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View all search resultsRyan Tedder: Music-Making Machine
Ryan tedder took his band onerepublic to the top of the chartswith the Song âapologizeâ, but heâs fiercely unapologetic about how he liveshis life
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Ryan tedder took his band onerepublic to the top of the charts with the Song 'apologize', but he's fiercely unapologetic about how he lives his life.
Ryan Tedder is caught up in the whirlwind life of a world-class musician and can rattle off the names of recently visited cities ' Sydney, Auckland, Las Vegas, Berlin, Denver, Singapore ' like they are friends.
And then there is Jakarta, a city whose busy streets and aromatic food Tedder loves. 'You guys are gutsy,' he said of Jakartans. 'Braving Jakarta's busy streets on a scooter is no easy feat.'
Tedder is on a world tour with his band to promote their third album Native. For the uninitiated, Tedder is OneRepublic front man, celebrated producer and awardwinning songwriter.
Having written most of the band's songs himself, Tedder is the creative force behind OneRepublic. But he is also well known as the songwriter and producer responsible for such ballads as Beyoncé's 'Halo', Leona Lewis' 'Bleeding Love', Kelly Clarkson's 'Already Gone' and Maroon 5's 'Love Somebody'. The crowning jewel in his music career was a Grammy win as a producer of Adele's second album 21.
We met backstage, moments before he rocked the Guinness Arthur's Day celebration at JIExpo Kemayoran in October. He was dressed in leather and, appropriately enough, given the event's sponsor, had a glass of creamy stout in hand.
'I get a lot of ideas in the airplane,' he said. 'My schedule doesn't always allow me to sit down in a studio and write music. Native was recorded all over the world.'
For Tedder, writing songs comes easy: 'I don't have a predetermined pattern of ideas and I don't care where the ideas come from.' Yet while writing for others is a pleasure, he admitted it's always more fun to pen a hit for his own band ' although the pressure is greater: 'The stakes are higher. There is more to prove.'
Breaking the Mold
Native was released in March and has since been slaying charts all over the world. It is now dominating the charts in 23 countries, and has secured the coveted top spot in Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. But even with all this success, Tedder is secondguessing himself ' and it's when things are so good that he worries even more.
'Frankly speaking, it's hard to define your best work,' he said. 'But I do think this is the album most people connect with.' Native doesn't sound typically Tedderish, taking a step away from the American ballad template. In his own words, this album sounds 'universal'.
'Well, I don't consider OneRepublic to be a hyper-American-sounding band. But I do intend to show a different musical character in this record. I want it to sound like something everybody can relate to,' he said. 'And the word 'native' implies something familiar and local. We aim to be familiar and local to every country in the world. We want to be local to everybody.'
This deliberate attempt at a universal sound perhaps explains the abstract nature of the single 'Counting Stars', with its raw and poetic lyrics open to multiple interpretations.
Musically speaking, 'Counting Stars' is the album's biggest departure from OneRepublic's previous efforts. Catchy and upbeat, the song has a touch of gospel and a dash of indie folk. It is an eclectic combination of acoustic guitars, shouted harmonies and soaring pop melodies.
In a recent episode of The Voice US, Tedder, vocal adviser for Adam Levine's team, spilled the beans on 'Counting Stars', telling the two contestants who were going to perform the song that he 'just wanted to be stop thinking about money and be able to spend my nights counting stars instead'.
'There's a line that goes 'everything that kills me makes me feel alive' in this song, and we wanted to make a visual interpretation of that verse,' Tedder says of the video to the song. 'British director James Lees decided to put in multiple scenes that are both dangerous and stimulating ' crawling alligator, Christian revival service, light bulbs hanging in wet basement.'
For those who find the juxtaposition disturbing, be warned that this is the intended response. Drop any moral judgments, and it's clear that video is moving and poetic ' just like the music itself. Or at least that's what the band's fans seem to think; 'Counting Stars' is OneRepublic's biggest hit since the massive success of 2008's 'Apologize'.
Tedder says evolution and reinvention are necessary for artists. He's not about to churn out 'Apologize' No. 2 ' and 'Counting Stars' proves there's no need for that.
Humble Beginnings
Tedder, who came from a family of Christian missionaries and pastors, had a day job as a shop assistant at Pottery Barn when he began his songwriting career, producing demo numbers for record labels for US$300 a pop. In 2000, he took the leap of moving to LA, and several established artists picked up his songs. But not fully satisfied ' 'I wanted to sing too,' he said ' he called up his childhood friend Zach Filkins, then an underwear model in Chicago.
Together with Eddie Fisher (drums), Brent Kutzle (bass and cello) and Drew Brown (guitar), Tedder and Filkins formed OneRepublic in 2002. The boys locked themselves in the studio, emerging two and a half years later with their first album, Dreaming Out Loud.
But just two months before the album's scheduled release, their label, Columbia Records, dropped them. The band turned to MySpace, the social media site then popular among aspiring music artists wanting to showcase their work.
Tedder's distinctive voice caught the attention of Timbaland, music producer extraordinaire.
Timbaland signed the band under his label and added his unmistakably sharp and twitchy beats to 'Apologize', the band's debut single, written by Tedder. The single found its way to the top of the music charts in more than 30 countries, including a spot at the US Top 40 Radio Airplay Record with a record-breaking 10,331 spins in one week.
Leona Lewis, winner of the UK's X Factor, set a new record a few weeks later with 'Bleeding Love', which Tedder cowrote and produced.
Five years, two more albums and a mountain of top 10 hits later, Tedder remains unchanged in his pragmatic view on success. And he is not going to apologize about that.
' Photos AP
