"I was just talking to Max Martin the other day—he was an idol of mine, and so now he and I have developed a friendly relationship. The single greatest email I ever got in my life was Max Martin emailed me about a year-and-a-half ago and said, “There are only two songs ever written that I’ve told anybody I wish I’d written.” And he said, “You wrote both of them.” I saved the email!"
How did the OneRepublic song “Marchin’ On” get selected to be on Timbaland’s Shock Value II—albeit on the “deluxe” edition?
That’s really interesting. It was actually not finished. “Marchin’ On” was the last song that made the album, and it came about as an accident. I didn’t know that the album was even being made, and then all of a sudden I find out it’s being made and it’s gotta be finished in three weeks and Timbaland needs a song from you. So we did a song that we really liked that we were considering saving for our next record, and Tim heard it and he liked it but he thought it was too happy. He wanted something a little bit more somber. I just kind of kept beating my head against the wall, and tried four or five different ideas for songs. A few of them were great. I tend to not finish songs if I don’t think that they’re gonna be great. So I had four unfinished song ideas, and on the fifth one I just decided to do something really, really simple. I came up with a verse and chorus to “Marchin’ On,” I think I was in Minneapolis in some studio, and then sent it to Tim and he freaked out on it. He [had] asked me for a “Halo.” He was making all these references. I was like, I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna hand in something that sounds like “Apologize, Part II.” I don’t really believe in trying to rip yourself off.Why go back there, anyway?
Yeah, it’s not worth going back. That territory, for better or worse, was conquered. So, nevertheless, I wanted to give him something that had tempo, that was four-on-the-floor, that could almost be a dance song. The funny part is it was only supposed to be on his album. Our album was done. We had ten songs. Originally our album was only gonna be nine songs, and the album title for the longest time was 9. We even had artwork and everything, but we had to scrap that because two different movies and a book and all this crap was coming out called 9. So we literally added a tenth song.You said “Marchin’ On” wasn’t finished?
What happened was there was a miscommunication and the label thought we were putting “Marchin’ On” on our album as well as Timbaland’s album. And so they printed every single album sleeve with “Marchin’ On.” But the problem was, with the Timbaland version I only did half of a song. I did a verse and a chorus. So I find out literally the evening before the whole album was being mastered, it’s being mastered in 12 hours—and I’d just finished a show—and my manager says, “You’ve got to gotta go into a studio tonight and finish ‘Marchin’ On.’” I was like, hell no! It’s not supposed to be finished. Timbaland finished it. He was like, “No, we need a OneRepublic version now, because wires got crossed and everything’s been printed with ‘Marchin’ On.’” So that’s how that song ended up on the album. That song went from a verse-chorus to a full song literally in an hour and 45 minutes.
Read the rest on the link below:
Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone
Beyonce - Halo
Now an article on Kelly Clarkson by CBCNews reveals Clarkson's reaction to the similarity of the two songs and her disdain of RCA's choice to use "Already Gone" as a single. Here's a portion of the article:
Now, here's where it gets interesting - if I remember correctly, a portion of a Ryan Tedder interview with PopJustice conducted in June of 2008:If you’ve been listening to the radio lately, it’s possible you’ve heard the soaring strains of Already Gone, the newest single off All I Ever Wanted. It’s very likely that you thought you’d heard the epic song before, albeit in a slightly different form. Kelly Clarkson collaborated with Ryan Tedder on the track, a dramatic ballad driven by a pounding heartbeat, twinkly piano and swooping strings. Unbeknownst to Clarkson, Tedder used suspiciously similar elements when he produced another recent mega-hit, Beyonce’s Halo.
“Ryan and I met each other at the record label, before he was working with anyone else,” Clarkson begins, gritting her teeth. “He’s from Oklahoma, I’m from Texas; we got along really well and had some of the same influences. We wrote about six songs together, four or five of them made the album. It was all fine and dandy. I’d never heard of a song called Halo. Her album came out when my album was already being printed. No-one’s gonna be sittin’ at home, thinking ‘Man, Ryan Tedder gave Beyonce and Kelly the same track to write to.’ No, they’re just gonna be saying I ripped someone off. I called Ryan and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that?’”
The palpably frustrated Clarkson claims she “fought and fought” to try and prevent her label from releasing Already Gone as her third single, out of respect for Beyonce.
“In the end, they’re releasing it without my consent,” she sighs. “It sucks, but it’s one of those things I have no control over. I already made my album. At this point, the record company can do whatever they want with it. It’s kind of a shitty situation, but.… You know, you learn.”
Do you have any emergency global Number One songs up your sleeve?I think its safe to assume he was talking about "Halo", right? So to give you an idea of what has happened here from the perspective of a songwriter/producer:
I would say yes. At any given point in time I have one or two songs for other people that I do believe are quite massive. I'd love to go on record right now with one of them but what I'll say is that a massive artist just cut one of them and everyone's freaking out on it. I told people I was sitting on a smash and now everyone's gone nuts.
What's the initial of the song title?
H. It's one word.
I remember reading a Ryan Tedder interview @ Popjustice that was conducted in June, where Tedder was being coy about a certain smash he'd just given a 'massive' artist. He didn't let any details slip, besides saying 'everyone's going nuts' and giving the first initial of the song, and he definitely wasn't lying about it being a smash.
