OneRepublic interview

interview by Bill Palmer

If there is in fact a traditional path to music stardom, OneRepublic certainly hasn’t followed it. After years in obscurity and working to gradually build a sizable online fanbase, the band’s first big hit “Apologize” was actually a remix version found on a Timbaland album – and the songs that lead singer Ryan Tedder co-writes for other artists routinely end up competing with his own band’s songs on the charts. But as unusual as OneRepublic’s path to stardom has been, today’s release of their new album Waking Up finds the band squarely at the center of mainstream attention, with singles from the album occupying the top two spots on the iTunes rock chart today just as they were even before the album’s release. In the midst of whirlwind promotion, Ryan shared with me how things are finally coming into focus.

”I guess I didn’t know what to expect,” he says of the chart domination of the new songs. “It makes you feel better about the time that you spent making it.” Still, the fact that iTunes (and in its own way, FM radio) has placed OneRepublic into any particular genre runs against the band’s stated desire of to be the first ‘genreless’ band – a goal brought into particular focus with the making of Waking Up.



“”The goal, when this album comes out the door, was to create our own sound, that within the first five or ten seconds of a OneRepublic song they know it’s OneRepublic. “We struggled with that. We’ve had some big hits but we didn’t have a huge thumbprint, you know what I mean? We didn’t leave an indelible mark in terms of sonic identity.”


But the mere ability to steer things at all this time around stands in contrast to the improbable path that came before, which included getting dropped from a major label a few years back (on the same day that the label dumped Katy Perry and The Jonas Brothers), and falling back on MySpace promotion because “that was our only avenue for us at that point” before eventually finding their way back onto another major label – only to find out that the world was going to hear a remixed version of Apologize before they ever had a chance to hear the original.



“You can’t have your first single be a stinking remix,” Ryan laughs “We were so mad when they remixed it. Obviously it worked, but to this day I still wish that the original version had been the single to come out. I mean who knows what would have happened, but I still think it would have been a hit. So we spent the next the next year and a half explaining to the world that we weren’t Timbaland’s boy band. And I love Timbaland, I have a great relationship with him. But when you’re a band and you break with a song like Apologize, the way that that song sounded, it spooked everybody. People didn’t know what we were.”



While some songs on Waking Up take tongue in cheek stabs at the band’s new found celebrity status, the ballad “Secrets” is aimed squarely at the pressure of topping previous songwriting successes, opening with the confession “my life gets kind of boring” before pleading with the audience for new ideas.



”The whole idea is the person, the artist quote-unquote, saying I don’t really trust my own flow, I don’t trust my own delivery in writing, so tell me what you want to hear. This song is basically asking the audience, what do you want me to do? It’s kind of an interesting song. The song slips back and forth between insecurity and total confidence, insecurity, total confidence, which is to me the life of the artist.”



Having co-written songs for everyone from Kelly Clarkson to Jordin Sparks to Beyonce, it’s inevitable that Ryan’s external songwriting efforts are going to end up competing with OneRepublic’s own songs, a phenomenon perfectly crystalized by the fact that two years after the radio airplay record set by “Apologize” was broken by the Leona Lewis song “Bleeding Love” (which was co-written by Ryan), Leona’s new album coincidentally comes out today – featuring two more songs co-written by Ryan and an appearance by all of OneRepublic – leaving the band literally competing with itself in the new release category today. “I hate to say it,” Ryan says of the peculiarity of the situation, “but if you’re gonna fight anybody, any other song, I’d rather it be one of mine than something else.”



Having recently turned thirty has put certain things into perspective: “I won’t tolerate passive aggressiveness anymore. I’ve turned thirty and I’ve had some measure of success, and I feel that I know who I am, so when I interact with people I don’t beat around the bush anymore. Say what you mean, mean what you say. It’s great to know what page you’re on with everybody, in your camp, in your family, friends, and not have things left unsaid. Priority wise, too. I’m thirty, hauling my ass all over the world in a tourbus, I’m barely sleeping and doing this crazy stuff, and it doesn’t feel the same as when you’re twenty-one. So when you’re thirty, I’m a little bit more results-oriented.”



That sentiment also applies to which of his songwriting efforts actually see the light of day. “At this stage in the game I’m very cautious over what gets out that has my name attached to it. What I do now is I can tell when I’m about halfway through a song whether it’s going to be great or not. And if it’s not, I’ll never finish it. I have tons of half-finished songs. Life’s too short to put out anything that’s not great.”

Waking Up is available now in iTunes. Learn more about OneRepublic at OneRepublic.net.