Concert review: OneRepublic was most compelling when singing other people’s songs
It’s easy to understand the folks who’ve forgotten about OneRepublic, who headlined St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center Sunday night.
The band kicked around Los Angeles for five years before hitting it big with their 2007 debut single “Apologize,” an infectious, arena-ready pop rocker with nods to hip-hop and slick production reminiscent of contemporary Christian music.
OneRepublic continued to find success in that vein for a few years, but things started to fall apart in the mid ’10s. Lead singer Ryan Tedder never really had the charisma to become a household name, struggled with the rigors of promotion and touring and focused more on his second gig as an in-demand songwriter and producer for other acts (more on that later). That, and Imagine Dragons followed the OneRepublic formula and become a much bigger band in the process.
So why are they back now? In recent interviews, Tedder has been talking up the Beach Boys/Mamas and the Papas vibes on his band’s upcoming album. (Oddly enough, he has also said “nobody’s really done anything like that since that time” which ignores a slew of indie rock acts doing just that, starting with Dr. Dog, Animal Collective and the Explorers Club.)
Two tastes of that new direction showed up Sunday night, the single “West Coast” and “I Ain’t Worried,” which Tedder wrote after Tom Cruise asked him to craft a song for the beach scene in “Top Gun: Maverick.” The latter connected with listeners and gave OneRepublic their biggest radio hit in eight years. (They played it near the end of the main set, complete with a video introduction from Cruise himself.)
Beyond that, it was an evening devoted to OneRepublic’s most popular material. As Tedder recently said: “We literally went down to the data. We looked at what songs were listened to the most — downloaded, consumed, streamed, the greatest hits that we’ve ever had … I want to please the most people possible at the show.”
And, well, Tedder and company appeared to please the 9,500 people who showed up Sunday night. Although it was the actual songs, rather than the band, that commanded the attention. As was the case during OneRepublic’s last local headlining show in 2014, Tedder was full of energy but tended to get lost among the big screens, stage fog and confetti.
The big hits — “Counting Stars,” “Stop and Stare,” “Apologize” — all earned a warm reception from the crowd. And Tedder nodded to the summer’s most unexpected hit, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” by playing a bit of it during the end of “Good Life.”
But the most compelling part of the show was devoted to airing songs Tedder co-wrote and/or produced outside of the band. For about 20 minutes, with mostly minimal backing, Tedder crooned his way through the tunes and told the stories behind them. He really loosened up, too, as he tackled a set that included Beyonce’s “Halo,” the Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker” and Adele’s “Rumour Has It.” (Earlier in the set, the band played their own “Love Runs Out,” Tedder’s blatant rewrite of the Adele smash.)
“The Voice” season 14 champ Brynn Cartelli opened, followed by an hour-long set from Needtobreathe, a South Carolina rock band that does big business on Christian radio and has been flirting with mainstream success for the past 15 years. Judging by the enthusiastic reception from the crowd, it seems more than a few people were there to see them, not the headliner.
