‘I feel really good about it, and Katy, I hope you like it,’ OneRepublic frontman says of tunes for Perry’s next album.
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Akshay Bhansali
OneRepublic
Photo: MTV News
When your band has a single that refuses to drop off the charts, life is pretty good. Unless, of course, you’re OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, and you’ve got a lucrative side career going as an in-demand songwriter for some of the biggest acts in the business. Then things get complicated.
See, OR’s “All The Right Moves” — the first single from their Waking Up album — continues to hang around on the pop charts even though it was released last September and its success has forced Tedder to put his other endeavors on hold. That means he’s had to keep Katy Perry, who’s been waiting for his contributions to her new album, on hold. And she can’t hold for much longer.
“She and I have actually been trading text messages for, like, the last five months about this album, trying to lock our schedules in. And she was going to come to Denver for, like, two weeks, but because of our schedule I had to cancel on her, unfortunately,” Tedder told MTV News. “And it was, like, the last available time I had to work with her. … I have three songs that I think are dead-on, incredible songs for her that are just started, they’re ideas that I want to finish with her. So, literally, in the next three days, I travel with a microphone and studio stuff, so I’m going to be trading e-mails with her and hopefully get one of them on the album at the last minute.
“I’m literally the last guy to come onboard, and I was one of the first people she talked to [about working on the album],” he continued. “That’s what happens when you’re in a band … most of the time, the people I want to work with, we can figure something out. But her and my schedule, literally, at every possible juncture, has just conflicted.”
And to hear Tedder tell it, it would be a real shame if the songs he’s written for Perry don’t end up on her new album. After all, they’re tailor-made for what she’s going for on the disc, an over-the-top ode to the Cardigans and Ace of Base — “songs that people want to hold hands and roller-skate to,” as she put it.
“The stuff that I’m doing for Katy Perry … it connects to the first album. One song is, like, the evolution of ‘Hot N Cold,’ that kind of thing. The next step from that,” Tedder said. “The other two literally sound like something you would hear in the mid-’90s at a roller-rink skating party — like, a birthday party at a skating rink. I would describe it as guilty-pleasure music, straight up. A chorus where, guy or girl, you’re like, ‘Oh crap.’ You find yourself singing it and singing it.
“I’ve had the melodies and the choruses in these songs stuck in my head for, like, a week. So I feel really good about it, and Katy, I hope you like it,” he added. “But it just comes down to time. I’m married and so when I do get home, I can only work so much before I end up with all kinds of conflict I don’t want.”
Are you excited to hear a potential Ryan Tedder/Katy Perry collaboration? Let us know in the comments below!
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