Is there a much bigger pop group than OneRepublic in the mean time? For the reason that launch of their debut album Dreaming Out Loud in 2007, they’ve dominated charts around the globe. Frontman Ryan Tedder has additionally labored as a producer, writing songs for artists akin to Taylor Swift and Adele, and has received various awards together with a number of Grammys.
In Japan, particularly, the band has grow to be stars, particularly amongst Western music followers, via occasions akin to their first look on the rock pageant Summer season Sonic in 2008. Subsequently, they launched “I Ain’t Worried,” which was featured within the 2022 blockbuster High Gun: Maverick. The music reached the highest 10 on the US chart, marking their fourth prime 10 hit, and likewise made it into the highest 3 on the international music chart in Japan. In 2023, their solo live performance, held on the Tokyo Backyard Theatre in Ariake, Tokyo, offered out shortly. Constructing on this momentum, the group lately ventured into new territory, releasing “Nobody (from Kaiju No. 8)” the closing theme for the anime Kaiju No. 8 in April 2024. The weird scenario, wherein a Western group created a music for a Japanese anime, shocked not solely their followers but in addition anime lovers.
The lyrics, which delicately seize the feelings of the characters, are in English, however hyperlink superbly to the world of the anime. It’s attracted a variety of listeners: As of this writing, it’s been streamed greater than 100 million occasions. The music video, which additionally incorporates quite a few components of Japanese tradition akin to karaoke packing containers, has additionally grow to be a success. Tedder, reflecting on the group’s recognition in Japan, had this to say: “It became very obvious that things were getting a lot bigger for us in Japan in the last two years. And I would have comments from different artists, like whether Maroon 5 or Charlie Puth or Tate McRae, like, ‘Wow, you guys are like huge in Japan. I hear your music everywhere.’ d4vd was like, jealous, very jealous because he’s like a massive anime fan. It’s fun when you hear from people, you know, 9,000 miles away or whatever, and they hear your music.”
Following the discharge of the music, the band carried out at Summer season Sonic 2024, and simply six months later, they held a solo live performance in January 2025. Each occasions drew packed audiences. These performances solidified their standing as a serious act in Japan, the place Western music tradition has historically struggled to realize recognition. Ryan believes that flexibly mixing their music and productions with numerous media and cultures has been vastly necessary. “The reason I focus on these cultural moments is because there are too many songs that come out every day. And even if you’re the best songwriter alive, I could write the best song of my life tomorrow, and when it comes out with 100… and we have 35 million followers on socials and all that other thing, I could go perform on The Voice or the TV shows. But it doesn’t work like it used to. It’s not the same. And so for an artist like us, these cultural events like a ‘Kaiju No. 8’ is everything.”
“Nobody (from Kaiju No. 8)” is a masterful mix not solely of their eager sensibilities, but in addition of the environment of the anime, and the heart-pounding pleasure that listeners are searching for. “There is a method to writing for TV and film,” Tedder explains. “The primary method is, no matter what your inspiration is, no matter what the storyline is, if you are writing the theme to the show, then more or less, you are really writing the theme of the protagonist. It’s the protagonist’s show. No matter what you think you’re doing, if you want the song to succeed in the film, you are writing Tom Cruise’s song. His character. That’s what you’re writing.”
Even so, Tedder’s songs are by no means overly confined to the world of the work itself. Ryan’s rule in songwriting is to depart sufficient room for a variety of interpretations. “There are so many things you have to do to have a song really be a hit, not just in a series, but outside of the series. If I’m too specific with the lyric, then the average listener cannot relate to it. It’s too… we call it like, “inside the screen.” Like if I get too far contained in the display and I’m within the film with the lyric, it’s an excessive amount of. ‘Nobody got you the way I do. Whatever demons you’re preventing via.’ That’s Kafka [from Kaiju No. 8]. However that’s additionally a median listener who’s by no means watched Kaiju No. 8. They’ll hear the music and go, ‘That’s me and my sister. That’s me and my mother. That’s me and my child. That’s me and my finest buddy. That’s me and my lover.’ And that’s the right… if you get fortunate sufficient, you’ve a music that checks all of the packing containers.”
The music was not solely embraced by the anime’s passionate followers, but in addition led to additional work on the collection. OneRepublic additionally created the heart-pumping quantity “Invincible (from Kaiju No. 8)” because the ending theme music for “Kaiju No. 8 Season 1 Compilation / Hoshina’s Day Off,” launched in March 2025. They’ve additionally supplied the ending theme for Kaiju No. 8 Season 2, which is able to begin in July. That music is named “Beautiful Colors.”
Hearken to One Republic’s “Beautiful Colors” now.
“I mean, we were so excited. It’s smart for us, it’s smart for them because they know and I know that if it takes four or five songs to nail what they want, I will do four or five songs. And no other artist will do that. No one that I know, anyway. I just don’t know anyone that will do that. I’m so committed to writing for TV and film, and I know it takes a certain level of dedication to nail the perfect song. And that’s the level of commitment that we have to Kaiju. So I was very happy.”
As with the earlier songs, he crafted the music with cautious interpretation of the world of the anime. “I would say that when Kafka finally realizes what his powers are and what his responsibility is, I think that he sees… you know, I mean, he’s… he could be saying it to the other agents who are responsible. I mean, he’s a Kaiju, but he’s also now responsible for eliminating Kaiju. Kafka to me, if he’s looking in the mirror and he knows what he is inside, he knows what he’s hiding, he knows what he is. He is a Kaiju. So he’s saying, ‘But that’s kind of amazing, and it’s beautiful, and it is what it is, and I’m different than everybody else, but there’s a magic inside of me.’ And the magic is that he is a Kaiju.”
Tedder says that the music was additionally impressed by scenes and pictures of Japan that stay in his reminiscences: “What I thought of when I was doing the lyric, I was thinking about like walking through various streets in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto, and you see this insane array of colorful signs. ‘All your beautiful colors,’ apply that to Tokyo, apply that to any major city in Japan, the countryside. It is a colorful, beautiful, a magical place from an American perspective. That’s Japan.”
Tedder additionally included one other message within the lyrics: range is what makes the world go spherical. “If I’m saying to somebody, ‘All your beautiful colors, you know, I see magic coming through inside of you,’ to anyone that feels rejected or small or less than or not beautiful or not unique enough, this lyric penetrates them. And those people, to me, are infinite. It’s everyone that you see walking through the street who’s slightly insecure. And when you really get to know people and you find all the layers that a person has and you’re like, ‘Wow, this person’s actually amazing, and I never would have known,’ right? So this is aimed at those people that feel not seen or less than seen.”
By the music, he tells us that there’s a distinctive magnificence which may solely be discovered by going through your internal self, moderately than evaluating your self to others. “With the lyric ‘all the voices that tell you lies while you’re in the shadows building castles in the sky,’ I’m telling myself that I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not attractive enough. In my mind, ‘I’m building castles in the sky,’ which means I have big dreams and high hopes, a lot that I want to do, but I don’t think I can do it because I’m not good enough. And that’s what that opening lyric says. And that’s why, in the conversation between two people, the chorus comes in: ‘All your beautiful colors, I see them.’ Maybe you don’t see them, but I see them. And that’s what this song is about.”
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Interview by Naohisa Matsunaga
