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00:00♪ Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep ♪
00:04I'm wearing like all these bracelets I bought.
00:06You can hear them kind of clattering,
00:08I think, in this solo guitar.
00:09♪
00:12There it is.
00:12You hear it?
00:13You hear it there?
00:14Again, like coins.
00:15Hi, I'm Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic.
00:17I'm wearing the shortest shorts I own,
00:19and I'm here to take you through two songs.
00:21We have Counting Stars on the menu today.
00:22We also have OneRepublic and David Guetta,
00:25I Don't Wanna Wait.
00:26♪ I don't wanna wait, I don't wanna wait, I don't wanna wait ♪
00:33♪ Got no reason to wait ♪
00:34Counting Stars, I wanted that to be the first single.
00:37I was overruled, but I did put it as track one
00:40on the album for a reason.
00:41We thought that our first two singles
00:43had like kind of misfired, and this was our last shot.
00:45We didn't know, as we were shooting the video
00:47for Counting Stars, that If I Lose Myself
00:51was blowing up overseas.
00:52No one told us.
00:53Had no idea.
00:54And turning into this monster, European,
00:57I mean Asia, Australia, everywhere.
00:59♪ Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep ♪
01:04♪ Dreaming about the things that we could be ♪
01:08I started it at a camp in the Hamptons writing for Beyonce.
01:11It was her self-titled album.
01:13I did the lead single on that album called XO.
01:15A lot of times, if I'm put in a space
01:18where I'm focused on another artist,
01:20I will write my story,
01:22because that's what I'm pulling from.
01:24And the first thing I recorded was,
01:28I think you can still hear my,
01:29I was wearing, this is back when like,
01:31like stacks of bracelets was cool, 10 years ago, right?
01:34So I'm wearing like all these bracelets I bought.
01:36You can hear them kind of clattering,
01:38I think, in this solo guitar.
01:41There it is.
01:42You hear it?
01:43You hear it there, and again, like coins.
01:45And here's how you know I played it.
01:46It sucks.
01:47Like, like the guitar is not,
01:50it's not perfectly cadence, it's not quantized.
01:52It's just like, I did a bunch of takes till I got it.
01:54You know, we used some synth.
01:56Acoustic guitar.
02:00I always had a love-hate relationship with my own voice.
02:03The first two albums, I didn't like how pop it sounded.
02:06It drove me nuts.
02:07Like, I would always try to mess up my voice.
02:09Sometimes I'd like smoke a cigar
02:11and like intentionally inhale,
02:12which you're not supposed to do,
02:13just so I'd cough, just to get my voice
02:15to sound like rougher and warmer.
02:17So on this song, and on a few songs on this album,
02:20I lowered the key like three, four steps
02:24below anything we had done.
02:26I want to start singing lower
02:27and get into a different tone.
02:29I'm singing low, like.
02:31♪ Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep ♪
02:36♪ Dreaming about the things that we could be ♪
02:40The style of production in 2013, 14, in terms of drums,
02:43if you were remotely a pop producer at all,
02:47unless you're cutting just live drums,
02:48you would do this stacking, like drum stacking,
02:52to create the feeling of live
02:55and like variances in keys, velocities, all these things.
03:00You know, that era, the drums were so muscular
03:04and so, just they hit you in the face.
03:07And you couldn't get that from just one kick, one snare.
03:11I mean, probably, and you can even hear it.
03:15I have like these weird, on like left hand,
03:19left and right, like, it sounds like crunching something.
03:22And they're like, it's like a weird folder
03:25of hip hop claps that I have that I staggered.
03:28So it goes like.
03:31There it is.
03:35It's like crinkle rap, right?
03:37Into the verse.
03:42And then in the chorus, I go to
03:43ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
03:45right?
03:51And the way I produce is that every four bars,
03:55something is slightly different.
04:04Oh, oh, that's a fun story.
04:05This was recorded in Greece.
04:07I can like imagine like Grecian harpists for some reason,
04:10even though I don't, that's probably like
04:12from like Greek mythology,
04:13but like statues of people playing harps in Greece.
04:16And so when we got to Santorini, I was like asking Celia,
04:18we want a Greek harpist, Grecian harpist.
04:21And it's like, oh my God, we have one,
04:23actually a phenomenal one who's recorded
04:26here on the island in Santorini.
04:27She came through, me or Zach learned the part on,
04:31we bought or rented an accordion
04:33and just figured out how to do these two notes.
04:35I think it's me.
04:36The intro, you know.
04:39Stars.
04:42And then right here, one, two, three.
04:51The best lyric is, you know,
04:52everything that kills me makes me feel alive,
04:54which was kind of the line that became the line.
04:56But like coming into this section, we have a,
05:02I had her pluck the harp and then I hit it with crystallizer.
05:04So it's going, doing this shimmery stuff.
05:07Not gonna lie, everything that kills me makes me feel alive.
05:14My other favorite element of this song
05:15is this little sound right here.
05:26That's where the gospel element comes in right here, right?
05:29Like.
05:30Use our four letter word, make that money, watch it burn.
05:33Oh, but I'm not that old.
05:36But I'm not that bold.
05:38Recorded that in London, had a background vocalist
05:40that had sung on, I think, some of the Adele stuff.
05:43The benefit of me constantly working with other artists,
05:46I'm constantly dipping in and out of their universes
05:48and what they're listening to.
05:50It's no different than like chefs cooking together,
05:51whatever, you're always getting
05:52different ingredients and recipes.
05:53So this bridge exists, guarantee it,
05:57because I was working with Adele at the same time.
06:00And a lot of times it takes that,
06:01like working with a different artist,
06:02for you to feel okay about being more authentic
06:05to what you want to do.
06:06It gives you a hall pass to try stuff.
06:07Throughout this song, there's some, hey, right?
06:10That I've thrown and some of, ho!
06:12This is before the Lumineers, ho, hey.
06:14So when that song came out, I was like, oh my God,
06:18like we're all drinking from the same water supply
06:20because it all came out around the same time,
06:21which is also why I tell artists all the time,
06:24if we stumble into a song that's not
06:26came out around the same time,
06:27which is also why I tell artists all the time,
06:29if we stumble into a lyric or a song title
06:33that's a 10 out of 10, and the song is a 10 out of 10,
06:36you better race to get that thing out
06:38because someone else just came up with the same idea.
06:40I've had it happen four times, five times in my career
06:43in 20 years, and I've been on the losing end
06:46of that equation where someone, a month earlier,
06:49a big artist drops the same title song, same idea,
06:52and then you're cooked.
06:54This very much represents that time,
06:56and I just find it so bizarre,
06:59some of the similarities and elements
07:02between whether it was Avicii, The Lumineers,
07:04we were all drinking from the same water supply
07:06at that time.
07:07♪ Baby, I just don't wanna wait ♪
07:12♪ Swimming in the deep blue, got me thinking about you ♪
07:15♪ I'm just trying to dive right in ♪
07:18So, I Don't Wanna Wait, the process of this song
07:20started probably a year ago.
07:22David Guetta, who's a very close friend of mine,
07:24is constantly coming up with ideas for songs.
07:27He was realizing how many of the songs
07:29from the late 90s and 2000s,
07:32combing through all of them,
07:33going, what else could breathe new life into?
07:36The original version of this, the chorus was,
07:39♪ My, ah, he, my, ah, ha, right? ♪
07:42Which we all remember.
07:43But what's weird about this one is we didn't sample that.
07:45We interpolated the verse, which is so bizarre.
07:48The verse is now our chorus melody,
07:50everything else is original, everything else we did.
07:52That verse melody, David had the brilliant idea
07:54of taking that, making it a chorus melody.
07:55That was kind of it.
07:56Let's do a song, this melody,
07:58everyone's gonna remember it, especially in Europe.
08:00And he sent it to us.
08:01And he said he was nervous to send it, though,
08:03because he's like, if we don't nail this,
08:05he's like, it's cheesy.
08:07He's like, it's a big, big, big song,
08:09but it's almost so obvious that it runs the risk
08:12of being just too swinging for it, pop, corny.
08:15This took me six months or longer to come around on.
08:20My first instinct was, no, I'm not doing it.
08:22What do I play?
08:23Piano and guitar.
08:24It's very much my style of playing.
08:30So when we first got it, though, that was gone.
08:33There was no guitar.
08:35It was more like this.
08:37♪ I don't wanna wait, I don't wanna wait ♪
08:41♪ Got no reason not to celebrate it ♪
08:45This like, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,
08:47bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,
08:49almost like a classical music arpeggio,
08:50like similar to some of the other records
08:52that we've done in the past,
08:53like Secrets or Apologize.
08:55I slowly started warming up to it.
08:57I always knew the song felt like a hit.
09:00That said, with all those, my shamelessness surrounding hits,
09:04I do have certain lines I can't cross,
09:06and this song continually was across that line for me.
09:09By the way, it was also across the line for David.
09:11He was like, I'm not putting this out
09:13unless you can make it feel cooler.
09:14I know it's a hit, but it's just too cheesy
09:17in his thick French accent.
09:19Like, we need to make it cool, like uber cool,
09:21much cooler.
09:22We had to add band elements.
09:23It's very simple.
09:24It's like live guitar, live drums, live bass,
09:26like all that stuff.
09:27And so we started implementing those things in,
09:29one at a time, in the world of Wonder Public.
09:35Right?
09:37And then added some guitar here.
09:41And then you go, okay, cool.
09:42We swung the song too far into Wonder Public land
09:45at some point, and so we had to kind of marry it
09:47with some of Ghetta's more dancier elements,
09:51obviously, because it's the day of the Ghetta record.
09:53So now we got bass and synth.
09:58It just feels moodier, the voicing.
10:00It feels cooler.
10:03Now we add some synthesizer on the guitar
10:07to double the guitar, bringing it to dance land, like here.
10:12Right?
10:13You know, the chorus is like half, 50% Wonder Public,
10:16like live instruments, 50% dance, synth, bass, drums.
10:20When we sent our, I call it like my approved version,
10:24the one where I felt okay about it
10:25and the band felt okay about it,
10:27it was probably too Wonder Public at that point.
10:29In the drop, which is like the main,
10:31the payoff moment for any given dance record,
10:34there was something missing.
10:36And David, because he's brilliant,
10:38had the idea to do this, I forget the name of it,
10:41but I'll play you the sound.
10:42And.
10:44And.
10:48Like, this is extremely European, right?
10:52This is not anything that an American DJ
10:55or a dance record producer would instinctively go to.
10:58But David's been doing this so long,
11:00he's like working with Chat GPT.
11:02If you want a reference for any song you're working on,
11:05he has, his brain just goes, oh,
11:08we could take the bass from this Giorgio Moroder record
11:14and we could take the vocal chop from this Daft Punk record
11:17and we could take the tempo of Usher,
11:20DJ Got Us Falling In Love.
11:21His brain just does it in real time.
11:23If you don't nail the drop in a dance record,
11:24you don't have a hit, you don't have a record.
11:26Like, that's critical.
11:27And so David was like, I'm just gonna go full 1999 Euro.
11:33Full Euro.
11:34Just commit to it and like go so far past
11:37almost corniness that it's cool.
11:38And that's where we got to this.
11:40♪ Night's awakening, I don't wanna wait, wait ♪
11:44♪ I don't wanna wait, wait, I don't wanna wait, wait ♪
11:48If this was five years ago,
11:51or any time really from like the 90s to like five years ago,
11:55you would have the chorus
11:57and then it goes into the full instrumental drop,
11:59which would have like a vocal chop,
12:01just a big hooky synth line.
12:04Something just like this.
12:07That's the drop, right?
12:11Pretty much instrumental, no real singing over it.
12:13And you could go on it for eight bars, 16 bars.
12:16What's brilliant about what David did was he,
12:19for this record, he's like, it needs a drop
12:21because it's building.
12:22Let's just copy paste the chorus.
12:24Let's do a double of the chorus.
12:26If you have no vocal happening on this at all,
12:29in like a more old school fashion Euro dance record
12:31or any kind of dance record, you go,
12:32♪ I don't wanna wait, I don't wanna wait. ♪
12:39And you just go instrumental.
12:43He took the very like sought out drop,
12:46combined it with a chorus.
12:48And so in that way, it's modernized.
12:51We get to verse two.
12:52I changed the melody a little bit
12:53and had some fun with the lyrics.
12:55♪ I've been chasing so long, every right that feels wrong ♪
12:58♪ I'd rather be with you instead. ♪
13:02♪ There's something about it right, got me seeing so clear. ♪
13:06And then it's pretty much the same build into chorus two,
13:08but I changed the melody in verse two
13:10and got a little more like metaphoric with the lyrics.
13:14After the first chorus, if you did a drop chorus,
13:16you can't play that same,
13:17because it's like kind of like a magic trick.
13:18You can't do it twice, right?
13:21So you've got your momentum at this point.
13:23We're done.
13:24♪ Tonight's the weekend, I don't wanna wait. ♪
13:28♪ I don't wanna blend in, I don't wanna wait. ♪
13:31The only real elements,
13:32we're going kind of full on at this point,
13:34I'm adding these background vocals.
13:36We go like.
13:36♪ Hey. ♪
13:38♪ Hey. ♪
13:39♪ Hey. ♪
13:41♪ Hey. ♪
13:43♪ Hey. ♪
13:44♪ Hey. ♪
13:46♪ Hey. ♪
13:47Really the only thing that changes in the second chorus
13:51is I'm doing passes of ad libs and vocal,
13:54like call them like counter melodies to the lead chorus.
13:58And you can kind of hear it here, like.
14:00♪ Just don't wanna wait, tonight's the week. ♪
14:04Woo, woo, woo, woo.
14:05Like all those things.
14:06♪ I don't wanna wait, I don't wanna wait. ♪
14:10♪ I don't wanna wait. ♪
14:12So you get to the final end of the song
14:13and we're like, okay, let's bring it back to we're a band.
14:16Like Getta had his 30 seconds of full drop.
14:21♪ Just don't wanna wait. ♪
14:23♪ Tonight's the weekend, I don't wanna wait. ♪
14:27That's how we ended it.
14:29Wanted to kind of bring it back to reality,
14:32if that makes sense, out of like Euro dance world.
14:35♪ Got no reason not to celebrate. ♪
14:38♪ Baby, I just don't wanna wait. ♪
14:51♪ I don't wanna wait. ♪