OneRepublic will release a new album, Artificial Paradise, on July 12. It’s the “Counting Stars” group’s first project since 2021’s Human.
In an Instagram post soundtracked with a clip of the album’s title track, singer Ryan Tedder writes that the genesis of the album began in 2016 when the band wrote a song called “West Coast” in a New Orleans hotel room.
“That song led to a series of others over the last eight years that didn’t quite make sense together, but we kept collecting songs and we kept writing; as we do, in different hotel rooms and studios dotted around the world,” he continues.
He adds that many of the album’s songs were written “in the last couple years while we navigated a world full of artificial stories and constructs and paradise – all around the world and people’s digitally broadcasted lives and the lives that we create for ourselves and the stories that we tell ourselves and others.”
“And as we continue to talk about this new paradigm, the phrase ‘artificial paradise’ kept coming up over and over and over again,” he continues. “And it just feels all too resonant with the world we currently live in, and the aspiration of so many people, for better or worse.”
“Amidst all of that artificiality, we are trying to find real connection and real love, and a real story.”
The group’s current single is a collaboration with David Guetta called “I Don’t Want to Wait.”
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