Pop’s winning recipe
The biggest stars turn to Ryan Tedder for a No 1 hit. Ed Potton jots down Tedder’s top 10 tips for a surefire chart smash.
BEYONCE, Adele, Taylor Swift, U2, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Ed Sheeran, One Direction, Pharrell Williams, Ariana Grande, Peter Gabriel, Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Ellie Goulding, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, James Blunt, Kelly Clarkson, the Pussycat Dolls, Leona Lewis, Sugababes. It’s almost certainly easier to make a list of the contemporary pop stars Ryan Tedder hasn’t worked with.
Dubbed ‘‘the undercover king of pop’’ by Billboard magazine, Tedder is one of an elite group of songwriter-producers to whom the A-list turn when they need a radio anthem.
The 37-year-old from Oklahoma doesn’t just do big songs – he does huge songs. Among his megahits are Beyonce’s double Grammy-winning power ballad Halo, which he co-wrote and coproduced; and Apologise, aNo 1 in 16 countries for OneRepublic, the band Tedder fronts. By his standards, a million-seller is a dud.
We meet at his publicist’s office in central London, where Tedder talks in a caffeinated whirr about his obscene schedule. Two weeks ago he was working in Los Angeles with Stevie Wonder on his new duet with Ariana Grande. Yesterday he was writing in London with Ed Sheeran, before staying up until the early hours finishing OneRepublic’s new album.
Next week, he rejoins U2 in Ireland for sessions for their forthcoming album. At some point, he hopes to see his wife and two children at home in Los Angeles.
So how did this affable man from a strict Christian family in Tulsa become one of the most influential people in music?
Here are Tedder’s 10 golden rules for writing a modern pop smash. 1) Cut out the distractions Tedder avoided sex, drink and drugs all the way through high school and college. ‘‘I was every bit as horny as the next 17-yearold, but I viewed it as an absolute waste of time. Without having those distractions, and being an only child, I had buckets of time every single day.’’
2) Does the song give me goosebumps?
‘‘Do I have a physical reaction to it?’’ Tedder asks. ‘‘If I’m in with someone like Ellie Goulding, she wants people to feel tingly from the melody and the picture the lyrics are painting, an effervescence. I know what kind of melody or vibe is going to set her off.’’ 3) Catchiness is king . . . Unsurprisingly, a memorable melody is paramount, Tedder says. ‘‘When I hear it, does it make me go, ‘Oh my God, I gotta hear that again’?’’
On this front, he acknowledges his debt to the Swedish school of songwriting that has come to dominate contemporary pop, a lineage that stretches from the current master, Tedder’s friend Max Martin (Britney Spears’s Baby One More Time, Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl), to Martin’s 1990s mentor Denniz Pop (Ace of Base’s All That She REUTERS Wants), and all the way back to Abba.
There is, Tedder says, a ‘‘mathematical structure’’ to a Swedishstyle hit. Many of them draw on the tradition of schlager music, which emerged in northern and southeast Europe after World War II as a more sentimental response to American rock’n’roll. The fundamentals of schlager songs include a three-minute length and a big key change before the final chorus. 4) . . . unless you’re Beyonce Catchiness can go out of the window if you’re at the top of the tree, Tedder says.
‘‘With Beyonce, the lyric and concept rules everything. Hits be damned: it’s about the lyrics being 100 per cent honest.’’
Adele has reached a similar level, he thinks. ‘‘That is the power of Adele and Beyonce: when you can cast aside hit after hit in exchange for pure honesty.’’
5) Some things can’t be measured
Although Tedder can recognise a great song, he can’t always explain where it came from. ‘‘It falls from the sky. It’s the ghost in the room.’’ 6) It helps to be hyperactive Tedder’s friends think he’s ‘‘the most poster child ADD person they’ve ever met’’, but being ‘‘always on’’ and receptive to multiple influences can be an advantage in pop music. Stevie Wonder is similar, Tedder says: ‘‘Every time Stevie calls you, he’s singing or playing piano in the background.’’
7) Life’s too short to work with people who suck
‘‘I only work with people I genuinely listen to or like,’’ Tedder says. ‘‘Even if I’m not a cardcarrying album-buyer of them, if I admire their talent, then I’ll make it happen.’’ If an artist proves to be a tosser, however, he has been known to remove his name from their record. ‘‘There are certain levels of disrespect that, if you allow it to happen, you are responsible for perpetuating.’’ 8) Once more with feeling ‘‘I have to believe that you mean the song from every fibre of your being, whether you wrote it or not,’’ Tedder says. He is still surprised by the number of songs that fail that test, that sound as though their singers have no connection with the lyrics.
The ultimate believable performance, Tedder thinks, is Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U. ‘‘Watching that video REUTERS REUTERS with her staring into the camera, I thought, ‘This girl has been through it’.’’
9) Don’t be afraid to savage the work of megastars
‘‘It makes my hands sweat thinking about it,’’ Tedder says of his first meeting with U2, towards the end of work on their last album, Songs of Innocence. ‘‘ ‘We’re just going to play you stuff,’ they say. ‘Give us your immediate view, tear every song apart. What are the songs that you’d chase and what would you axe?’ ’’
10) Find the balance between dirt and shine
One of Bono’s credos, Tedder says, is ‘‘If one boot’s getting shined, the other needs to be in the mud’’. He gives the example of U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. ‘‘Come on! All those platitudes, that’s so tired. Then you sing, ‘But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’. Oh, there it is! The whole thing fits in place.’’
‘‘When I hear it, does it make me go, ‘Oh my God, I gotta hear that again’?’’
The Times