A beacon of creativity Ryan Tedder has an abundant gift that allows him to use his voice and his words to craft some of the biggest and most memorable tracks of our time. As the lead vocalist of OneRepublic, he has also penned a kaleidoscope of records for huge artists such as Adele, Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, J Lo, Justin Bieber, Lil Nas X, Shawn Mendes and many more.
The synchronicity and pure magic that OneRepublic have as a band has imprinted onto listeners on a global scale. With combined streaming figures of over a billion, the band have created masterpieces such as ‘Apologize’, ‘Counting Stars’, ‘Stop and Stare’, ‘Love Runs Out’ and many more. OneRepublic is comprised of singer/songwriter and lead vocalist Ryan Tedder, guitarists Zach Filkins and Drew Brown and Brian Willett who is on the keys. The Grammy nominated band also features bassist and cellist Brent Kutzle and drummer Eddie Fisher.
Their collection of songs produced throughout the years consequentially created a profound library of music that is continuously growing. The latest inception ‘I Ain’t Worried’ is ubiquitous by nature and it has led OneRepublic into the forefront of the music consciousness as it charts worldwide. Featuring in the motion picture Top Gun: Maverick, at present the song is igniting the airwaves and is trending on TikTok. In the height of the buzz surrounding, ‘I Ain’t Worried’, we got to speak with Ryan Tedder to discuss his latest single. We also found out what keeps him inspired and an insight into creating songs for some of the biggest names in pop music.
Soaring over 300 million streams on Spotify the astounding momentum surrounding the song is not set to slow down anytime soon. Deciphering the creation behind ‘I Ain’t Worried’, he retells the moment he got a call from his friend Randy Spendlove at Paramount Pictures. ‘He calls me on a Wednesday and he says ‘hey, I’ve got an emergency, 911. We are at the end of editing Top Gun 2, the famous beach volleyball scene, it’s a reconstitution of that scene. It’s a three and a half minute long scene and nobody can seem to nail the song, that goes in that scene. Would you jump on a Zoom with Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer tomorrow?’ I said ‘sure’, I zoomed with him, Tom tells me how critical it is, we watched the scene together and he asks me what I hear and I described basically ‘I Ain’t Worried’, I just described to him sonically. I said this is what it should feel like, kind of like an indie band, I think I said a little The Beach Boys, a little Foster The People, I was making some different references. He said ‘yeah man, this sounds exactly like what I am hearing, so get to it.’ That was a Thursday, I wrote the song the next morning, pretty quickly, the initial idea probably took me about thirty minutes. I sent him the song and he called me five minutes after I texted him, he called me saying ‘what the hell man.’ He was convinced we had already written it and we were just sitting on it and I pulled it out of a hard drive. I said ‘no man, I did it this morning’, he was like ‘what the hell, oh my god, I am calling Jerry, I am calling the editor we are going to edit it into the scene.’’
The fabric of Top Gun was seamlessly showcased in the ‘I Ain’t Worried’ music video, which reveals scenes featured in the movie. Unlike their other music video, which have been shot in foreign cities or countries, this one was filmed closer to home. Discussing the filming process of the music video he says: ‘It was probably the easiest or one of the best experiences we ever had because the location was Manhattan Beach, which is 25-30 minutes from my house and we had the beach blocked off and it was a perfect Southern California day and girls in bikinis [laughs].’
‘The whole band was pretty stoked, it was effortless. Videos can be extremely taxing and miserable and this was a very not miserable, not taxing experience.’
With over one million followers on TikTok, Ryan Tedder took to the app and reacted to a video where a user said ‘I Ain’t Worried’ wasn’t anticipated to be one of the biggest songs from the Top Gun film. Exploring the reaction surrounding the film, we asked whether he had thought the song to be as big as it was.
‘’I’ve been doing what I do long enough both within my band and as a writer that I’ve learned to have to no expectations. No matter how much I love a song that’s how thick-skinned you have to be. Especially now, more than ever, because you can’t control what is going to be a hit. Nobody cares how big you were two years ago, nobody cares how big your hit was or how many hits you had.’
‘The longer you get into your career having hit records, serves more as a reminder to all of the other songs you did that people loved. You have a new hit and people go ‘I Ain’t Worried’, oh my god that’s the band that did ‘Love Runs Out’, ‘Apologize’, ‘Stop and Stare’ and ‘Counting Stars’. It triggers people to point back to your body of work.’
He continues to explore having no expectations: ‘Unless you are a select four or five artists in the world with huge socials and huge armies of fans, for the rest of us it’s like winning a lottery ticket, no matter how good you are, so I had no expectations. I am so accustomed to failure, which sounds weird. People say ‘well you have written all these songs’, yes, but what people don’t know is that for every one of those hits I might have nine or ten songs come out that everyone else is convinced is a hit and then because they didn’t go viral on TikTok it is like a tree falling in the forest. I had three singles come out in the last two weeks with Khalid, Lukas Graham and John Legend. It doesn’t matter how good the song is, it doesn’t matter how big you are, something has to react culturally to make your song go viral for it to really be a hit.’
Ryan’s music credentials speaks for itself and he is instinctually innovative as both a singer and songwriter. As mentioned in the introduction he has written for some of the biggest musicians in the world. The person behind some of my favourite tracks, I asked what keeps him inspired. ‘What keeps me inspired is doing things that are different, every now and then a great song might trigger me, when Gotye ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ came out it triggered me, I was like oh my god that’s inspiring I’ve got to write a song that good.’
‘Shortly thereafter that song, I wanted to write a song that felt that big and I wrote Ella Henderson ‘Ghost’, it doesn’t sound like ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ but I was in Australia, in Sidney, when I wrote that record and Gotye was everywhere and ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ was everywhere. I just remember that song forcing me to reach inside and I got to come up with something that feels as big as that and ‘Ghost’ was the very first song that I wrote after that song came out. So sometimes I get inspired by another artist’s song but more often than not I just get inspired by if I am working with an artist I am coming up with an idea of something I want to hear selfishly.’
He explains: ‘A lot of songwriting is selfish, you are writing the song that you want to hear that artist sing. The artist is the vehicle and your song is the passenger, I’ve got to be inspired if I am working with whoever it is.’
Ryan speaks of his experience working on music for other artists: ‘With Lil Nas ‘That’s What I Want’, for instance, he already had all these rap records, he had ‘Industry Baby’, he had a couple of others that were more rap heavy and ‘Call Me By Your Name’ it was super dark and almost Spanish sounding. I was like ‘man let’s do a straight up Outcast inspired pop record, let’s do a feel good record’, because he didn’t have any of those at the time so sometimes what I am inspired by is what is an artist missing? What do you not have?’
‘I did ‘Rumour Has It’ with Adele, I intentionally pushed to do a tempo record on that day because she had just played me ‘Someone Like You’. In the studio she sat and played me ‘Someone Like You’ and I had already written ‘Turning Tables’ and I immediately got deflated because I was like ‘well I am not going to beat ‘Someone Like You’’, I just knew instantly the moment I heard it there’s no way in hell we are beating that song and it’s a ballad so I shifted that very moment. She was like ‘what do you want to do?’ and said ‘well we are not doing a ballad. The only shot I have of catching a hit with you is we’ve got to do a tempo record, we got to do a banger, that’s why I shifted and did ‘Rumour Has It’, I was like I want to do something that you don’t have.’
At the time of the interview, OneRepublic embarked on their US tour, which involved over 40 live dates in the US. The band are set to have roughly 5 weeks off in the interim, they will head over to Europe followed by 2023 dates in the Middle East, South Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Speaking on some of their highlights, Ryan spoke about a part of the set that stood out to him. ‘This tour we have done something different, for the first time ever, in the middle of the concert we break into an eight song medley of number 1’s I’ve written for other artists. So for the first time ever I am performing ‘Bleeding Love’ and I am performing Maroon 5, Adele, Beyonce, Lil Nas X, Thomas Rhett in some locations, some country stuff and Ellie Goulding. I am playing ‘Burn’ for the first time, I’ve never played ‘Burn’ live and I play it on piano and it is so much fun to play. So that’s probably one of my favourite moments because it is different, when you’ve toured 17 years as a touring artist you crave something different. Playing all these other songs that I have done for other people is probably my favourite moment only because it is something we have never done.’
Honouring their career to date, their tour will span worldwide as they perform to fans across countless countries. Relentlessly staying inspired as a musician and songwriter, we are not only looking forward to hearing music from OneRepublic, but also to hear music that Ryan pens for his musical peers.
