Music Notes

No Vacancy

My sixth track is No Vacancy, a bright, spunky, tropical and summer-flavored EDM song OneRepublic released in between album cycles in 2017.

As I was starting my extremely cautious musical explorations that year and looking into OneRepublic as a decent band which seemed to hold my interest, I discovered their lead singer Ryan Tedder had recently gone through a near nervous breakdown.

To be exact, when I heard the news of Chester Bennington's death (a person I knew nothing about) I had a feeling I should Google Ryan's name and check his headlines just to see how he was doing, even though I hardly knew if I liked his band or not yet. And that's how I found Ryan had to drop all performances and promotion of OneRepublic's 2016 album Oh My My out of sheer exhaustion and take an extended break from anything related to music.

I say this because No Vacancy is OneRepublic's "comeback" song, one of their first tracks released after Ryan recovered and ventured back into doing his favorite thing again. He said his kids loved it and constantly asked him to play it for them.

Ryan threw himself enthusiastically into No Vacancy, reaching out to no less than three different artists to create foreign language remixes of the song: French, Spanish and Italian. The French version features singer Amir and garnered a special music video ▼

showcasing behind the scenes production.

When I found this song, I was completely enamored with all four versions of it. In my naivete, I thought it was the most delightful thing in the world to feature the different languages, and babbled happily about it to my editor pen-pal Max (@TossingDice) on Genius. He, being more mature and serious minded, plus living in the Netherlands where songs in multiple languages are not at all unusual, was not nearly so impressed with the admittedly cheesy EDM of No Vacancy.

One reason I appreciated the song so much is it provided a "head substitute" for two songs of a similar style which were all the rage at the time and I didn't approve of: Ed Sheeran's Shape of You and Justin Bieber's bilingual collaboration, Despacito. (What, Gboard actually spelled that made-up word I've never used before ) Anyway, as I wrestled with developing my own personal musical tastes, I found myself repulsed by those two songs yet getting them somehow stuck irritatingly in my head. No Vacancy was my answer to both of them.

After a while I put it aside, and by the time I started downloading my music onto a personal playlist in 2021, I'd almost entirely forgotten about it. It wasn't until the summer of 2023 I listened to No Vacancy again. The very first notes brought a smile to my face as I remembered how much I'd enjoyed it during that time of my life. Despite my deeper preferences and more mature understanding these days of what makes songs tick, I still like it. The bubbly theme and irrepressible, bouncy electronic dance melody create a fun and happy song which adds a bright spot to any day.

Word count: 535.