A lot of bands spend their careers cashing in on one song.
You know the ones. Hell, you’ve probably got a couple in your head right now. They write one insanely catchy track, stick it in the middle of an otherwise-mediocre album, and then tour the hell out of it until they can retire to their mansions in the Californian hills.
Sounds pretty sweet, doesn’t it?
You can swan around the world, playing 40-minute sets to festival audiences who don’t give a damn about your new single, because they know that you’re going to play that song. It doesn’t matter that the people don’t care about anything you’ve done in the last five years. It really doesn’t. You wrote a hit song. You’re set.
It’s the good life, right?
Right?
Well, we hate to break it to you, but OneRepublic are not one of those bands.
Yes, their debut single was, in their own words, ‘bigger than it should ever have been’. Yes, their singer has been accused of giving his best songs away to other artists. And yes, the crowd still goes wild when they play Apologize.
None of that matters, though. At the end of the day, OneRepublic have managed to transform themselves into one of the world’s best pop bands. We’re convinced that they’re going to be one of the world’s biggest, too. Yes, we know that they’re pretty big already, but their show at the always-brilliant Apple Music Festival left us convinced that they’re ready to make the step up to stadiums in the not-too-distant future.
Don’t believe us? Well, let us tell you why.
For a start, they’ve got the hits. The band played an hour-and-a-half long set at the Apple Music Festival, and each song was a bona-fide belter. Obviously, they’ve got the likes of Counting Stars and Love Runs Out up their sleeves, but they’ve also got three albums’ worth of arena-ready pop-rock anthems to fall back on, and they made the most of them for their Apple Music Festival show. You’ll probably know more OneRepublic songs than you think you do, actually – remember this? And this? And this?
Yeah, we thought you would.
It’s also really, really hard not to be impressed by their live show.
There’s just nothing to dislike, really. The setlist was insanely good, the light show was enough to fill a room four times the size of the Roundhouse, and frontman Ryan Tedder is a four-octave-spanning ball of energy.
Indeed, of the whole spectacle, it’s Tedder who stands out; he may be one of the most in-demand songwriters in pop, but he’s also one hell of a live performer, and their set served as perfect proof of this. In fact, we’d even go so far as to say that he’s one of the best frontmen in pop music. Heck, what’s not to love? He’s charismatic, he’s likeable, and he’s got one of the best voices in pop music right now:
In short, you should go and see them
It’s safe to say that we think they’re pretty great. Their set at the Apple Music Festival was enough to convince us that they’re going to be one of the world’s biggest bands within the next year or two, they’re one of the best live bands we’ve seen for a long time, and they’ve got enough hits to ensure that even the most casual fan is guaranteed to have a great time at one of their gigs. What’s not to like?