pages present a person: a producer who also teaches Reiki. They give no other name, and they say nothing about how the songs are made.

The biggest record has more names on it. 'Movin' To The Sun', released on 22 May 2026 by Make The Girls Dance Records, credits the French producer HUGEL, Imael Angel and the American singer Ultra Naté as its three main artists. WhoSampled lists it as sampling an earlier Imael Angel track, 'I'm Moving to the Sun', and Official Charts shows that original as a one-week entry on the UK sales chart, at No. 63.

Is Imael Angel a real person, or AI?

The two halves of that question now have different answers. On the first, the artist's own pages present a person, as set out above. On the second, we found no statement from the artist or the label about how 'Bad Times' was made as of 6 October, so for that song the honest answer is still unconfirmed. The published statements on the subject concern a different song. According to Wikipedia's article on 'Movin' To The Sun', HUGEL told the radio station Capital Dance, in an interview with MistaJam dated 17 June 2026, that the song began with Imael Angel, who used AI to write it. HUGEL then rebuilt the track from scratch himself and asked Ultra Naté to sing. We could not find the interview itself, so this is Wikipedia's account of it, and we report it as a claim by HUGEL, not as a finding of ours.

HUGEL returned to the subject on 24 September. After questions about the record's origins, he posted a video walking through how it grew from that AI-made starting track into the finished production, as the dance news site EDM House Network reported the same day. That is still a collaborator describing one song. It says nothing about 'Bad Times', which carries no HUGEL credit.

Posts on social sites go further and say flatly that the artist's work is machine-made. They are assertions, not documentation, and the same posts are the main source for the personal details we left out. In the comment section the mood is different. Of the 40 most-liked comments on the official upload, read on 21 September, one mentions AI, in a sentence that begins by saying the song sounds great. It has 8 likes.

What would settle the second half is still short: a statement from the artist or the label about how the songs are made. The channel promises new music every week and names a Reiki practice's website as its own; neither says what tools make the music. Until the artist says, unconfirmed is the accurate word for 'Bad Times', including in our own reading.

Where is Imael Angel from?

Two places appear, and neither comes as a statement of nationality. Wikipedia's article on 'Movin' To The Sun' calls Imael Angel a Hungarian producer, in passing. The Reiki site that the artist's channel names as its own puts UK in its page title and uses a UK web address. The two do not contradict each other, and we found no statement from the artist about where they come from. The music website gives no country, Shazam and Official Charts do not, and the YouTube description of 'Bad Times' is still a single line calling it hypnotic deep house that you cannot stop listening to, followed by hashtags and a Spotify link. Search suggestions also ask for a real name. We found no verified one and will not guess.

What is 'Bad Times' about?

The lyric is short and mostly about being talked about. The text online runs to 30 lines, and every copy we compared on the lyrics database lrclib is identical, so it seems to come from one source. Seven of the 30 lines repeat a single claim: that other people say the singer works out of sight. The reply is self-worth. The singer says they know their own value, will not play the victim, and need to heal. A chanted stretch in the middle is more rhythm than sentence, and the title words never appear in the lyric as we read it. We summarize the lyric rather than print it. Anyone who wants the words can find them with the song on Spotify or Apple Music.

It is tempting to lay that repeated line over the artist's anonymity. Nothing in the song says it is about the artist's own life, and we mark that as our reading, not a finding.

The sound does the rest of the work. The studio release runs 2:48, while the YouTube upload, titled 'Bad Times Deep House', runs 6:41. Shazam lists the tempo as 108 beats per minute, and our own estimate from the upload agrees at 107.7. We split the upload into eight equal parts and took the level of each: after a quieter first part at 56 percent of the loudest, the other seven parts stay between 81 and 100 percent. It arrives and stays, which fits the channel's own word for it, hypnotic. One commenter with 566 likes says they went straight to YouTube for the long version and hopped and skipped for all six minutes of it.

Which version of 'Bad Times' is No. 1 on Shazam?

Shazam counts the versions separately, and the Extended Version is the one that reached No. 1 on its global chart. Its page says that version spent 8 days at No. 1 and 68 days in the Top 50 after entering on 14 July 2026, with about 2 million Shazams in total. For its 'this week' count, the page shows 365,000 Shazams for the Extended Version, 300,000 for the plain 'BAD TIMES' and 383,000 for 'Movin' To The Sun'. Three listings, one small catalogue, and roughly a million identifications in a single week.

How did 'Bad Times' spread?

It travelled through people before it travelled through press. The official video went up on 30 March 2026, and the Extended Version's Shazam Top 50 entry came more than three months later. The comments give a route. Of the 40 most-liked comments, 16 credit Instagram, a reel or a creator duo, Ben & Zara, for bringing them to the song, and those 16 carry about 86 percent of the 40 comments' combined likes. Eleven name the duo, and a Facebook video titled as a lip-sync of 'BAD TIMES' by Imael Angel matches the story. Nine of the 40 give their age, from 48 to 77, and two say they have listened to house since the 1990s. One says they first heard the song in a taxi in Dubai. It is not the usual story of a teenager finding a sound.

The bigger engine was 'Movin' To The Sun'. Shazam's page shows it entering the global Top 50 on 28 May, six days after release, then spending 62 days at No. 1 and 115 days in the Top 50, with about 6 million Shazams. In the UK it reached No. 2 on the Official Singles Chart, in its 14th week on the chart, according to Official Charts on 28 August. That is the highest position for both HUGEL and Imael Angel and a career best for Ultra Naté, whose previous peak was No. 4 with 'Free' in 1997. On the Big Top 40 chart for the week of 20 September it was No. 1 for a third week, with Shakira and Burna Boy's 'Dai Dai' at No. 3. 'Bad Times' has its own UK run. By 6 October Official Charts listed peaks of No. 4 on the singles sales chart and No. 2 on the downloads chart, and two weeks in the Top 100 of the Official Singles Chart itself, with a best of No. 75.

Critics were less united than listeners. On 3 August, The Singles Jukebox had ten writers score 'Movin' To The Sun' from 0 to 9, for an average of 5.30. One writer who gave it a 2 called it anonymous club music, and one who gave it an 8 praised its surging deep house bass.

What can we say for certain?

So who is Imael Angel? By the artist's own pages, a deep house producer who is also a Reiki master and teacher, with a practice that puts UK in its title and a channel that promises new music every week. By the charts, a name on two songs that have each reached No. 1 on Shazam's global chart and on a single that reached No. 2 in the UK. What the record still leaves out is how the music is made. HUGEL has said that AI was where 'Movin' To The Sun' began; the artist has said nothing about how 'Bad Times' was made. In September this looked like the gap we found around another singer the web cannot place, a song that millions of people identified and replayed long before anyone published who made it. Half of that gap is now filled, from the place we said it would come: the artist's own pages. The other half will be filled the same way or not at all. Until then, the numbers are the confirmed part, and they belong on the record next to the global music trends that are shaping this year's charts.