NEWS
OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder:'Rick Rubin, all hail. He's Obi-Wan Kenobi and I have a lightsaber'
28 March 2022
OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder joins Deep Hidden Meaning Radio with Nile Rodgers and tells the stories behind some of his biggest hits. He reveals the secrets to writing hits for his own band OneRepublic and other massive acts like Beyoncé and Adele.
Ryan Tedder On OneRepublic's “Apologize” & Being Discovered By Timbaland...
What's funny is that remix was never supposed to be the single. I had written the song by myself, up in Colorado while I was visiting my dad for his 50th birthday. Timbaland tracks me down nine months after the TV show. Apparently, he'd been trying to track me down for nine months, but this is before social media, really. So he gets ahold of me through my buddy Aton who lives in New York, who's still one of my best friends, and gets ahold of me. He calls me in Nashville. We talk for three hours about music. And I find out weird things, like Timbaland's favourite artist was The Cranberries, which I never would've guessed. That Irish group, that Irish band. And anyway, he puts me on a plane to Miami, and I go to the Hit Factory and I'm with him. And I was lucky enough to be signed with Tim for a two-year period. And during those two years, he did the Missy Elliot album, the two or three biggest hits that she ever had. ‘Justified.’ He played me “Cry Me a River” the night they did it. He's like, "Ryan, get down here." And I get down, he goes in his tour bus, and he goes, "Just did this 10 minutes ago with JT." And he plays me “Cry Me a River.” And I was just like, "Oh my God.” And so, I got to be a fly on the wall for two years, cut two. I realised I don't want to be a solo artist because I'm not going to outplay John Mayer on guitar. I'm not going to outdance JT. So what the hell am I going to do? I don't want to be a white solo pop dude. So I started a band and called it Republic. I sent Tim the demo. We got signed to Columbia, dropped by Columbia. And then Tim swoops in a few months later, signs it. He goes, "Let me do a remix of ‘Apologize.’ I'm going to bury it on my album. It won't be a single." It's track 10. "It won't be a single, but I just want to get people familiar with you." Because he was crushing it with ‘Shock Value.’ And he had three number ones in a row. Well, the third number one was “Apologize.” Because by the time the album dropped, some station in Austin, Texas started spinning “Apologize” the day the album came out, and the rest is history. It was just, that was it.
Ryan Tedder On Adele's “Rumour Has It” and “Sabotaging" Rick Rubin's Production...
There was a Radiohead song that I was a massive fan of. And I just started stomping. And there's this Radiohead record. And I was playing this to [Adele]. She's like, "I don't know Radiohead." She's British, but she was not like the world's biggest Radiohead fan, but I was. And I said, well, I don't want to rip off Radiohead, but let's do a drop D. And I started stomping and she's like, "What do you hear?" And I just went, (singing). And then in one sentence, Adele just goes, literally she sings the first like verse just off stream of consciousness. (singing) Like goes through the whole thing. We knock out the chorus. And I've never said this in an interview, but I'll say it now. She had already told me and everybody, "Rick Rubin is doing this album. He's producing it. So don't worry about production. Just get a good demo, et cetera." And she didn't tell me that till the end of the day. We had already written the song, but we didn't have a middle eight. And she's like, "Would you mind, could you stay and maybe figure out a middle eight, so tomorrow when I come in, it's just done and we can just sing it?" And it's like, okay. And then she's like, "By the way, but don't work too hard, honey, darling, because Rick Rubin's doing the whole album. He's doing the whole album. He's doing the whole album, don't work too hard." And I was like, "What?" I had no idea. I was floored. I was like, but I'm a producer. I mean, God bless Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin, all hail. He's Obi-Wan Kenobi and I have a lightsaber. So this is funny. I decide to make the middle eight the bridge on “Rumour Has It” the most difficult to copy or re-duplicate bridge I've ever done. I completely delete the click track. I go completely off tempo. And if you listen to the middle eight, it is this strangest, weirdest arrangement. And the chords, I don't even know what chords I'm playing. I'm literally just going, what's the most difficult chord that... I'm finding inversions and suspensions. And I play in and program all these strings. And at the end I'm doing this weird, almost like Scott Joplin. And anyway, the shape of the melody, the shape of the chords, shape of the bridge, it would be inherently wildly difficult to replicate. I don't care who you are. It would just be extremely difficult.
So I send in the demo to her manager, Jonathan Dickins, and the label and whatever. She's extremely happy with it. The second day, we have two days, she comes in, she goes, she sits down. We turn on the U47. We're testing volume. She goes, "Ryan," she's like, "let's do a pass. Let's warm up, blah, blah, blah." Just as a safety, I hit record. And I know you've seen this before with other artists, but I hadn't seen it. She sings it one take, top down. That's it. That's the final take. There are no punches. Every note. And there is no auto tune. There is no pitch correction. Everything you hear in “Rumour Has It” was one take. And the engineer turned to me was just like, "What the?" Everyone was just losing their marbles. And I said to her, "Can I get one more take just in case?" She's like, "Sure, I do it." I go, "You're done." In five minutes. Five minutes, song was done. Song's finished. I send it off. I don't hear anything. Six months later out of nowhere, I get a call from her. And she goes, "We need this session uploaded to mix immediately. Can you get the session prepped and uploaded to mix." And I'm going into a panic trying to find the session. And I find it, and I say, "well, what happened to Rick? I thought Rick was doing the album?" She goes, "well, strangest thing, do you know the middle eight,” I was like, "yeah." She goes, "it's f*****g impossible to do. It's impossible. He did five versions of it. He did five versions of it. Five tries, it just didn't work. And so I was like, you know what? I like the demo so we're keeping it." And that was what ended up… And then I ended up getting nominated for Producer of the Year because of that song. The Grammy's, which I lose to Paul Epworth. I told Paul, I was like, "Rolling in, you're going to win. You're going to win with ‘Rolling in the Deep.’” But it's because I took that risk. I was so I was so angry that I wasn't going to get a shot at producing. I was like, I love Rick Rubin, but how can I just kind of throw a thorn underneath his car tire? So yeah. So that's the story of “Rumour Has It.”
Ryan Tedder On Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker" and How Lil Nas X Stole His Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 Right In Front Of Him...
RYAN TEDDER: [Jonas Brothers] are great. I got to connect you and Joe, down in Miami. He's one of the funnest hangs you'll ever have, man. So Jonas Brothers “Sucker,” I wrote it with two of my friends, Louis Bell and Frank Dukes. We were having a session. We were focused on another artist, another potential big placement. And I sent it in. And the head A&R actually loved the record and said, "I love this. Let me get back to you." Okay. I write back, "please." Never heard back. So it sat on my hard drive for probably about a year. It's the type of song that, it's harder to have hits now than ever, part of the reason is almost nobody takes outside songs anymore. But Joe Bros at the time, I knew they were reuniting. They hadn't announced it yet. We all were like, had to sign NDAs to like not talk about it because their fan base is freaking crazy.
NILE RODGERS: Crazy. I know.
RYAN TEDDER: So Wendy Goldstein, man, you know what? I got to hand it to A&Rs with good ears. Wendy Goldstein's one of those people. She's now the president of Republic Records. She came through, she heard the song once. She goes, "That's the first single." I go, "Really?" She goes, "You need to finish the production, but that's the first single, that's a smash." She's like, "If we time this right, I can pretty much guarantee it will be Billboard number one week of release." And I mean like literally she mapped it out.....
We send it in to get mixed. Week of release, number one everywhere. And here's where the story gets funny. Number one, Billboard Hot 100. They were telling us at Billboard that we probably had five weeks at number one. That week, Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road” comes out.
I'm not making this up. I end up booking a session with him. He opens the gate to my studio. I haven't even met this kid. He's 19. He walks through the gate. I'm 10 feet from him. I'm sitting there with the number one song in the country feeling pretty good about myself. His phone goes ding and he literally goes, "Oh, I'm number one." And I go, what? And he goes, and then he pauses, "And it's my birthday." And he had like all these like horse balloons coming in behind him from his manager. He had just turned 19. He had hit number one, knocked us out of number one. And then he stayed there for like 18, 19 weeks. But then we became friends and have continued to work since then. But like, yeah, that was story of “Sucker.” And my favourite record to have more than Billboard Hot 100’s, and you'll appreciate this because you know what I'm talking about, air plays number ones. And especially my favourite record I could ever have is a record that is like takes and breaks an air play record. So “Sucker” I think it was 2019 or 2020. Well, 2019 was the number one most play song in the world at radio. And that was my favorite... Beyond the Billboard. Billboard, you can keep your number one. I'll take the air plays number ones, all day long, all day long. That pays for the house.
Ryan Tedder On How Writing Beyoncé's “Halo” Was A "Miracle"...
“Halo,” that came pretty shortly after like the first two, OneRepublic songs, “Apologize,” “Stop And Stare,” those are our two hits off the first album. [Beyoncé] called me. I was doing radio promo, one of those Jingle Ball things, I think in DC or Philly or somewhere. And I get a call from a blocked number. Probably the first time I ever got a call from a blocked number, and it was Beyoncé and J. Brown. And she had picked a song off our debut album called ‘Come Home.’ It was track 13. It was very me doing a poor man's John Lennon type piano thing. And she said, "I love this song on your album. Will you do…” I was expecting her to say, will you write me another “Apologize”? Which is the thing you hate to hear… You know like, "Nile, will you write me another ‘I’m Coming Out.’” And you're just like, man, like anyone in the world could do that except you. It's not like I'm not going to go plagiarize myself and give you a B minus diet version of another hit. So she asked me to do a “Come Home” and I just thought that's really, I don't know how I would do that. I don't hear that, but I'll do something else. So I got really lucky and my first at bat so to speak, for Beyoncé, the first attempt was “Halo.” The first thing we wrote, all the stars. When I say it's a miracle it's because, I mean it in every sense of the word…
When I turned the keyboard on that day to write, I had three hours total. I was injured. I had torn my achilles. I wasn't supposed to work. I had three hours to kill. It was the only song I wrote in probably a three-month period. And I turn on the keyboard and the first sound that the keyboard, the default setting, for some reason that day was the opening sound of “Halo.” Which I played the chords and it sounded like angels singing. If any other sound had come on that day, and again, that wasn't the default setting on the keyboard, so I don't know why that sound popped up that day. That's what was so shocking to me. I was like, "What setting is this?" And it's the rolling phantom. I forget what the patch name is. I turn it on. I play it. And me and Evan Bogart, we go, "Oh my God. Like, that's just like, that sounds like angels." It's like, (singing).
Ryan Tedder On The Inspiration Behind "Halo"...
And I just started, I found the four chords and we go, "Dude, let's write a song called angels or angel." Like, you're my guardian. So the idea came, we knew that her and Jay-Z were together, but they hadn't gone public yet with the relationship. They might have already been married for all I know at that point, this is 2009, maybe eight or nine. And we go, you know what, let's write a song called “Angel.” And it'll be like, Beyoncé, Jay-Z's her guardian angel. That was kind of the concept. And they're like, ah, Angel's a little like, then I started thinking like Brandy and Monica, like there's so many angel songs out there. And then one of us landed on the word “halo.” Like, no, no, no, I can see your halo because that's like the more clever way of saying you're my guardian angel. And as a writer, you're always trying to find what's the least derivative, cheesy, like the least common way to say something that we all relate to. So we landed on Halo and as God as my witness, the song was done inside of the next two hours. It was just, we wrote it top down. It came together so quick. I threw the drums in real quick. And then the next day I came in and I played in the bridge. The original bridge was a piano solo, (singing). I was a classical pianist when I was a kid. She pulled a fast one on me and she went in and sang my piano solo. Like when I finally got the mix back from Spike, she was doing the (singing). Like just singing her a** off. And then they told me… “Single Ladies” is coming. And then I think it was either this next or the one after, it was either second or third single. And yeah, man, and now it's like, it's the biggest hit of her career. Which I never, ever anticipated that. I literally thought, for sure, there's no way we're beating “Single Ladies” ever.
Ryan Tedder and Nile Rodgers on "Bleeding Love,” “I’m Coming Out” and Bust-Ups With Record Labels...
I just thought it was cool. And then I had the A&R from this artist who I wrote it with, told me, "Yeah, ‘Bleeding Love’ is not going to make the album." And I was like, "Seriously." And he said, "Yeah, it's not a hit, man. It's not a hit." I told him, I said, "Man, literally I need to pick a new job. If this song isn't a hit, I need to go apply at, I got, there's a Starbucks, 200 yards from here and I'm going to walk down there and I'm going to fill out an application." And this guy was so rude about it. It's the only time in my whole career I've ever gotten in an actual fight with a, with anybody, an A&R whatever, a verbal exchange. Because then once Leona cut it six weeks later, because Clive Davis and Simon Cowell both said, this song's a smash. They announced it. The coming single ‘Bleeding Love’ for Leona Lewis. This A&R calls me back and says, "I want the record back. I want it back for our artists." And I lost my, I mean, man, I went sideways on this guy. I've never screamed at anybody on a phone, but I screamed at this guy for 10 minutes. And I was like, "You made me feel this big, man. You literally made me question my career, my talent, my ability. You like, you were so dismissive of me and of this song. And now you want it because someone else has it." And I, and anyway, I'll spare you the details. But long story short, that song came out. And that was my first number one. And he got fired a month later. That's a true story.
NILE RODGERS: Man, it's, this is awesome because I have, I used, I've told people that I've spent my entire career swimming upstream. Like after the record becomes a hit, it really just sounds like a pop song to people. But I just did an interview right before I called you. And I was telling this journalist how I wrote the song “I’m Coming Out” and the difficulty and man, and the big fight with Diana Ross and the record company and she walks out of the studio for two months.
RYAN TEDDER: Oh, god. So you got in a battle with a label.
NILE RODGERS: Oh. And, and yeah. Serious.
RYAN TEDDER: And Diana. Yeah.
NILE RODGERS: Really serious. Yeah. Because everybody kept telling her it was going to ruin her career because of the subliminal message…
RYAN TEDDER: For sure, I get the subliminal. I mean, just what a legendary record. Yeah. And to your point though, the records that become the biggest, that become ubiquitous, in my opinion, I think it's pretty, I think it's somewhat rare that everyone in the record, in the building, in the record label is aligned, like the label and the artist and the manager and the producer. If everyone thinks the song's a hit, you almost got to be like a little nervous about it. Like, well, this might not be a hit. This is one of those songs that we've all done, that I like, I'm really good at writing songs that sound like hits. I do that consistently. Right? But the difference between a song that sounds like a hit and a song that strikes the global ubiquity and the cultural zeitgeist, the stars align. It's still, to this day, people such as yourself, people such as myself, like we are all doing the same thing. Maybe we have a little higher bat, we have a higher batting average, I would say than some people. And that's really the way I put it. People are like, oh man, you, Midas touch. No, no, no. There is no such thing as a Midas touch. Like, despite. Don't let the Grammys or anything else fool you, it's that I'm taking more swings at bat and I never leave the batting cage. So I'm always swinging. It's just I have a little higher batting average. It still is lightning in a bottle. It is a miracle every time a hit happens.
Ryan Tedder and Nile Rodgers on “Counting Stars,” “Le Freak” and Not Spotting A Hit Record...
RYAN TEDDER: [“Counting Stars”] is a good one. So I got called to work to write on Beyoncé's the follow up, the self-titled album So I want to say this is 2013. I'm in the Hamptons. They rented out this incredible compound. I'm in one room by myself, Greg Kurstin and Sia are in a different room, Florence + the Machine, Hit Boy, she's got every big, brighter producer. And we'd all have dinner together every night. It was crazy. And I ended up doing a song called “XO” that I did with the Dream that was her first single with “Drunk In Love.”
I think third day of being out there, I woke up in the morning in the house we were renting, I pick up a guitar and end up with this... I start playing this kind of peddling notes and [singing]. And originally it was a completely different melody, but whatever it was, I recorded on my phone. And I was like, oh my God, this is a smash. This is a smash. She's going to freak out. She's going to freak out. She's going to love this. And I'm sitting here thinking about it. And I go, wait a minute. This is a four on the floor almost folk kind of record. This isn't Beyoncé. It's not. It's not anything, like all her vision boards, which she has everywhere, this doesn't line up with any of the vision boards, any of the pictures whatsoever.
And I'm sitting here going, wait a minute. Is this OneRepublic? I think it is. So I put save on that, and I go, I'm going to pick this back up then when I get back to Colorado. I finish the Beyoncé sessions. I'm exhausted. I go home. The next day I sit down and I produce out this song. I did five, six versions of the chorus. At some point, my wife, I think, was the person who helped me unlock what the chorus actually became. And I played this song for whoever our A&R was at the time. And he said, "Oh, it was a great song. It's not a hit." Famous last words. "It is not a hit. I don't know that it's a single, but you know what'd be cool? Make it track one on the album because it's going to give people a real taste for what the album is and it'll set the table. But it's definitely not a single." Obviously we know where this is headed.
So we end up shooting the video. Cheapest video we've ever shot in OneRepublic history. 85 grand. The budget was 85 grand. But they barely give us any money to shoot the video. It's now, I think it's the number one most viewed video of any band. We're top five in the most viewed videos of all time. We're like 3.2 billion [views]. And the song of course became a huge hit for us, which we needed. You want your third album to have a big smash. That was our biggest hit. We didn't want to be the Apologize band anymore. It put us into arenas everywhere in the world. It changed our lives. It changed my life. And now that song has a distinction of being the number one song in Interscope history. And I think as of six months ago, I asked one of the people at the label, I said, "how many have we sold of ‘Counting Stars’ now?" And it was at 42 million six months ago. So it went from not being a hit to the biggest hit that we've experienced. Again, to your point earlier, though, the songs, if everyone in the building thought it was a smash, it wouldn't have been. Now I look for it. If someone tells me song's not a hit and I think it is, I almost want the label to be like, I don't hear it. Then I'm like, I know it's a hit. You know what I mean?
NILE RODGERS: So the reason why I say to you, man, that this was a science experiment and we are all cut from the same cloth… Biggest record in the history of Atlantic is our song called “Le Freak.” It's a simple song. There's this chorus, “ah, freak out.” Do you know that when we played that record, this is totally true story, Ryan. So they're all in the conference room. They ask us, what do we believe the first single's going to be? We play this song that goes, “ah, freak out.” It's just got this guitar riff. [sings] That's it. And that's the hook.
By the time that finished, I swear to God, the conference room was completely empty. The only people sitting and the only people left were me, my partner and our attorney, because we didn't have a manager. So we're sitting there, the three of us, and nobody's in the room. They all went outside trying to figure out who was the person that was going to come in and tell us that it sucked. And they were outside trying to figure out who's going to tell them it's the worst piece of shit we've ever heard? The record really sucks. So they come in and they timidly ask, "Do you guys have anything better on the album?"And we say, "yeah, we got two or three songs that are a lot better." And so we play them that song called “I Want Your Love.” And they say, "wow, that's great. Why don't you release that first?" And we said, "well, I mean, compositionally it's better, but it's not a bigger hit." They said, "no, it's great. It's great." Then we play this other song called “Happy Man.” They go, "wow, that's fantastic. That's incredible. The bass playing's ridiculous." But we go, "but it's not as a big hit like, ‘Le freak.’” Anyway, somehow we stick to our guns. We put it out. The biggest selling single in Atlantic history.
RYAN TEDDER: So you and I hold the distinction of the biggest hits of our relative record labels?
NILE RODGERS: Yeah. Absolutely.
Ryan Tedder On Finding A The Mamas & The Papas Tribute Artist For OneRepublic's “West Coast”...
“West Coast,” started this song four or five years ago. I had just bought a house in California. We were moving back from Colorado to LA. And my first trip out, we were sitting in this house, just staring at the sun and the palm trees in the dead of January. And it was just LA's beautiful year round. And I put on The Mamas & the Papas and Beach Boys, and it's all I played for like an entire weekend. And it got me in such a state. And I was like, why hasn't anyone done anything like this since then? Like the choral pop, right, is I think the technical term that Phil Spector, Wall of Sound, choral pop records, Beach Boys, et cetera. And so I just had this chorus. I dream about the west coast and it was so instantly sticky. And we demo’d it out. And then finally revisited it about a year ago. So I went and booked out United Studios, which is where the Beach Boys and Phil Spector did a lot of that stuff. And The Mamas & the Papas. Right? In Hollywood, I used the echo chamber that was used for all the vocals. I tracked down this girl up in Santa Barbara, who I told our day to day, I need you to track down a girl that sounds like Mama Cass from Mamas & the Papas. And apparently this chick had been in like a Mamas & the Papas cover group. And people knew her as sounding identical to... So I brought her in to do all the background vocals with me on West Coast. You can hear her in the background. And I just tried to dial in that era in nostalgia, but nail it in 2022, which is where the drums come in. Right? And some of the other elements. But man, that song was such a huge project. It's the hardest song ever to sing, because there's no time to breathe, but it's one of my favourite songs absolutely we've ever done. And it's like all OneRepublic songs, it's a grower. But each day we're like locking in more and more playlists. I've gotten more text messages from songwriters, peers, producers, and other artists about that song than any song we've done in five years. So God willing, God willing, it just stays the course and does its thing in the weird world of streaming. And we love playing it. So yeah, it's a summer vibe, man. It's a summer vibe.
Ryan Tedder On OneRepublic's “Apologize” & Being Discovered By Timbaland...
What's funny is that remix was never supposed to be the single. I had written the song by myself, up in Colorado while I was visiting my dad for his 50th birthday. Timbaland tracks me down nine months after the TV show. Apparently, he'd been trying to track me down for nine months, but this is before social media, really. So he gets ahold of me through my buddy Aton who lives in New York, who's still one of my best friends, and gets ahold of me. He calls me in Nashville. We talk for three hours about music. And I find out weird things, like Timbaland's favourite artist was The Cranberries, which I never would've guessed. That Irish group, that Irish band. And anyway, he puts me on a plane to Miami, and I go to the Hit Factory and I'm with him. And I was lucky enough to be signed with Tim for a two-year period. And during those two years, he did the Missy Elliot album, the two or three biggest hits that she ever had. ‘Justified.’ He played me “Cry Me a River” the night they did it. He's like, "Ryan, get down here." And I get down, he goes in his tour bus, and he goes, "Just did this 10 minutes ago with JT." And he plays me “Cry Me a River.” And I was just like, "Oh my God.” And so, I got to be a fly on the wall for two years, cut two. I realised I don't want to be a solo artist because I'm not going to outplay John Mayer on guitar. I'm not going to outdance JT. So what the hell am I going to do? I don't want to be a white solo pop dude. So I started a band and called it Republic. I sent Tim the demo. We got signed to Columbia, dropped by Columbia. And then Tim swoops in a few months later, signs it. He goes, "Let me do a remix of ‘Apologize.’ I'm going to bury it on my album. It won't be a single." It's track 10. "It won't be a single, but I just want to get people familiar with you." Because he was crushing it with ‘Shock Value.’ And he had three number ones in a row. Well, the third number one was “Apologize.” Because by the time the album dropped, some station in Austin, Texas started spinning “Apologize” the day the album came out, and the rest is history. It was just, that was it.
Ryan Tedder On Adele's “Rumour Has It” and “Sabotaging" Rick Rubin's Production...
There was a Radiohead song that I was a massive fan of. And I just started stomping. And there's this Radiohead record. And I was playing this to [Adele]. She's like, "I don't know Radiohead." She's British, but she was not like the world's biggest Radiohead fan, but I was. And I said, well, I don't want to rip off Radiohead, but let's do a drop D. And I started stomping and she's like, "What do you hear?" And I just went, (singing). And then in one sentence, Adele just goes, literally she sings the first like verse just off stream of consciousness. (singing) Like goes through the whole thing. We knock out the chorus. And I've never said this in an interview, but I'll say it now. She had already told me and everybody, "Rick Rubin is doing this album. He's producing it. So don't worry about production. Just get a good demo, et cetera." And she didn't tell me that till the end of the day. We had already written the song, but we didn't have a middle eight. And she's like, "Would you mind, could you stay and maybe figure out a middle eight, so tomorrow when I come in, it's just done and we can just sing it?" And it's like, okay. And then she's like, "By the way, but don't work too hard, honey, darling, because Rick Rubin's doing the whole album. He's doing the whole album. He's doing the whole album, don't work too hard." And I was like, "What?" I had no idea. I was floored. I was like, but I'm a producer. I mean, God bless Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin, all hail. He's Obi-Wan Kenobi and I have a lightsaber. So this is funny. I decide to make the middle eight the bridge on “Rumour Has It” the most difficult to copy or re-duplicate bridge I've ever done. I completely delete the click track. I go completely off tempo. And if you listen to the middle eight, it is this strangest, weirdest arrangement. And the chords, I don't even know what chords I'm playing. I'm literally just going, what's the most difficult chord that... I'm finding inversions and suspensions. And I play in and program all these strings. And at the end I'm doing this weird, almost like Scott Joplin. And anyway, the shape of the melody, the shape of the chords, shape of the bridge, it would be inherently wildly difficult to replicate. I don't care who you are. It would just be extremely difficult.
So I send in the demo to her manager, Jonathan Dickins, and the label and whatever. She's extremely happy with it. The second day, we have two days, she comes in, she goes, she sits down. We turn on the U47. We're testing volume. She goes, "Ryan," she's like, "let's do a pass. Let's warm up, blah, blah, blah." Just as a safety, I hit record. And I know you've seen this before with other artists, but I hadn't seen it. She sings it one take, top down. That's it. That's the final take. There are no punches. Every note. And there is no auto tune. There is no pitch correction. Everything you hear in “Rumour Has It” was one take. And the engineer turned to me was just like, "What the?" Everyone was just losing their marbles. And I said to her, "Can I get one more take just in case?" She's like, "Sure, I do it." I go, "You're done." In five minutes. Five minutes, song was done. Song's finished. I send it off. I don't hear anything. Six months later out of nowhere, I get a call from her. And she goes, "We need this session uploaded to mix immediately. Can you get the session prepped and uploaded to mix." And I'm going into a panic trying to find the session. And I find it, and I say, "well, what happened to Rick? I thought Rick was doing the album?" She goes, "well, strangest thing, do you know the middle eight,” I was like, "yeah." She goes, "it's f*****g impossible to do. It's impossible. He did five versions of it. He did five versions of it. Five tries, it just didn't work. And so I was like, you know what? I like the demo so we're keeping it." And that was what ended up… And then I ended up getting nominated for Producer of the Year because of that song. The Grammy's, which I lose to Paul Epworth. I told Paul, I was like, "Rolling in, you're going to win. You're going to win with ‘Rolling in the Deep.’” But it's because I took that risk. I was so I was so angry that I wasn't going to get a shot at producing. I was like, I love Rick Rubin, but how can I just kind of throw a thorn underneath his car tire? So yeah. So that's the story of “Rumour Has It.”
Ryan Tedder On Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker" and How Lil Nas X Stole His Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 Right In Front Of Him...
RYAN TEDDER: [Jonas Brothers] are great. I got to connect you and Joe, down in Miami. He's one of the funnest hangs you'll ever have, man. So Jonas Brothers “Sucker,” I wrote it with two of my friends, Louis Bell and Frank Dukes. We were having a session. We were focused on another artist, another potential big placement. And I sent it in. And the head A&R actually loved the record and said, "I love this. Let me get back to you." Okay. I write back, "please." Never heard back. So it sat on my hard drive for probably about a year. It's the type of song that, it's harder to have hits now than ever, part of the reason is almost nobody takes outside songs anymore. But Joe Bros at the time, I knew they were reuniting. They hadn't announced it yet. We all were like, had to sign NDAs to like not talk about it because their fan base is freaking crazy.
NILE RODGERS: Crazy. I know.
RYAN TEDDER: So Wendy Goldstein, man, you know what? I got to hand it to A&Rs with good ears. Wendy Goldstein's one of those people. She's now the president of Republic Records. She came through, she heard the song once. She goes, "That's the first single." I go, "Really?" She goes, "You need to finish the production, but that's the first single, that's a smash." She's like, "If we time this right, I can pretty much guarantee it will be Billboard number one week of release." And I mean like literally she mapped it out.....
We send it in to get mixed. Week of release, number one everywhere. And here's where the story gets funny. Number one, Billboard Hot 100. They were telling us at Billboard that we probably had five weeks at number one. That week, Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road” comes out.
I'm not making this up. I end up booking a session with him. He opens the gate to my studio. I haven't even met this kid. He's 19. He walks through the gate. I'm 10 feet from him. I'm sitting there with the number one song in the country feeling pretty good about myself. His phone goes ding and he literally goes, "Oh, I'm number one." And I go, what? And he goes, and then he pauses, "And it's my birthday." And he had like all these like horse balloons coming in behind him from his manager. He had just turned 19. He had hit number one, knocked us out of number one. And then he stayed there for like 18, 19 weeks. But then we became friends and have continued to work since then. But like, yeah, that was story of “Sucker.” And my favourite record to have more than Billboard Hot 100’s, and you'll appreciate this because you know what I'm talking about, air plays number ones. And especially my favourite record I could ever have is a record that is like takes and breaks an air play record. So “Sucker” I think it was 2019 or 2020. Well, 2019 was the number one most play song in the world at radio. And that was my favorite... Beyond the Billboard. Billboard, you can keep your number one. I'll take the air plays number ones, all day long, all day long. That pays for the house.
Ryan Tedder On How Writing Beyoncé's “Halo” Was A "Miracle"...
“Halo,” that came pretty shortly after like the first two, OneRepublic songs, “Apologize,” “Stop And Stare,” those are our two hits off the first album. [Beyoncé] called me. I was doing radio promo, one of those Jingle Ball things, I think in DC or Philly or somewhere. And I get a call from a blocked number. Probably the first time I ever got a call from a blocked number, and it was Beyoncé and J. Brown. And she had picked a song off our debut album called ‘Come Home.’ It was track 13. It was very me doing a poor man's John Lennon type piano thing. And she said, "I love this song on your album. Will you do…” I was expecting her to say, will you write me another “Apologize”? Which is the thing you hate to hear… You know like, "Nile, will you write me another ‘I’m Coming Out.’” And you're just like, man, like anyone in the world could do that except you. It's not like I'm not going to go plagiarize myself and give you a B minus diet version of another hit. So she asked me to do a “Come Home” and I just thought that's really, I don't know how I would do that. I don't hear that, but I'll do something else. So I got really lucky and my first at bat so to speak, for Beyoncé, the first attempt was “Halo.” The first thing we wrote, all the stars. When I say it's a miracle it's because, I mean it in every sense of the word…
When I turned the keyboard on that day to write, I had three hours total. I was injured. I had torn my achilles. I wasn't supposed to work. I had three hours to kill. It was the only song I wrote in probably a three-month period. And I turn on the keyboard and the first sound that the keyboard, the default setting, for some reason that day was the opening sound of “Halo.” Which I played the chords and it sounded like angels singing. If any other sound had come on that day, and again, that wasn't the default setting on the keyboard, so I don't know why that sound popped up that day. That's what was so shocking to me. I was like, "What setting is this?" And it's the rolling phantom. I forget what the patch name is. I turn it on. I play it. And me and Evan Bogart, we go, "Oh my God. Like, that's just like, that sounds like angels." It's like, (singing).
Ryan Tedder On The Inspiration Behind "Halo"...
And I just started, I found the four chords and we go, "Dude, let's write a song called angels or angel." Like, you're my guardian. So the idea came, we knew that her and Jay-Z were together, but they hadn't gone public yet with the relationship. They might have already been married for all I know at that point, this is 2009, maybe eight or nine. And we go, you know what, let's write a song called “Angel.” And it'll be like, Beyoncé, Jay-Z's her guardian angel. That was kind of the concept. And they're like, ah, Angel's a little like, then I started thinking like Brandy and Monica, like there's so many angel songs out there. And then one of us landed on the word “halo.” Like, no, no, no, I can see your halo because that's like the more clever way of saying you're my guardian angel. And as a writer, you're always trying to find what's the least derivative, cheesy, like the least common way to say something that we all relate to. So we landed on Halo and as God as my witness, the song was done inside of the next two hours. It was just, we wrote it top down. It came together so quick. I threw the drums in real quick. And then the next day I came in and I played in the bridge. The original bridge was a piano solo, (singing). I was a classical pianist when I was a kid. She pulled a fast one on me and she went in and sang my piano solo. Like when I finally got the mix back from Spike, she was doing the (singing). Like just singing her a** off. And then they told me… “Single Ladies” is coming. And then I think it was either this next or the one after, it was either second or third single. And yeah, man, and now it's like, it's the biggest hit of her career. Which I never, ever anticipated that. I literally thought, for sure, there's no way we're beating “Single Ladies” ever.
Ryan Tedder and Nile Rodgers on "Bleeding Love,” “I’m Coming Out” and Bust-Ups With Record Labels...
I just thought it was cool. And then I had the A&R from this artist who I wrote it with, told me, "Yeah, ‘Bleeding Love’ is not going to make the album." And I was like, "Seriously." And he said, "Yeah, it's not a hit, man. It's not a hit." I told him, I said, "Man, literally I need to pick a new job. If this song isn't a hit, I need to go apply at, I got, there's a Starbucks, 200 yards from here and I'm going to walk down there and I'm going to fill out an application." And this guy was so rude about it. It's the only time in my whole career I've ever gotten in an actual fight with a, with anybody, an A&R whatever, a verbal exchange. Because then once Leona cut it six weeks later, because Clive Davis and Simon Cowell both said, this song's a smash. They announced it. The coming single ‘Bleeding Love’ for Leona Lewis. This A&R calls me back and says, "I want the record back. I want it back for our artists." And I lost my, I mean, man, I went sideways on this guy. I've never screamed at anybody on a phone, but I screamed at this guy for 10 minutes. And I was like, "You made me feel this big, man. You literally made me question my career, my talent, my ability. You like, you were so dismissive of me and of this song. And now you want it because someone else has it." And I, and anyway, I'll spare you the details. But long story short, that song came out. And that was my first number one. And he got fired a month later. That's a true story.
NILE RODGERS: Man, it's, this is awesome because I have, I used, I've told people that I've spent my entire career swimming upstream. Like after the record becomes a hit, it really just sounds like a pop song to people. But I just did an interview right before I called you. And I was telling this journalist how I wrote the song “I’m Coming Out” and the difficulty and man, and the big fight with Diana Ross and the record company and she walks out of the studio for two months.
RYAN TEDDER: Oh, god. So you got in a battle with a label.
NILE RODGERS: Oh. And, and yeah. Serious.
RYAN TEDDER: And Diana. Yeah.
NILE RODGERS: Really serious. Yeah. Because everybody kept telling her it was going to ruin her career because of the subliminal message…
RYAN TEDDER: For sure, I get the subliminal. I mean, just what a legendary record. Yeah. And to your point though, the records that become the biggest, that become ubiquitous, in my opinion, I think it's pretty, I think it's somewhat rare that everyone in the record, in the building, in the record label is aligned, like the label and the artist and the manager and the producer. If everyone thinks the song's a hit, you almost got to be like a little nervous about it. Like, well, this might not be a hit. This is one of those songs that we've all done, that I like, I'm really good at writing songs that sound like hits. I do that consistently. Right? But the difference between a song that sounds like a hit and a song that strikes the global ubiquity and the cultural zeitgeist, the stars align. It's still, to this day, people such as yourself, people such as myself, like we are all doing the same thing. Maybe we have a little higher bat, we have a higher batting average, I would say than some people. And that's really the way I put it. People are like, oh man, you, Midas touch. No, no, no. There is no such thing as a Midas touch. Like, despite. Don't let the Grammys or anything else fool you, it's that I'm taking more swings at bat and I never leave the batting cage. So I'm always swinging. It's just I have a little higher batting average. It still is lightning in a bottle. It is a miracle every time a hit happens.
Ryan Tedder and Nile Rodgers on “Counting Stars,” “Le Freak” and Not Spotting A Hit Record...
RYAN TEDDER: [“Counting Stars”] is a good one. So I got called to work to write on Beyoncé's the follow up, the self-titled album So I want to say this is 2013. I'm in the Hamptons. They rented out this incredible compound. I'm in one room by myself, Greg Kurstin and Sia are in a different room, Florence + the Machine, Hit Boy, she's got every big, brighter producer. And we'd all have dinner together every night. It was crazy. And I ended up doing a song called “XO” that I did with the Dream that was her first single with “Drunk In Love.”
I think third day of being out there, I woke up in the morning in the house we were renting, I pick up a guitar and end up with this... I start playing this kind of peddling notes and [singing]. And originally it was a completely different melody, but whatever it was, I recorded on my phone. And I was like, oh my God, this is a smash. This is a smash. She's going to freak out. She's going to freak out. She's going to love this. And I'm sitting here thinking about it. And I go, wait a minute. This is a four on the floor almost folk kind of record. This isn't Beyoncé. It's not. It's not anything, like all her vision boards, which she has everywhere, this doesn't line up with any of the vision boards, any of the pictures whatsoever.
And I'm sitting here going, wait a minute. Is this OneRepublic? I think it is. So I put save on that, and I go, I'm going to pick this back up then when I get back to Colorado. I finish the Beyoncé sessions. I'm exhausted. I go home. The next day I sit down and I produce out this song. I did five, six versions of the chorus. At some point, my wife, I think, was the person who helped me unlock what the chorus actually became. And I played this song for whoever our A&R was at the time. And he said, "Oh, it was a great song. It's not a hit." Famous last words. "It is not a hit. I don't know that it's a single, but you know what'd be cool? Make it track one on the album because it's going to give people a real taste for what the album is and it'll set the table. But it's definitely not a single." Obviously we know where this is headed.
So we end up shooting the video. Cheapest video we've ever shot in OneRepublic history. 85 grand. The budget was 85 grand. But they barely give us any money to shoot the video. It's now, I think it's the number one most viewed video of any band. We're top five in the most viewed videos of all time. We're like 3.2 billion [views]. And the song of course became a huge hit for us, which we needed. You want your third album to have a big smash. That was our biggest hit. We didn't want to be the Apologize band anymore. It put us into arenas everywhere in the world. It changed our lives. It changed my life. And now that song has a distinction of being the number one song in Interscope history. And I think as of six months ago, I asked one of the people at the label, I said, "how many have we sold of ‘Counting Stars’ now?" And it was at 42 million six months ago. So it went from not being a hit to the biggest hit that we've experienced. Again, to your point earlier, though, the songs, if everyone in the building thought it was a smash, it wouldn't have been. Now I look for it. If someone tells me song's not a hit and I think it is, I almost want the label to be like, I don't hear it. Then I'm like, I know it's a hit. You know what I mean?
NILE RODGERS: So the reason why I say to you, man, that this was a science experiment and we are all cut from the same cloth… Biggest record in the history of Atlantic is our song called “Le Freak.” It's a simple song. There's this chorus, “ah, freak out.” Do you know that when we played that record, this is totally true story, Ryan. So they're all in the conference room. They ask us, what do we believe the first single's going to be? We play this song that goes, “ah, freak out.” It's just got this guitar riff. [sings] That's it. And that's the hook.
By the time that finished, I swear to God, the conference room was completely empty. The only people sitting and the only people left were me, my partner and our attorney, because we didn't have a manager. So we're sitting there, the three of us, and nobody's in the room. They all went outside trying to figure out who was the person that was going to come in and tell us that it sucked. And they were outside trying to figure out who's going to tell them it's the worst piece of shit we've ever heard? The record really sucks. So they come in and they timidly ask, "Do you guys have anything better on the album?"And we say, "yeah, we got two or three songs that are a lot better." And so we play them that song called “I Want Your Love.” And they say, "wow, that's great. Why don't you release that first?" And we said, "well, I mean, compositionally it's better, but it's not a bigger hit." They said, "no, it's great. It's great." Then we play this other song called “Happy Man.” They go, "wow, that's fantastic. That's incredible. The bass playing's ridiculous." But we go, "but it's not as a big hit like, ‘Le freak.’” Anyway, somehow we stick to our guns. We put it out. The biggest selling single in Atlantic history.
RYAN TEDDER: So you and I hold the distinction of the biggest hits of our relative record labels?
NILE RODGERS: Yeah. Absolutely.
Ryan Tedder On Finding A The Mamas & The Papas Tribute Artist For OneRepublic's “West Coast”...
“West Coast,” started this song four or five years ago. I had just bought a house in California. We were moving back from Colorado to LA. And my first trip out, we were sitting in this house, just staring at the sun and the palm trees in the dead of January. And it was just LA's beautiful year round. And I put on The Mamas & the Papas and Beach Boys, and it's all I played for like an entire weekend. And it got me in such a state. And I was like, why hasn't anyone done anything like this since then? Like the choral pop, right, is I think the technical term that Phil Spector, Wall of Sound, choral pop records, Beach Boys, et cetera. And so I just had this chorus. I dream about the west coast and it was so instantly sticky. And we demo’d it out. And then finally revisited it about a year ago. So I went and booked out United Studios, which is where the Beach Boys and Phil Spector did a lot of that stuff. And The Mamas & the Papas. Right? In Hollywood, I used the echo chamber that was used for all the vocals. I tracked down this girl up in Santa Barbara, who I told our day to day, I need you to track down a girl that sounds like Mama Cass from Mamas & the Papas. And apparently this chick had been in like a Mamas & the Papas cover group. And people knew her as sounding identical to... So I brought her in to do all the background vocals with me on West Coast. You can hear her in the background. And I just tried to dial in that era in nostalgia, but nail it in 2022, which is where the drums come in. Right? And some of the other elements. But man, that song was such a huge project. It's the hardest song ever to sing, because there's no time to breathe, but it's one of my favourite songs absolutely we've ever done. And it's like all OneRepublic songs, it's a grower. But each day we're like locking in more and more playlists. I've gotten more text messages from songwriters, peers, producers, and other artists about that song than any song we've done in five years. So God willing, God willing, it just stays the course and does its thing in the weird world of streaming. And we love playing it. So yeah, it's a summer vibe, man. It's a summer vibe.
