Human by OneRepublic
Human is the fifth studio album by American pop rock band OneRepublic. It was released through Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records on August 27, 2021. It was preceded by the release of the singles "Rescue Me", "Wanted", "Didn't I", "Better Days" and "Run". Background The album was announced by frontman Ryan Tedder in September 2019, with a planned release in "late November" of that year. Tedder stated that he wanted to put out an album with eight or nine songs and then continue releasing new music in 2020. Tedder later revealed that the album had been delayed until the second quarter of 2020 because it was "physically impossible to finish an album in the timeframe that we thought we needed it", and he believed the album would not be successful if released between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Tedder also said the band had "two years worth of songs just scattered on hard drives" and were trying to find and finish "the best ones" to make "a coherent album out of the last two years". Tedder stated that the May 8 release date was delayed because of it being a "weird time", amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The band also stated, "due to the current circumstances requiring us to distance ourselves from each other and you, the release has been postponed." On July 1, 2021, the band announced via their Instagram account that the official release date for Human would be August 27, 2021. Singles The lead single "Rescue Me" was released on May 17, 2019, and reached number five on the US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100. "Wanted" was released as the second single on September 6, 2019, and reached number nine on the Bubbling Under Hot 100. The third single "Didn't I" was released alongside the album pre-order on March 13, 2020, and reached number nineteen on the Bubbling Under Hot 100. "Better Days" was released as the fourth single on March 25, 2020. "Run" was released as the fifth single on May 5, 2021, and reached number 21 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100. "Someday" was released as the sixth single, along with the album's release.
After experimenting with their sound on 2016’s <i>Oh My My</i>, Ryan Tedder and his crew have returned to their roots in what Tedder calls their “most OneRepublic album” to date. “We wanted to make something where it’s like, all right, if you’ve been with us at all going back to ’07, ’08, if you’ve liked anything we’ve done, this kind of encapsulates that,” Tedder tells Apple Music. “It’s a summary of all four previous albums.” Songs like “Run” and “Didn’t I” evoke some of the band’s classic sounds as flourishes like whistles and orchestral strings are designed to remind you of some of their biggest hits. Key to Tedder’s objective is writing pop songs that are relatable. ”I’m trying to strike a nerve, and at least somebody walks away with one or two records where they’re like, ‘Wow, that song just read my mail.’” “For the people who’ve ever liked our sound, they’re going to find stuff on this album that’s going to connect with them sonically. And then I think we have to evolve.” Read more about how some of the key tracks on OneRepublic’s latest release came to be below.<br /> <b>Take Care of You</b> “I love the melody. I love the lyric so much. I just liked the idea of ‘I take care of you, you take care of me.’ And especially during the pandemic—I wrote this in the peak of the pandemic last summer. And it just felt like a very, I don’t know, topical song.”<br /> <b>Forgot About You</b> “This is a rare instance where I was really irritated with somebody, another person in the music industry, who was threatening to sue me over the absolute most inane, outrageously ridiculous claim on Earth. I said, ‘Man, I forgot he existed until this email.’ I’ve never actually written a kiss-off record, just like literally, ‘Bye.’ And that’s what it is. It is what it sounds like.”<br /> <b>Better Days</b> “This was written at the beginning of the pandemic. We had the chorus almost finished, I went to Europe and when I got back the whole world changed overnight. I was just so distraught that I was like, ‘Guys, let’s write this, finish this song now, record it, and post it on Instagram,’ which I never do. Then the CEO of Fiat Chrysler and a ton of diffrent car companies hits me up, saying they want to use ‘Better Days’ for their entire spring campaign. Then NBC calls, then NFL, ESPN. The next few months it was just the theme that all these companies were using for COVID, which is weird. This whole album was written for the most part in a pandemic, but that’s the only song that actually addresses it and you can tell that we were in the middle of it.”<br /> <b>Wild Life</b> “Very, very OneRepublic, like an old-school OneRepublic song. I got hit by a bunch of songwriters that were OneRepublic fans growing up, and when ‘Wild Life’ came out they’re like, ‘Man, this is my favourite type of song that you guys do better than anybody,’ because it’s very much intrinsic to our sound, not a radio single, not a single, but just a beautiful record that I love.”<br /> <b>Ships + Tides</b> “This was the oldest song that was written on tour while we were touring on [2013’s] <i>Native</i>, believe it or not. We started that song in Switzerland. I remember where we were. And we tinkered around with it for years, could never figure out how to finish it, and then we finally did. We wanted this beautiful serenity and orchestral movement. And in the past we’ve done those types of things on albums a lot. We wanted to go out on something extremely musical and kind of cinematic.”
