Ryan Tedder, the songwriter of chart-topping dramatic ballads for Beyoncé, Leona Lewis and Kelly Clarkson, is driving up the tempo and cranking up the guitars in a bid for rock stardom with his band OneRepublic.
Tedder has written radio hits based on piano melodies and string arrangements such as Beyoncé's Halo, Best Song winner at this year's MTV Europe Music Awards; Lewis' Bleeding Love and the Timbaland remix of OneRepublic's Apologize. He is searching for a new success formula with the release of his band's second record, Waking Up.
"I couldn't stand putting out an album of songs that sound like I could've given them to Rihanna," Denver-based Tedder said in a phone interview. "I threw away two or three huge songs that would've been hits because I didn't want songs that sound like Coldplay or Lifehouse could've done them."
Tedder, who notched Grammy Award nominations for Record of the Year with Halo and Album of the Year with Beyoncé's I Am... Sasha Fierce, has also written songs for American Idol winners Adam Lambert and Jordin Sparks as well as former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. He started working with Timbaland nine years ago, a relationship that paid off in 2007 when a remix of the ballad Apologize appeared on Timbaland's second solo studio album, Timbaland Presents Shock Value, and topped the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart.
Now Tedder hopes to expand his band's audience with more upbeat alternative/pop crossovers such as the single All the Right Moves.
"Apologize was so big, it was an anomaly," he said. "I didn't want to write Apologize Part II, so I took a different direction and switched our sound up a little bit."
Tedder struggled with the new musical approach, even buying different synthesisers to achieve a different sound.
Grand ambitions
"It's very challenging for me to not wear the producer hat and write a song like Halo," he said. "That would be a lot easier for me, but it doesn't work for us. That's not the kind of music we do and not the kind of fans that I think we have."
While he admits it would be easier to keep writing pop singles and cash the royalty cheques, his ambitions are much grander than that. He wants OneRepublic to become one of the biggest bands in the world.
"I know it's a really lofty goal, but I'm going to keep pushing and see how far I can take it," he said. "This album is critical for us to connect to a much larger fan base around the world."
To do that, OneRepublic has been touring the UK, opening for James Morrison, after a US tour in support of Rob Thomas.
In the end, Tedder's ultimate wish still revolves around a music studio. "As excited as I am to work with Beyoncé, I'd be a lot more excited if I found myself in a studio with Peter Gabriel or Paul McCartney," he said. "That's my life goal, for one day to be able to work with those guys in any capacity."
