This song was quite literally the only reason I could wake up and crawl out of bed those icy December mornings. The only way I could force my legs to keep mechanically moving down the uncooperative street, trying to breathe in the stinging air.
That beat. That chorus. The part that goes, “Make that money/watch it burn/sink in the river/the lessons I’ve learned.” (One of the catchiest bridges ever.)
How to recognize a great song: when, at 5 AM, half way to your destination, you're grinning like an idiot and practically dancing down the slick pavements. This is a great song.
My perception is that OneRepublic is one of those bands that people relatively enjoy, but viscerally label as being “too pop” or “too top 40” to take seriously. It's not the kind of band you name-check at a party. There's this old episode of Gilmore Girls where the aforementioned Gilmore girl, at her friend's indie-rock band's gig, kindly makes conversation with her ex’s new girlfriend, who isn't really enjoying the music. "So what kind of music do you like?"
“I don’t know,” says the sweet, dull, blonde girl, vaguely, "uh, Michelle Branch, Matchbox 20?“
“Geez,” mutters a James-Dean-wannabe character, and there follows a half-hearted attempt of the main character to pacify, though our intrepid heroine clearly agrees with the greasy-coiffed-leather-jacketed fellow.
The point of this tangent being: if that scene had been set in the present, I have this feeling that OneRepublic would have been one of the names slipped into that list.
But you know what? Ryan Tedder knows his way around some good music.
He spins some incredible melodies and counter-melodies, soaring choruses, and frankly, I’ve never heard better use of dynamics by any other band. The music is consistently epic, anthemic; it always sounds like it’s reaching upwards towards an ideal. It’s unusually positive for our post-modern culture, but it's just as thoughtful and well-crafted, if not more so.
(More than, for instance, this eloquent line from Afraid by The Neighbourhood, whose actually poetic Sweater Weather I do like: “It hurts but I won’t fight you / You suck anyway / You make me wanna die.” Nice, guys.)
And they are both charming and electric live. I had the pleasure of seeing them at their concert in Terminal 5, a really underrated venue, in which they were continuously delightful. The highlights:
- - their cover of Take Me Out,
- - the duet with surprise opener Sara Bareilles,
- - the part where they charmingly passed a bottle of champagne to the crowd and said, "We kind of got in trouble for this at the last concert because there were people who were underaged - so pass this around and only drink it if you’re over 21,"
- - the shirtless gay guy in white pants who was sinuously dancing around in a 2-square-foot space with his hand in the air like it was a nineties' rave, and went around telling everyone that everything was fabulous
- - the cello. Any band with a string instrument is worth a listen.
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