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 |  A blog about music from my unique perspective (also a spot for some poetry I’ve written) |
A simple music themed blog for Jeff’s "The Soundtrack of Your Life"  challenge, and also to dump my thoughts about the 48 Hour Media Challenges when I don’t feel like creating a story or poem from the provided material. I may also add random poetry in here if I feel like it doesn’t qualify for a separate item.![Merit Badge in WDC Media Prompt
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| My tenth and final track choice is OneRepublic's Wild Life, released in September 2020 as part of the soundtrack for the Disney+ movie Clouds. Quite a story lies behind this song. Being released at the height of the pandemic, it basically went in one ear and out my other. I couldn't have told you, without looking it up, when exactly it came out or what show it was associated with. I was under the pressures of trying to survive a toxic, unreliable and overtaxing work environment while trying to avoid catching Covid and dealing with my finances, and my creative side had all but deteriorated. I took one look at the preliminary music video, composed of super-cringe clips of snuggling teenyboppers and other "precious moments" from the movie, and dismissed the whole song as being not worth my time. Which obviously, if you know anything about me by now, was a very unnatural thing for me to do. Months later, over the summer of 2021, as I put my scattered brain back together, I took some time to sit down and watch all the other videos associated with Wild Life. There's an official 1R music video, which shows an intricately choreographed pair of interracial lovers dancing in the wilderness. I liked that about as much as the one with the movie clips  The best video was a special performance 1R filmed of the song while under lockdown. Each member of the band, sitting at home alone, set up a camera and showed themselves in studio as they all, somehow, live, remotely and simultaneously, managed to play Wild Life together. You have to see it to appreciate the finesse required. Ryan Tedder poured his heart into singing, giving us his best melisma and flashing the peace sign at the end with his unique lopsided smile. It was a comforting display of pandemic unity. I still didn't truly appreciate the song, however, not even after making an art piece with a screenshot from the performance video. Indeed, after watching the videos once, I forgot Wild Life existed for a couple years. It wasn't until I started seriously beefing up my personal offline playlist in 2023 (first half… second half of the year was spent on WdC) that I remembered to download it. Then, finally, without the visual distractions of videos, I discovered how relaxing and beautiful the song truly is. For me, the soaring instrumental brings forth imagery of sweeping drone footage of nature amidst flocks of birds in the distance. It is at once soothing and exciting, dramatic yet peaceful, as Ryan Tedder reminds us to live life without holding back. Wild Life is the perfect track to complete my participation in "Barrel of Monkeys" hosted by Jeff  . It's a song which exemplifies everything I love about OneRepublic, with "all the feels" production, heartfelt lyrics, and clear evidence of a band that knows what it does best.Word count: 508. |
| My ninth choice is Light It Up, a deep cut from OneRepublic's 2013 album Native. Full of suspiciously psychedelic turns of phrase, rambunctiously hypnotic riffing, and Ryan Tedder playing with an exaggerated vocal, it's unique among 1R's discography. I had a lot of fun with this when I discovered it. On Genius, I argued back and forth with my pen-pal/editor, Max (@TossingDice) about how to write the bio for it. I wanted to explain the style and lyrics as being an inversion or parody of rowdy old rock music. Max was reluctant to accept what I wrote because he insisted there was no firsthand evidence of Light It Up being intended that way. I insisted on putting the idea forward anyway because I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about the song: that it's talking about getting high  We managed to agree on a bio which interpreted it the way I wanted… link here I'm pleased with how it turned out between the two of us. Though there's no "proof" of my speculation, I know Ryan's sense of humor and his tendency to add little "Easter eggs" into his work. A family friendly parody of what, AC/DC? Deff Leppard? Led Zeppelin? Don't ask me because I couldn't care less. Anyway, I don't think it's too far off to guess that this was Ryan's intention for Light It Up.You go ahead and draw your own conclusions…       Word count: 254. |
| My eighth OneRepublic track is Serotonin, a deep cut from their 2024 album Artificial Paradise. It has a uniquely funky charm, seemingly the exact type of song the album cover art was designed for, with loopy, cyclical, "drifting through cyberspace" synths and quietly confused lyrics that have a mildly surreal and psychedelic quality. The first thing I thought when I heard the opening lyrical melody and Ryan's vocal timber is: this is a Post Malone parody! Seriously, it sounds exactly like a song Ryan Tedder might have prepared for Post Malone and then decided to keep for himself. Either that or Ryan was knowingly imitating the other artist. Now, this last theory is not so farfetched as it may seem. Ryan Tedder has a sense of humor, and I've noticed he's hidden little "Easter eggs" in some of OneRepublic's songs over the years. I'll give a couple examples from their 2021 album Human. In Distance, Ryan sings "I don't wanna ever need a map to you." He is here referencing the old song he wrote for Maroon 5, Maps. And in Savior, he uses the word "bridge" at the song's bridge, a subtle pun. Ryan is also a high-level producer who has written songs for and worked with pretty much every pop artist you could name within the past fifteen years. So, if he wanted to, he could easily have made a song in the style of Post Malone just for fun. All that aside, I truly enjoy Serotonin, despite the simple, almost childish lyrics. The loopy moodiness of the theme and the music resonate with me, especially so because it reminds me of two Imagine Dragons songs which I love for similar reasons, Sirens and Peace of Mind. (Both of those are deep cuts off their 2022 "second half album" Mercury Act 2.) The first night I sat down and put Serotonin on to analyze turned out to be quite a memorable night, with the song woven into a bunch of other things that were happening. When I hopped onto WdC some time before midnight, which I don't usually do, I shared Serotonin with LinnAnn -Book writer  on Scroll and chatted eagerly about it. I think she enjoyed it too. It was fun to be able to bond with someone so different from me, on the other side of the country, across three time zones, listening to the same song simultaneously.All in all, the mood of the night was very much similar to the mood of the song I chose to listen to: peculiar and slightly surreal. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the song. A quirky bunch of summer memories to associate with it. Interestingly, Serotonin is an example of a recent songwriting habit of Ryan's, what I call "burning the bridge." Over the years, OneRepublic's songs have become shorter and shorter, until at some point I realized they're actually missing a crucial element: the bridge, particularly the lyrical bridge. The lyrical bridge is a natural turning point in a song, usually coming after two sets of verses and choruses and leading up to the final chorus and outro. It introduces a new angle on the main theme and provides intellectual and instrumental depth as well as a moment of fresh engagement. Taking a random 1R track, Love Runs Out from their 2013 album Native as an example, we see a clearly defined lyrical bridge. A random track ten years later, 2023's Runaway, entirely lacks one, having only ten seconds of instrumental transition between choruses. Ryan repeats this trend across a dozen or so different songs within the past three years, both deep cuts and singles. The absence of this natural turning point in 1R's recent songs creates a cheapening effect, making them seem too short, overly repetitive and simplistic. For that matter, the disappearance of 1R's bridges coincides with a general oversimplification of their major themes, from the charmingly moody and cryptic lyrics of the early days to basic, optimistic love songs. Even the verse structure has changed, from longer poetic lines with alternated rhyme schemes to quickly stacked sound bites aiming more for catchiness than complexity. I don't know if Ryan Tedder is consciously "dumbing down" his lyrics for OneRepublic these days to make them more trendy and TikTok-able. Maybe it's not such an unexpected thing, considering the other half of his career is built on the ongoing chart success of what he produces for others in a rapidly evolving industry. Imagine Dragons lead singer Dan Reynolds, on the other hand, still uses the lyrical bridge as a crucial element of his songwriting. The lead single off of 2024 album Loom, Eyes Closed, includes a bridge which adds a fresh concept to the seemingly boisterous song, that of seeking solitude in order to work on oneself when the world gets too stressful. Dan often uses the lyrical bridge as a way to add deeper, more personal meaning and a different perspective to what he's conveying. If he decided to leave them out, we would be missing a lot. Returning to OneRepublic and Ryan Tedder, I do remember thinking many of the bridges of his earliest songs from the 2006 and 2009 album cycles seemed to run on the same melody. I even conflated a few bridges over the years. None of this is to say the quality of Ryan's work has seriously diminished. He repeatedly assures fans that what he writes for OneRepublic is the best he has to offer; he understands we're looking for something higher quality than average pop music, not merely trendy, but also somewhat transcendental. He is a master of his craft, insomuch as he knows the formula and sticks to it. Which, in his case, isn't a bad thing at all. Word count: 1001. |
| My seventh choice is Passenger, a OneRepublic deep cut—I think perhaps a bonus track—off of their 2009 sophomore album Waking Up. As was my tendency in my early years of musical exploration, I focused more on the poeticism of lyrics than the minutiae of style; I adored the words of Passenger without being experienced enough to understand the musical genres it falls into. I told myself it sounded like "Christian contemporary music;" looking back on it now, I have no idea how I reached that conclusion. I suppose the piano sounds rather churchy. A note: Passenger is definitely the kind of song which sounds far better with high quality binaural headphones/earbuds. The different instruments are carefully sorted out from one side to the other, creating a richly three-dimensional audio experience. With that being made clear, I think I would now categorize Passenger as more of a corny, piano-based, early aughts emo type of song than anything else, similar to Keane. Indeed, if your audio system is mono or anything sub-par, you might find the song to be a noisy mess. (These days it doesn't cost anything to get better quality sound; my current pair of truly wireless earbuds is a $5 set from Dollar Tree, and good grief, I'm hearing all my music like I've never heard it before it's glorious  )Which brings me to an interesting question I've recently considered. I'll start by saying there are two kinds of vintage emo music: sappy girly narratives and angsty annoying rants. Maybe I can say there's the Jimmy Eat World "it just takes some time, little girl" and the All American Rejects "I hope he gives you hell." And then there's Fall Out Boy… don't get me started on how much I hate them  OneRepublic always steered to the former type rather than the latter.The question I asked myself is: does emo music always sound like such a noisy unmelodious mess because I've only ever heard it in mono, on radios and shop speakers and whatnot? Maybe if I heard something from Green Day or one of those artists I couldn't care less about with better quality audio, I might understand what all the fuss is. (Green Day is currently doing a coffee collaboration with 7-Eleven. Any of you ever tried Punk Bunny coffee?) Honestly, though, for me, Passenger is a song which reaches beyond genres and creates a timeless, era-less work of art. It sounds better to me now than it did when I first listened to it in the misty mountains of Asheville NC. When I hear it now, I understand it is old-fashioned. But to me it doesn't sound like anything else I've ever heard. And I love that. Word count: 471. |
| 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. |
| My fifth choice is the 2018 OneRepublic song Connection, released ostensibly as a lead-up to an album cycle but ultimately never making the cut due to Covid. Crafted in a funky, hyper-modern style, with synthesizers and trappy beats, this song is cram-packed with rapid-fire words, though it only lasts two and a half minutes. When Connection came out, the lyrics immediately clicked for me; I knew exactly what Ryan Tedder was trying to get across, in large part because I had recently read an interview of his where he explained his desire to write more socially aware songs.I sat down that same evening and wrote up what we call on Genius a "song bio," basically an article giving meaning and background and citing primary sources, which is then posted to the song's page. It was one of my longest annotations, and I was proud enough of it to pin it on top of my profile, where it sits to this day. Rather than copy pasting, I'll link to it here. The music video for Connection shows Ryan exploring a vast shopping mall, where crowds of grayscale people run around, mindlessly staring at their empty hands as though they're holding phones. A dancer stands in their midst, performing an intricate choreography, yet no one stops to bat an eyelash. This suits the song's theme perfectly. The funny thing about the music video is, I assumed the idea of portraying people fixated on their phone-less hands was original to OneRepublic. It was only a couple years later I learned about Eric Pickersgill and his photography series Removed, which features the exact same concept. Released and much discussed in the media in 2015, it became the obvious inspiration for OneRepublic's music video theme.Word count: 319. |
| OneRepublic released Start Again, the fourth track on my list, in 2018 as part of the soundtrack for Season 2 of the Netflix exclusive show 13 Reasons Why. When I first learned of the song, I was shaken to find it was connected to the show. The Christian educators I was studying under decried the series as a glorification and glamorization of suicide. And when I examined the Wikipedia plotlines, I saw how it portrayed high school as "a zoo" and decided it was highly exaggerated and an unhealthy subject. Start Again, however, despite having ominous electronic production with echos of a ticking clock, is ultimately an optimistic song; though it describes the darkness which comes from one's wrong decisions, it also expresses the desire for redemption and renewal. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Start Again is the second verse, where 1R brings in Logic to do a rap session. I don't care for rap as a genre (mostly due to content and culture—plus rappers always seem to be angry about something, but that's another story…) Logic, however, is a good guy who uses his platform to discuss serious issues of mental health and such. I remember swapping excited emails with my Genius pen-pal and editor, Max (@TossingDice, from the Netherlands) saying how much I liked the song and appreciated Logic's contribution. I must've watched all the different iterations of Start Again about a million times, because OneRepublic released two movie style videos for it: one with lyrics, and a proper music video. With each one, they drew further from the themes of the Netflix series and instead crafted a gripping storyline of nuclear annihilation and post-apocalyptic wreckage. This coincided with Ryan Tedder's exploration of more socially aware songwriting during the years between 2016 and 2021, where he dealt subtly with themes of the environment, world peace and human connection. Word count: 310. |
| OneRepublic released my third choice in 2017 as part of the soundtrack for the Al Gore environmental documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power . A deeply emotional song, with backing vocals provided by an African American choir, Truth to Power takes on the voice of Mother Earth herself, reminding us of her fragile ecosystems and mourning our disrespectful treatment with spiritual solemnity. I was quite impressed with this when I discovered it; staying in Asheville NC at the time, it seemed everywhere I looked in those beautiful, pristine mountains, I saw things which would make good art pieces with the lyrics. At the bottom is a collage of a bunch of pictures I made, inspired by the song. Words: 118.  |
| Track #2 is a bonus track off of OneRepublic's debut album, released in 2007: Dreaming Out Loud. The song has the same name as the album. This is another one of Ryan's cryptic, mysterious songs where he discusses his career hopes and dreams in language cloaked in metaphor. It struck a deep chord with me; so deep, in fact, that I have literally dreamed about hearing it a few times over the years. Once in autumn of 2017, I saw this beautiful notebook cover at a Hamrick's store in South Carolina, and it immediately meshed with the song, which I'd only just learned. It became one of my earliest digital collage artworks, where I experimented with applying text and interesting patterns to images. (When I uploaded the image here, I tried doing a Google Lens on it, expecting to be able to credit the original artist, but I couldn't find it. Thank you to whoever drew this.) I always wondered why the title song was not a single released from the album, but merely a bonus track, only included in certain markets. Last year I discovered something when Switchfoot released the 20th Anniversary edition of their album The Beautiful Letdown. To celebrate the influence the original had on downstream artists, Switchfoot invited numerous of them to come alongside and sing their favorite track with the band. Ryan Tedder chose the song Dare You to Move, waxing eloquent about how much it meant to him as a young songwriter just starting out in life. I had never heard of it, being from an era before my musical "coming of age." So I downloaded the collaboration and listened (it's the kind of song that sounds much better with high quality audio equipment.) The hook tickled my awareness… hadn't I heard that melody before? Then, yes! Syllable for syllable, beat for beat, the chorus of OneRepublic's Dreaming Out Loud follows the identical melodic path of Switchfoot's Dare You to Move. I dare you to move, dare you to move, Dare you to lift yourself up off the floor Vs I'm dreaming out loud, dreaming out loud, And all at once so familiar it seems Good grief. No wonder OneRepublic never released Dreaming Out Loud as a single! I smiled at Ryan's youthful inspiration and didn't count it any less of him to do something so quaint. If anything, it’s rather fascinating, because Dreaming Out Loud always made me think of Alice in Wonderland, where Alice tries to remember popular nursery rhymes but they come out with different words. This phenomenon really does happen when one dreams; I have experienced it myself. Word count: 442.  |
| For Jeff and his "Barrel of Monkeys" challenge, I've chosen OneRepublic because I'm a huge fan and know (and love!) every song they ever made. Lead singer Ryan Tedder is the glue holding the band together: with an optimistic, enthusiastic personality and more projects on his plate in a week than a normal person could juggle in a lifetime, he applies himself wholeheartedly to everything he does, and it shows. I have my ten songs picked out, and I've tried to go for deep cuts or tracks not associated with album cycles, to keep it interesting. I'm sure we're all familiar with OneRepublic on a surface level (2013's Counting Stars has over 3 billion views on YouTube) but there's plenty more to explore than what you might hear on the radio or at a gas station. My first choice is a demo, an unreleased version of the 2009 single All The Right Moves from 1R's sophomore album Waking Up. All The Right Moves has been a favorite 1R track of mine for as long as I've known them as a band, since 2017. With elaborate organs, the famous 1R cello, and a post-bridge that sounds like it's run through a gramophone, it carries a distinctly timeless, quirky and old-fashioned vibe. It was one of the first songs I listened to on my first pair of dollar store earbuds. The music video is fascinating, showing a story of a luxurious Victorian masquerade ball with dancing ladies and gents and a little boy picking their pockets after they turn up their noses at him. The lyrics captured my fancy; I saw Ryan's words as ominous, moody and mysterious, and I delighted in imagining vague, fleeting storylines around them. I always felt as though the lines "you'll be the Queen of Hearts, and we're the King of Spades, and we'll fight for you like we were your soldiers" were especially cryptic, jarring, even perhaps out of place. Gradually I pierced the metaphor, as I realized a major yet subtle theme of Waking Up was Ryan's concern about his band's sudden and potentially tenuous rise to fame and success. I discovered the demo version of All The Right Moves a mere handful of days ago, while browsing YouTube videos. I scrolled through a playlist of Ryan Tedder's demos from his golden years in the mid aughts; these are nearly all his personal "covers" of songs he wrote for other artists. This particular song, of course, is not one which went to anyone else, being instead made with his band OneRepublic. The main reason why this demo is special for me is in the lyrics. Rather than singing metaphorically about kings, queens and soldiers, Ryan shares his heart directly and honestly: "I don't know what it is they found, but we're going down to where everyone's getting it right… I don't have it figured like they do. You see I got my worries and I got my vice; there's nothing in my world that they're used to." These lines serve to explain, as well as add depth and realism, to the chorus. Perhaps the most vulnerable and touching moment is the bridge, where he turns to address his significant other: "I push and pull away, but I cannot seem to break someone that'll love like you…" These words didn't make it to the final version, replaced by words focusing on the dilemma of artistic uniqueness versus formulaic success. These new unreleased lyrics make perfect sense to me. It's exactly what I thought All The Right Moves was supposed to say. The demo is technically untitled, being available solely on YouTube and apparently having had a title appointed by the channel owner. Being a Genius contributor, I took it upon myself to add this track to Ryan's discography there.I'll add the music video below the demo for comparison. Word count: 644. |
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