American pop-rock OneRepublic, who will headline the Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival on February 28, know how to live it up in the emirate. The Colorado boys landed in the city last November, ahead of their performance on the Dubai Airshow Gala, ready to live it up with a visit to Satwa’s famous Ravi restaurant, coupled with a spin around the go-karting track at Dubai Autodrome and capping off their adventures by checking out the Dubai Police supercars parked at JBR The Walk.
As the band returns to the emirate this week for some more adventures (along with a performance at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre), led by vocalist Ryan Tedder, guitarist Zach Filkins, guitarist Drew Brown, bassist-cellist Brent Kutzle, drummer Eddie Fisher and keyboardist Brian Willett, Gulf News tabloid! sits down with them to discuss fame, fortune and their love for greasy Pakistani food.
Full Article here: https://gn24.ae/972992b6a48e000
See more at https://gulfnews.com/videos
#OneRepublic #DubaiJazzFest
As the band returns to the emirate this week for some more adventures (along with a performance at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre), led by vocalist Ryan Tedder, guitarist Zach Filkins, guitarist Drew Brown, bassist-cellist Brent Kutzle, drummer Eddie Fisher and keyboardist Brian Willett, Gulf News tabloid! sits down with them to discuss fame, fortune and their love for greasy Pakistani food.
Full Article here: https://gn24.ae/972992b6a48e000
See more at https://gulfnews.com/videos
#OneRepublic #DubaiJazzFest
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm pretty sure puns work in every culture, right?
00:03Yeah.
00:04Oh, technically.
00:05Pun.
00:06Drop.
00:07Yeah.
00:08Okay.
00:09It just keeps going.
00:10We love it.
00:11It just gets deeper and deeper.
00:17So we're going to do a couple touristy things, trying to track down a gold bar vending machine
00:23somewhere.
00:24They have one in Abu Dhabi, I'm aware of.
00:27They have one at the Burj Al Khalifa.
00:28Really?
00:29I can't believe it or not, unless they removed it, it's still there.
00:35Because why not?
00:36You're going to get my arm stuck in it.
00:37Yeah, I'm going to get my arm, trying to get my arm stuck in there today.
00:39Yeah.
00:40We'll do some touristy stuff and we're very excited about Jazz Fest.
00:44We'll have a little bit more time when we come back for that and more things to do.
00:49I want to go dune bugging.
00:50I want to do some other crazy Dubai desert stuff.
01:00By then, yes.
01:01Yeah, you will.
01:02By that show, absolutely.
01:04And we'll be probably, given the date, likely putting the finishing touches on the album
01:11in Dubai.
01:12Really?
01:13I mean, if I'm doing the math right, I think that would be within three weeks of our deadline.
01:17So yeah.
01:23I did not think it would go viral at all.
01:26That was really...
01:27And none of you stopped him.
01:28No.
01:30None of us really stop any of our jokes and that was not the least appropriate of the
01:39jokes that day.
01:40No, that was, yeah, that one was a couple of steps up above the Punjab joke.
01:50From the people who've been around us for a long time, who've heard a decent handful
01:56of these songs, I think you're going to be, based on their reactions, I think people,
02:01our fans will be very happy.
02:03It very much sounds like One Republic.
02:06It sounds like us in the modern world.
02:10It's not us mining the same territory that we've gone a million times, because I could,
02:16Lord knows I could never do that.
02:19But it is very much us finding our way in 2020, really, is what it will be, because
02:28we know it's coming out in 2020.
02:30So it's like, yeah, it's us finding what pieces of production and music today that we can
02:39incorporate.
02:40We always incorporate bits and bobs of what's happening, because it's just part of reflecting
02:43the world that you're in.
02:44And my favorite bands always manage to evolve and do that.
02:47They would evolve and sound like themselves.
02:49It's so hard to sound like yourself 12, 13 years later, to still sound like yourself,
02:56but also sound like you could be a new band in 2020.
03:00Those are hard.
03:01That's hard.
03:02That's really hard.
03:03But I think that we're finding our footing in that, and definitely going to give it all
03:09of our efforts.
03:10And right now, based on the quality of the songs, I feel very, very happy with it.
03:18For sure.
03:22I think our situation is probably unique.
03:24I think we have less involvement from our record label.
03:29They can hear me.
03:30Can they?
03:31We can.
03:32Yeah.
03:33Okay, good.
03:34We have less involvement and less people chiming in than other acts with maybe more development
03:45on that record label side.
03:48In general, I don't think anybody would ever put as much pressure on us as we put on ourselves.
03:55Without question.
03:56Yeah.
03:57So I think that's one thing about our situation.
04:01Even from other bands, there aren't a lot of other bands that are left at a certain
04:08global level.
04:09But I think of all of those, we probably have more autonomy.
04:18I think that, again, I don't feel any extreme ancillary pressure that I wouldn't apply
04:27to myself.
04:28So any amount of ambition or need to desire to connect or succeed or deliver something
04:41exceptional, the drivers that I have within my own brain and that we have within ourselves
04:48as a band to not put out some substandard whatever music exceeds any type of external
04:56pressure.
04:57We don't have...
04:58And we were thinking about our fans who just waited long enough for new music and a new
05:02tour.
05:03That's the thing I'm most focused on is we've left a lot of people hanging out who've loved
05:06us for a long time.
05:07We haven't been to those countries.
05:08We haven't been to Europe in ages.
05:09We used to tour Europe four times more than we toured America.
05:12We haven't been there in ages.
05:15There's a lot of places around the world, Australia, South America, that we have just
05:21taken our sweet time to get back to.
05:24And I'm only focused on how do our fans react to this?
05:28How do people, your average person living their life, how does our music connect with
05:35them?
05:38And I'm very keen and focused on us sounding modern.
05:42But not sound...
05:43It's that thing.
05:44Sound modern even though you've been around for 12 years, which in music industry terms
05:47is like dog years.
05:48So that's like, you know, that's ridiculous.
05:50It's like 86 years.
05:52But sound modern, but sound authentic.
05:58If a song is truly great, it will spread virally.
06:08I know that's hard to digest because you go, well, you know, basically it means that
06:14if I put out a song, it needs to be one of the best songs in the world.
06:17Yeah, but guess what?
06:18We've been signed for 12 years and every song we put out has to be one of the best songs
06:22in the world.
06:23We put out Rescue Me back in May or June and it got to 30 on the global Spotify chart.
06:30And I remember looking at that and had that one moment where I go, we had nothing behind
06:33it.
06:34We weren't pushing it.
06:35We weren't like...
06:36There wasn't some huge marketing campaign.
06:38That was our marketing campaign.
06:39And then when I was looking at it on the charts, I go, we haven't put out a new song in a long
06:43time and this is in the top 30 in the world without a feature.
06:50We don't have a rapper on it.
06:51We don't have J Balvin.
06:53We don't have a movie.
06:55And I let myself be happy for like a week, which is rare because I'm always thinking,
07:00yeah, but what did we not do?
07:02And it's easy to think that way.
07:05At the end of the day, any new artists, we're all competing for the same thing.
07:092007, when we signed, I'm not worried about new up and coming artists who are releasing
07:14songs by themselves independently.
07:16I'm not competing with them because they couldn't be heard.
07:19But now, if you're a new artist and you like OneRepublic or you know who we are, we are
07:25literally peers.
07:27We're competing for the same oxygen of every other song.
07:33And social media, without question, if a new artist is grinding and you're 18 or you're
07:3825 or whatever you are, and you're not on Instagram, posting the videos of your original
07:45songs or TikTok, all those things are just tools.
07:47You can love them or hate them.
07:50I don't like the fact that social media now is a thing.
07:54I was just fine before it existed.
07:57But if MySpace hadn't existed when it did, 99% chance we would not be sitting here today.
08:03We would not be a band.
08:04It was the necessary means to an end for this band.
08:08Because when we drove around for six months or a year, posting stapling posters of our
08:15band on telephone poles in Los Angeles.
08:18We met a lot of people.
08:21You go around handing out cards, come to our show, come to our show, come to our show.
08:24And then people, you see them, throw them in the trash.
08:27Every time we post a thing on a telephone pole, I drive back an hour later, it's been
08:30torn down.
08:32And I just remember thinking, this is never going to work.
08:34And then MySpace, we go, oh, if we put a song up that's good enough, it will go viral.
08:40People will share it.
08:41And God willing, we'll be heard.
08:44And we put Apologize up on MySpace.
08:47It went viral.
08:48People shared it.
08:49We got heard.
08:50It became a hit.
08:51And then it launched our career.
08:52So it is, I would say, no more easier or difficult today to get discovered.