OneRepublic

When: Wednesday 24^th April

Where: Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Why: They do nice tunes

Yeaaaaah OneRepublic! You know them! No, you definitely do…! …You know the song ‘Apologize’, with Timbaland? Yeah, that’s them… Yeaaah, they sound a bit like the unofficial soundtrack for One Tree Hill? Exactly.

I still think this is a pretty good way to sum up OneRepublic (in a complimentary way, clearly – I loved One Tree Hill). But after seeing them live I do appreciate their musicality a bit more – they do some cracking instrumentals, their lead guitarist is FIERCELY good, and lead singer Ryan Tedder’s voice is insane (also, how cute a surname is ‘Tedder’? I want to marry him). He spoke a lot about his gospel church experiences as a child (a song on the new album is called ‘Preacher’, about his grandad being, well… a preacher) and this has definitely influenced his voice and his range. It also turns out Tedder has written songs for about a billion other artists (see his Wikipedia page if you don’t believe me) which is impressive.

I also love the face that OneRepublic are a proper band, a little collective with multi-talented musicians, and who all sat around for a jam session half way through the set which was sweet. Their cellist is perfection – if I wasn’t marrying Tedder for his surname, I’d be marrying the cellist for his all-round brilliance. Tedder’s special lighty-up piano was also a hit, especially when it changed from red to blue alongside the lyrics of his acoustic performance of ‘Apologize’, which he then merged with ‘We found love’ - an interesting combo. It was an evening of mash-ups, as it happened, with the original and modern versions of ‘Gold digger’ and an epic encore mash-up of 7 nation army / Adele / Roxanne (he does a great Sting impression) / Sexy back. Impressive. My personal fave was the interweaving of my favourite song of theirs, ‘Good life’, with the backing from M83’s ‘Midnight City’ (aka the Made In Chelsea’ theme tune) – see the video for proof. Smasher.

They pulled up songs from all three albums which formed a brilliant set and finished on a joyful and euphoric ‘If I lose myself’ from the new album ‘Native’ (which is great) and a confetti canon (which you don’t see enough of nowadays, in my opinion).

Awesome.

Brixpig x