Ryan Tedder Quotes
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Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
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I think the best songs are being written by the very under-stated, under-appreciated indie artists. The thing that separates them from mainstream success is they either consciously or unknowingly refuse to deliver on a big chorus.
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I'm not interested in fad songs.
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If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.
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I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.
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I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test.
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Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.
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Just because a suit fits, doesn't mean it looks good. You need a tailor. You want to get bespoke.
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I have to shut down from other artists, because otherwise I end up giving them my stories.
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Any time you have a song that is directly connected to a very specific musical trend of the moment, you have immediately cut it off at the knees, doesn't matter if it goes to number one in the world, if you're too attached to a production style.
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The only thing contrived is the production - you can over-produce to the point you kill a good idea, you can under-produce so that the song's amazing but you'll have folks at a radio station saying they won't play it, so there's this balance, and it has to be true.
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I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.
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I am not opposed to doing a side project, like Death Cab for Cutie, where it's completely different from my own band.
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I'm a huge Lady GaGa fan - she makes the world a more incredible place.
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There is maybe a cynicism because of my past as a writer.
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Nobody works harder than Lady Gaga. Nobody. She is unbelievable. I don't know how she sleeps, or when or if.
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I grew up listening to English music.
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When life gives you the opportunity to check off a thing on the bucket list, you have to check them.
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I'm in an odd position because I write across so many genres for so many people and they all influence me, and if I'm going to write as honest an album as possible, it's going to be layered.
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With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer's block. If you're at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.
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I can go write an absolutely saccharine pop record with a really catchy lyric for another artist that could become a hit without meaning anything to me, but that's more the science laboratory, that's the other thing.
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I have to sing it every night, I can't get up on stage if it's some bullshit story.
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I listen to the far left which informs the far right. Somewhere in the middle is where we end up.
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The difficulty in working with someone on a show like Idol or X Factor is they have an idea of what they think is cool in their heads, and it's important as a producer to maintain control of the session and not let it get side-tracked or chase too many rabbits. But it's also important to let the artist feel like their opinion matters, so that balance is difficult.