Ryan Tedder Discusses New U2 Album

Original Story (2019-09-24)

Special thanks to U2360Gradi.it for bringing this information to our attention.
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Ryan Tedder, lead singer of OneRepublic, is featured in Rockol in a new interview today. As part of that interview he mentions his past work with U2, as well as plans to work on U2’s upcoming album. We’ve translated the below, for the original in Italian please see the link to Rockol.

“Working with a band like U2, which has established internal dynamics, is quite difficult admits Tedder, who collaborated on the production of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In these two cases, Ryan received credit as a producer but does not appear as an author, although he tells us that he and Brent Kutzle, another member of OneRepublic, have written a part of “Summer of Love” in Venice, Italy. “Bono and The Edge are like conductors. They listen to the demos and assemble the songs by taking the melody from one demo, the chords from another, the strings from a third demo. With them a song is never finished. You spend three months working on a piece, you leave and everyone seems happy with the result. Bono and the others go to Eze, in France, and they spend three weeks and they call you: ‘Ryan, Ryan, we’re thinking of speeding up the song, and maybe putting something punk on it like a new bass line. Ah yes, another thing, I completely rewrote the lyrics.’ And this thing happens with all of the songs! U2 are the best group on the planet but with them its not uncommon to produce 70 versions of a single song.”

“I spoke to them just last week. We will work together on some new pieces when I am in Los Angeles. I think it’s their intention to make a record completely different from the last two. It will be easier. You know, it’s like a pendulum. When you make a very produced album, with so many instruments in it, the next project you want it to be more sparse, and you wonder, what if the disc had the sound of four musicians playing in a room?”

The rest of the article does not mention U2. “Summer of Love” started as a OneRepublic song called “West Coast” which was developed for the band’s 2016 album Oh My My! and some of the early development of the song can be seen in videos that Tedder posted to social media. On the credits for Songs of Experience Tedder and Kutzle are listed as producers, with additional production by Jacknife Lee. Tedder and Kutzle both perform on the song as well, with Tedder being credited with backing vocals, programming and keyboards, and Kutlze being credited with programming and additional guitar.

VIDEO: One Republic “West Coast”

The comments about the new album reflect comments U2 have made about the new album as well. Adam Clayton said “We’ve certainly got lots of leftover pieces, but by the time we come to make another record, I’m sure we’ll start from scratch.” and Bono has commented “I’d like to make a balls to the wall rock album.” Both Adam and Bono’s comments suggest that the next project will be new, and probably will not revisit the album Songs of Ascent which was said to be waiting for release still. We have been told that the plans as they stand now are to finish out the tour dates currently scheduled for 2019, and then the band would start to work on the next album, which lines up with Tedder’s comments.

We may see some work sooner, however, as Tedder has teased on social media back in June that he would likely be attending some of the upcoming The Joshua Tree shows. Although Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have been announced for Australia and New Zealand, no opening act has been announced for the later Asian dates, although some shows have confirmed that there will be an opening act for these shows. (Press for the Indian show mentions one will be announced at a later date.)

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