On Friday, July 19, OneRepublic fulfilled a lyrical prophecy to their early-rising crowd as frontman Ryan Tedder leaned into the mic on TODAY’s Citi Concert Series stage and sang: “Let’s make tonight the weekend/ I don’t want to wait/ I don’t want to wait/ I don’t want to wait/ Got no reason not to celebrate/ Baby, I just don’t want to wait.” As Tedder made his way down the catwalk on the TODAY plaza, a sea of fans started making waves as they hopped up and down, giving weekend energy right back to the band. The singer worked the plaza while his five bandmates — Zach Filkins, Brent Kutzle, Brian Willett, Drew Brown and Eddie Fisher — created the instrumental magic, easily recognized as their hit song “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” which they worked on with DJ David Guetta.
The bop, arguably an anthem of the summer, is part of OneRepublic’s latest album, “Artificial Paradise,” that dropped one week earlier. That morning, the band played another new song on the album titled “Sink or Swim,” and then two fan-favorites: “I Ain’t Worried,” famously featured in the 2022 film “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “Counting Stars” from their 2014 album, “Native.” OneRepublic hasn’t kept to one era, to say the least: They’ve had six studio albums, starting with their 2007 record “Dreaming Out Loud,” featuring “Apologize” with Timbaland, that put them on the map.
Other hits from the band include “Good Life,” “Rescue Me,” “Love Runs Out” and many, many more. (Or just take a gander at with over 60 million listeners per month. Casual.
) Tedder has also established himself as a prolific songwriter, lending his lyrical skills to create some of the , from Adele’s “Rumour Has It” (2011), to Beyonce’s “Halo” (2008), to Taylor Swift’s “I Know Places” (2014). When OneRepublic arrived on the TODAY stage, its six members quickly fell into formation as musicians. But when speaking to TODAY inside Studio 1A for — when artists are asked eight questions before 8 a.
m. — they became pals just hanging out. The common thread in both environments, though, was that they never broke character as a unified force — or, dare we say, as one republic.
From laughing about a stage malfunction, to weighing in on Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s success — and all the mic-grabbing in between — here is OneRepublic, uncensored: It was the first time we all had been together since Covid. It was over a year we hadn’t seen each other, but it was still very Covid-y, if you remember that. Left the trailer without a mask, walked in and everyone went into a panic.
But on the game show, I don’t remember flubbing, but it was a couple years ago. We won, we won big time. We played a show in Sochi, actually, years ago.
In Russia, yes, and we had a stage malfunction. We were starting from underneath the stage on the circular platform, and the platform was not working, it was a hydraulic stage, and half of it was tilted. So we were stuck down there, basically.
The show was for International Kids Day, which apparently happens once a year somewhere in the world, and so there were 150 countries of kids represented, like teenagers and kids, who chose us be the performer. And then we found out — can’t make this up — the stage broke, people were sliding off into (the) underground, which was nothing but cables and standing water. And the crew that was supposed to fix the stage we’re actually laughing at us.
When I'm not raging with jealousy ...
the answer I would give is not remotely surprised. I remember meeting Taylor at a radio show, the first one we played in 2007 where we were all basically opening for T-Pain, because he had “Buy U A Drink,” Taylor had “Love Story,” we had “Apologize” at the same time. I literally texted her two weeks ago, we exchanged texts on my birthday, and I said, “To go from that moment, we’re opening for T-Pain, to you basically being as big or bigger than the Beatles is the most impressive, incredible — and nothing about it surprises me.
She’s the hardest working and most talent songwriter I’ve ever been in the room with. And Beyonce, I mean, come on. Nothing about her success is surprising.
Shifting into a country genre was a shock that I think nobody saw coming and she bodied it so, I mean, hats off to them both. Oh, my gosh. Every day is a cheat meal-day for me.
Go-to meal on the road is definitely like the biggest cheeseburger I can find, and if there’s chocolate cake around, I’ll add that to it, for sure. A memorable moment would be recording an instrumental track in Singapore, and I was writing it in my hotel room because I was in a sad place, missing family, and I sent it to Brent and we added it to the album. And it’s beautiful and it feels otherworldly, like Singapore.
Some type of water source, be that a Brita or an imaginary water bottle that fills itself. Some type of charger, maybe something that could charge a phone and a computer. Air conditioning, some type of air conditioning unit.
You can't have a bus without those three things. Yes. He loves tech and he loves music and he downloaded Ableton and FruityLoops software like two years ago, and then dove head first into it, probably about nine months to a year ago, and produces beats in all his spare time now.
(He) finds tracks and records that he loves on artists that he likes and figures out how to reproduce them from the ground up, and has gotten good enough to the point where he could post stuff, probably, and pitch some beats. He's starting with like hip-hop, which is how I started, but he really wants to do it — for now. He's 13, almost 14, so we'll see where it goes, but he genuinely loves it and wants to do it.
“Interstellar” is my favorite movie. Maybe “Jurassic Park.” “The Goonies” Yeah.
For me, the most-watched movie of all time is “The Goonies.” Favorite movie of the last 20 years though is “Step Brothers.” “The Godfather Part II.
” Nicoletta Richardson is the trending editor for TODAY Digital and is based around the New York City area..
