In addition to fronting OneRepublic, Ryan Tedder is one of the most sought after songwriters/producers in the industry. He’s worked on hit tracks for everyone from Adele to Gavin DeGraw and Maroon 5. When it comes to songwriting, Tedder never seems to run out of ideas. He’s accomplished more than most people will ever aspire to, and all by the tender age of 34.

We caught up with the GRAMMY Award-winning artist/producer/songwriter to chat about how he established himself as one of the leading songwriters in the industry. Tedder shared his strategies for coming up with fresh material and revealed his advice for aspiring songwriters.

How did you first become involved in songwriting?

Back in the ’90s I was talking to my dad about [Aerosmith song] “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.” …I remember talking about that song,  saying “Man, I love that song,” it was like the number one song in the world or whatever at the time, “Aerosmith’s amazing!” And my dad was like, “Yeah but you know Diane Warren wrote that.” That blew my mind. I was like, “Wait a minute! You mean Aerosmith didn’t write that song?” And he said, “No. Diane Warren wrote it.”
“Who is Diane Warren?”
“She’s a songwriter.”
“What’s a songwriter? What do they do?”

All of a sudden, I was fascinated by the people behind the song — the producers, the engineers, and the songwriters. At that point, I suffered from pretty bad stage fright so I thought, as much as I’d like to be an artist, I’d like to write songs as well and it’s a lot less scary. So I dove head first into studying song arrangements and song craft —everything from The Beatles to Oasis to Diane Warren — just kind of all over the map. I was probably 17 at the time.

So then you began writing songs?

I just started writing anything and everything. I moved to Nashville when I was 18. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I packed my bags right after the school got out, drove to Nashville, and I crashed on a friend’s couch for a part of the summer and interned at a management company. I was getting my feet wet and living in a different city without knowing anybody and being around music every day and that whet my appetite. I was sitting in class and writing songs. I truly became obsessed with songwriting.

Was that more of a priority for you than doing the band thing?

I’ve been in a band now for eight years and we’ve only really had success for about five years. The typical thing to do is, “Hey! I just learned how to play guitar. You just learned how to play bass. Let’s start a band. Let’s just start jamming.” I tried doing that with a few people in college and would always hit the same brick wall. The songwriting component was always weak.

It doesn’t matter how good you play or how good I sing or any of that. If the songs suck, none of that matters. I quickly became laser focused on getting the song down right, and I quickly realized the only way that I could do that is if I just did it myself. I abandoned the idea of being in a band for about three or four years and I spent all that time that people spend playing in garages and playing shows writing new songs and rewriting songs. That’s all I did for all four years of college. I decided that I wasn’t going to perform live until I felt that my songs were as good as anything that was on the radio.

Tell us about the songwriting competition you entered when you were 20.

When I was 20, I was working at a publishing company in Nashville on Music Row and I entered into a songwriting competition that happened to be coming through town. The four finalists would perform on MTV and the winner of that would win a record deal. I won the Nashville leg of it and then the finale and I wound up on MTV  performing original songs in front of Pink and Brian McKnight and Lance Bass and a handful of other people. I ended up winning a record deal, but it was a little early because I had spent so many years focusing on songwriting and I had barely performed.

Here I was with all these songs but very little live experience. That’s where my professional career kicked in. I moved back to Nashville after college. I started back up on my songs and pitching songs to country artists and Christian artists and pop artists and producing demos with songwriters for $300 – $400 a piece, trying to make a living. And then later in the year, Timbaland signed me to a production deal. He had seen me on the TV show and tracked me down.

How did working with Timbaland change your career?

I ended up in a studio with him for about a year. I started getting legitimate gigs producing dance remixes and hip-hop and started selling tracks because I learned how to make beats and that kind of stuff under Timbaland. I got my first cut with Bubba Sparxxx because I happened to be in the studio with Timbaland and Bubba. That one song paid for me to move to Los Angeles.

I called my friend Zack from high school who I used to be in a band with and I said, “Hey, let’s start a band.” I was petrified about being a solo artist. We regrouped in Colorado and started OneRepublic and I wrote “Apologize” right around the same time in 2003. I wrote two other songs and that made our first EP.

We headed to L.A. and started gigging up and down the Sunset Strip for about a year and a half and during that entire period, to pay the bills, I was a [production assistant] on a number of television commercials and studios. I was also writing songs from top to bottom, doing the entire track, writing the entire lyrics and melody and pitching them and I started getting cuts.

I started getting a couple first singles for new artists. Some of them came out and some of them didn’t but I was charging enough money to finally get my head above water in Los Angeles. Right around the same time that OneRepublic got dropped [from Colombia] I got a placement with “Bleeding Love,” I got a placement with Natasha Bedingfield, “Love Like This,” J. Lo “Do It Well.”

That all happened at the same time and I found out that Interscope wanted to sign us as a band and put out Dreaming Out Loud, our first album. So it probably took me about two years in Nashville and about three years in L.A. for it to finally all come together, but that’s the full story. Once “Apologize” and “Bleeding Love” came out, I didn’t have to fight as hard to have people consider my songs.

What do you do to keep your songwriting ideas fresh?

I never stop writing. That’s the main answer. I literally never stop writing.

I’m staring at a Pro Tools session right now looking at a track that I’m working on. I just approved a mix for Maroon 5’s new single “Love Somebody” five minutes before I called you.

I don’t really believe in writer’s block. Writer’s block happens if you’re very superstitious and you need the right candle, the right room, the right weather, the right elements. For me, I travel excessively. I travelled about 40,000 miles in the last 30 days from Australia to Sweden, all over Europe to L.A. to New York and back to Europe and now I’m sitting in Paris. I’m working in my hotel room, so that’s how I stay fresh. I try to be aware somewhat of what’s happening out in radio land and all that but I don’t want to be too aware or it almost freaks you out.

Do you stay in one niche or do you jump around?

I’m all over the map. I jump around from genre to genre all day long. Yesterday I was working on a brand new song with Sebastian Ingrosso from Swedish House Mafia and I was working on Churchill. Today I’m working on Gavin DeGraw.

I could never do the same style of music, the same genre — that would bore me to tears. I’m interested in new music and I’m constantly looking for new bands and new music. I get inspired by that all the time.

You mentioned that you use Pro Tools right now. What are some of your must have tools and gear that you use?

I have a library of about one terabyte of samples. When I travel, I don’t always have the luxury of having a piano or a bunch of vintage analog synths at my disposal or drums. I have tons and tons of stems and sessions and samples from every band and artist you can imagine combined with modern dance stuff that everybody has. I’ve got tons of plug ins. Tons of software synths. I travel with an electric guitar and an Apogee Duet and SM57 microphone. I’ve got the fastest Macintosh computer. I’ve maxed out the ram and I’ve replaced both hard drives and the optical drive with two separate one terabyte internal [solid state] drives.

I travel with two terabytes worth of internal drive space that allows me to literally get on an airplane, plug my headphones into my computer, plug my iLok into a laptop and that’s it.  At that point, I’m making music and it takes all of 30 seconds.

As a producer, how do you decide if you want to work with an artist or not?

There’s a million different components. I want to hear a voice that fits a good song and emotionally sells a record. I want to hear a voice that I can believe. They can sing “Happy Birthday” and it would be the happiest birthday of all time. So that’s one side of it, and then the flip side of it is the challenge.

My favorite is working with the Fergies and the Adeles, the James Morrisons, Gavin DeGraws, Beyoncés— the great vocalists of the modern era. Those artists are the most fun to work with but I also love the challenge of somebody saying, “Hey, Avicii is looking for his next single. He wants you to take a stab at this track that he thinks could be a hit.” I love the challenge of that or, “Lupe Fiasco needs a track in an hour and Mark Foster from Foster The People wants to collaborate on a hip-hop record.” I love that, too.

I’m motivated by so many factors and it’s not just one. I’m 50/50 motivated by heart and the challenge. Can I write songs that I don’t even think I’m capable of writing? I’m just as motivated by that. I love giant curveballs.

At this point in your career are most of your referrals through word of mouth or do you deal with a management team that helps you to market yourself?

I put a ton of ads out on Craigslist. [laughs] No, I don’t market myself or advertise myself. It’s all word of mouth.

What about social media?

We’re on Twitter a dozen times a day. Between Twitter and Facebook, we have about  3.5 million followers. I find out about new music through our fans. I find out how our records are doing from our fans. They know more about what’s happening with my career than I do as an artist. I don’t know how many records are sold until somebody tells me and usually it’s a hardcore fan.

For me, social media is pretty much everything. I mean that’s how my band broke! We broke through Myspace so the Internet is kind of our world.

What would your advice be for an up-and-coming songwriter? How can they get their music out there and heard?

It’s different for everybody. What I do for myself might not work for everybody. My M.O. has always been “just say yes.” I said yes to everything — any opportunity, any gig.

I was the guy who said yes. Labels knew they could count on me. They’d call me and no matter how out there, I was going to do my damndest to fulfill it. “Do a song for J. Lo?” I’ve never written anything in my life that sounds like anything she would ever sing but guess what, I’m your guy. I’m gonna do it. And because of that, I ended up with my first big cut, which was her single from like five years ago. “Hey we need a dance record with Swedish House Mafia for Sebastian Ingrosso.” Well, I don’t really write dance music but guess what? I’m going to do it. And it turned out to be successful.

If you don’t say yes, if you don’t at least take a swing, there are 10 people lined up behind you that will take that swing. It just comes down to what you want to do, but whatever you want to do, my advice would be to say yes. Dive in!

What about location? To make it in the industry do you need to be in a big city?

You have to leave wherever it is you live and get your ass to L.A., New York or Nashville. People that try, the only thing that frustrates me is when someone in like upstate Michigan or Wisconsin tells me how their entire life’s ambition is to be a songwriter and they are 25. I’m like, what are you doing now? You should be in Los Angeles. You should be in Nashville. They are not going to come to you.

If you’re an artist, it doesn’t matter. Start a band no matter where it is, but if you’re going to be a songwriter, you have to move to one of the cities where songwriters hang out and write and collaborate and that’s all there is to it.

If you want to be a skier, you can’t live in Texas.

[GRAMMYs]