Music Notes

Serotonin

My eighth OneRepublic track is Serotonin, a deep cut from their 2024 album Artificial Paradise.

It has a uniquely funky charm, seemingly the exact type of song the album cover art was designed for, with loopy, cyclical, "drifting through cyberspace" synths and quietly confused lyrics that have a mildly surreal and psychedelic quality.

The first thing I thought when I heard the opening lyrical melody and Ryan's vocal timber is: this is a Post Malone parody! Seriously, it sounds exactly like a song Ryan Tedder might have prepared for Post Malone and then decided to keep for himself. Either that or Ryan was knowingly imitating the other artist.

Now, this last theory is not so farfetched as it may seem. Ryan Tedder has a sense of humor, and I've noticed he's hidden little "Easter eggs" in some of OneRepublic's songs over the years. I'll give a couple examples from their 2021 album Human. In Distance, Ryan sings "I don't wanna ever need a map to you." He is here referencing the old song he wrote for Maroon 5, Maps. And in Savior, he uses the word "bridge" at the song's bridge, a subtle pun. Ryan is also a high-level producer who has written songs for and worked with pretty much every pop artist you could name within the past fifteen years. So, if he wanted to, he could easily have made a song in the style of Post Malone just for fun.

All that aside, I truly enjoy Serotonin, despite the simple, almost childish lyrics. The loopy moodiness of the theme and the music resonate with me, especially so because it reminds me of two Imagine Dragons songs which I love for similar reasons, Sirens and Peace of Mind. (Both of those are deep cuts off their 2022 "second half album" Mercury Act 2.)

The first night I sat down and put Serotonin on to analyze turned out to be quite a memorable night, with the song woven into a bunch of other things that were happening. When I hopped onto WdC some time before midnight, which I don't usually do, I shared Serotonin with LinnAnn -BOOk writer on Scroll and chatted eagerly about it. I think she enjoyed it too. It was fun to be able to bond with someone so different from me, on the other side of the country, across three time zones, listening to the same song simultaneously.

All in all, the mood of the night was very much similar to the mood of the song I chose to listen to: peculiar and slightly surreal. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the song. A quirky bunch of summer memories to associate with it.

Interestingly, Serotonin is an example of a recent songwriting habit of Ryan's, what I call "burning the bridge." Over the years, OneRepublic's songs have become shorter and shorter, until at some point I realized they're actually missing a crucial element: the bridge, particularly the lyrical bridge.

The lyrical bridge is a natural turning point in a song, usually coming after two sets of verses and choruses and leading up to the final chorus and outro. It introduces a new angle on the main theme and provides intellectual and instrumental depth as well as a moment of fresh engagement.

Taking a random 1R track, Love Runs Out from their 2013 album Native as an example, we see a clearly defined lyrical bridge. A random track ten years later, 2023's Runaway, entirely lacks one, having only ten seconds of instrumental transition between choruses. Ryan repeats this trend across a dozen or so different songs within the past three years, both deep cuts and singles.

The absence of this natural turning point in 1R's recent songs creates a cheapening effect, making them seem too short, overly repetitive and simplistic. For that matter, the disappearance of 1R's bridges coincides with a general oversimplification of their major themes, from the charmingly moody and cryptic lyrics of the early days to basic, optimistic love songs. Even the verse structure has changed, from longer poetic lines with alternated rhyme schemes to quickly stacked sound bites aiming more for catchiness than complexity.

I don't know if Ryan Tedder is consciously "dumbing down" his lyrics for OneRepublic these days to make them more trendy and TikTok-able. Maybe it's not such an unexpected thing, considering the other half of his career is built on the ongoing chart success of what he produces for others in a rapidly evolving industry.

Imagine Dragons lead singer Dan Reynolds, on the other hand, still uses the lyrical bridge as a crucial element of his songwriting. The lead single off of 2024 album Loom, Eyes Closed, includes a bridge which adds a fresh concept to the seemingly boisterous song, that of seeking solitude in order to work on oneself when the world gets too stressful. Dan often uses the lyrical bridge as a way to add deeper, more personal meaning and a different perspective to what he's conveying. If he decided to leave them out, we would be missing a lot.

Returning to OneRepublic and Ryan Tedder, I do remember thinking many of the bridges of his earliest songs from the 2006 and 2009 album cycles seemed to run on the same melody. I even conflated a few bridges over the years.

None of this is to say the quality of Ryan's work has seriously diminished. He repeatedly assures fans that what he writes for OneRepublic is the best he has to offer; he understands we're looking for something higher quality than average pop music, not merely trendy, but also somewhat transcendental. He is a master of his craft, insomuch as he knows the formula and sticks to it. Which, in his case, isn't a bad thing at all.

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