And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 227: Ryan Tedder pt.4 | The Modern Music Economy, A.I. and The Future, and How to Win

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Today's guest is a familiar face... A friend to the podcast and one of the most successful and influential creators in music history.He isn’t just a hitmaker. He's perhaps one of the few people in the history of music to have hits as a songwriter, artist, and producer... completely aside from one another across genres.And The Writer Is... Ryan Tedder!In this episode, he breaks down:🎯 Why the middle class of music is disappearing🎯 How splits, streaming, and AI are reshaping the game🎯 The mindset you need to survive as an artist today🎯 What real creative value looks like in 2025 and beyondThis one isn’t just inspiring — It’s essential listening for anyone who wants to last in music..A special thank you to our sponsors... Our lead sponsor, NMPA, the National Music Publisher's Association.Your support means the world to us!And Splice -- the best sample library on the market.Hosted by Ross Golan Produced by Joe London and Jad Saad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was just this close to being completely checked out of music altogether. If you aren't passionate about this, if you don't daydream about it, get out. I learned years ago that the only way that I could survive in this industry, I had to divorce myself from my songs. That was it. But this one's such a smash. It's such a hit record. It's not even going to see the light of day.

You have to divorce yourself. The two things are the most important right now within the music industry for artists, success of hits, songs, you name it. Unique world building around the artist and super fandom. When you get it right, you're unstoppable. Let's get our hands dirty. What are the stats, man? You are making the equivalent of 60 grand, and that's a smash in 2005 money, whereas the average writer of the same equivalent hit in 2005 is making 2025 money, 255,000.

Are you afraid of AI? My underlying fear with AI is... What's the worst point of your music career? I was just like, I can't take the heartbreak anymore of the music industry. I had no gas in the tank for my own band after our most successful album. My studio in LA, I was going to turn it into a real estate office. How did you get out of it? My magic trick that has me here today was...

This season is presented by NMPA, the National Music Publishers Association. Champions of songwriters and publishers everywhere. You and I talk a lot about how do we... create boost a middle class of songwriting. Let's start on a dark note. What are the stats, man? Okay, so this has been a hot button topic for the songwriting community at large around the world.

The analogy I gave was like, you throw one fry out, and there's a bunch of seagulls sitting, you throw out one fry, all of them jump. All the seagulls come. Santa Monica Pier, they dive on the fry. The fry is the song, we're the seagulls, right?

that is an appropriate analogy. So zoom out for a minute. How did this happen? One of the main reasons that this happened was I see it two ways. Number one, you know, look, there are genres that are more likely to have way more writers, you know, per song. When you're doing a lot of sampling and stuff like that, you can end up with 18 writers on a song. So if you're using hip hop as an example, definitely one of the culprits for like you just pull up the credits and your average writer doesn't know that four of those writers are from 1975 and three of them are from 1985. And then the rest are from 2025.

So you end up with 18. And it just you go, oh, that's songwriting. Right. And I told you how I started. By sheer luck, my dad turned me on to Diane Warren songs. I didn't know songwriting was a job at age 13, 12. and you know Diane Warren enough to know that when you pull up the credits of her songs

over 40 years there's only one name, it's her. So I got lucky in that my only window into songwriting was a person who was 100% her. Babyface was my other god. Guess what L.T does 100%. Now, had he given me some other biography to read on somebody else and been like, oh, this is the Brill Building gang or the Motown gang.

It'd been like, oh, songwriting is two or three people in a room, right? So just to give the backdrop, that's my history. That's definitely not anybody's history now. The internet and the lowering of the barrier to entry to recording equipment and gear is a huge contributor to the maxing out of songwriters per room. That seems like so counterintuitive. Wouldn't it be that these people have the access to write? everything by themselves. That's not the way the fish swam.

They could have. There was like a divide in the river. There were two pathways. 95% of the fish, for whatever reason, veered off to the right. And there's a handful that went to the left, but pretty much 95% went to the right, which is, oh, we're all going this way.

I want to hang out with that guy. I want to hang out with that guy. It became community. It became online, especially if you're not taught at an early age with the value of publishing us or a song. How can you truly be precious about something if you don't know it's precious? I'll never forget I was in, I mean, I don't even want to say who the artist is.

I was, I was in the room with a very well-known recording act, I'll say, in 2016. They had a song that was out and had been number one in the U.S. for four weeks straight. It was number one. globally probably total for seven or eight weeks it was the most played song that year at global radio or not maybe not most but top five top five okay it was a big hit 2016 2017 thereabouts they this artists this act had never had a global hit a radio hit they thought that they had interpolated somebody else's song okay Now, debatable if they had or they hadn't. I mean, I can hear.

I still can't hear it, man. Okay, so you know who I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. Okay, so anyway, long story short, they ended up doing very generous splits to who they thought the interpellation was, right? And by the way, gave it. They gave it away. They handed it to them preemptively because I know the other artists that they, I know too many artists, but I knew the, the other artists. Long story short, when they told me how much they gave away, this artist saw my face go white.

And they were like, what, why, why do you look like that? Why did you react that way? And I was like, do you, do you know what? I was like, no, that's, that's generous. I just kind of stopped. And they said, why? What's it even worth? And then they asked me the question, what's radio even pay? And I just went, oh God, oh God, I couldn't tell them. And I told them. And then I estimated approximately what that was worth. And then it was 30%. They panicked.

And 30% of a song that is a 10, maybe 10 million in the maybe short term. Yeah. Well, if you go through like lifetime and multiples and all that, it's worth way more than that. If you go through multiple and exit and if you sold it, it's probably $25, $30 million song. Yeah, you give this person, you gave away $6, $9 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that happens all the time. And let me get into the splits and why.

Talk about the middle class for a second because I can go down a rabbit hole in this stuff. And, you know, just to be clear so people don't try to guess who this was. This happens all the time. This was alternative act. I'll leave it at that. but with huge, you know, limited pop success. So, anyway, cut to now, okay? So when you have the internet and the barrier to entry to releasing music is so low,

and the, and you're growing up, you have two generations now, or one, at least one, that didn't grow up with radio as their discovery. Radio's not where they're discovering the music, right? It's more of a passive audience. so it's not you're not even they're not even when you're in these songwriting sessions with people let's say they're under the age of 30 they're only looking at the Spotify chart

now I look at it too to know if a song's doing well or getting traction we all do but they're only looking at it the media based chart they don't even know what it is radio one chart like be like dude you're number one NRJ in France and number one RTL in Germany no clue what that means no clue right okay the clue is that's that's going to pay you about five times what that Spotify chart is going to pay you. That's the truth. What? They have no idea. So when you're collaborating, when you're buried

entry to collaboration is the worldwide web and you have the internet, you have access to unlimited collaborators, you're grabbing samples off of wherever, you're, you know, taking sound bites, you're not really sure what they're worth. You're combining them together before you know, you blink, you have five, six people on one song and you go about your merry business. there used to be the barrier entry used to be you earned your way into those rooms and then people were very precious I mean I remember being in sessions in 05-06-o-7

that someone would try to add a third or a fourth person to the room and your management would shut it down and you'd be like no why am I no absolutely not there's a big a big band that I was close with where the lead singer was telling me the story about, you know, a producer and a writer who kind of our team came in to write with him.

And he's like, oh, what do you do? And he's like, you know, I write lyrics and melody. He's like, okay, well, you don't have to be here. Yep. Yep. And I was like, oh, I mean, the producer stayed. Yeah. Another writer just left the room because, like, this is a business.

Yeah. And this just generation doesn't, we're also in the era in time of what, would you do, don't offend anyone. And so we're very, very cautious about like not, you don't, nobody wants to be on the, the bad side of like, you know, that wrath. They're like, man, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they didn't want a third person in the room. You don't want that reputation. We're afraid of our reputation, too. So let's get to the numbers. And this is what I think is important for people maybe to hear. And then we can move into songs because I, I'm like, you know, don't want to come up, come across as

rain man with, like, like, like, you know, like. data because that's not why I got into music. I just like only when I got older did I start to zoom out and but I think it helps you write music and I don't want to because I want to get in these that part of the issue that you're referring to is that also album tracks have almost no value anymore and so people aren't seeing the value of publishing on songs that weren't hits versus there was a point where that did have value which we've discussed before so I think those people that are on the rise don't enjoy the success of the songs that weren't hits in the way that other generations as they got, as writers got better through the album track sort of ladder,

you know, they could survive on that. So they had this runway to learn and enjoy that and learn about the publishing industry. And now it's like, if you don't have hits, you don't know it. And we've even had a guest who is a very big artist who, you know, is a massive streaming artist who is like, who cares about publishing. Yeah, I've seen it. So, you know, like, when you see, there's a, that generation, even some of the people who have Spotify smashes, if they have some ownership on the master's side, they just don't even give a shit. I remember writing, yeah, if you, if you have ownership on the master's side of streaming, I had this conversation one time with Diplo

because there was a record we had coming out and we were having this debate and Wes and I are really close and so this is probably like seven, eight years ago and he was saying, oh, don't worry,

it's going to be a big streaming hit and I was like, Wes respectfully, like the other writers on the song do not have, do not have 50% of the master that you do. Like I was like, bro,

he's like, why are you trying to make this like, like, you know, get the radio plan together. I was like, bro, that's the only way

we're going to make any money on this. We put so much time is we got to get, this one we need a radio plan for this and it was a very radio hitty song anyway so yeah let's go to the numbers so the average amount and some of you can fact check me on this and i'm sure you'll use a i or whatever to do it go knock yourself out um the average amount of contributors to the average top 10 song across the entire calendar year of 20 24 was 7.2 7.2 contributors now that includes the

artist. So there are some cases where the artist did not write the record, but across writers and producers, which at this point, with rare exception, like, you know, for instance, on Miley Flowers, there's like three writers, and then there's a producer who was not accredited writer, right? That's extremely rare. So let's say 99% roughly, 98, 99% of the songs that came out in 2024 had 7.2 contributors. And I say contributors, really it's writer. you know six call it if you even want to round down but it's six to seven average per top 10 in 2024 now now watch the numbers that's 16.67% or 14.28% so those of you are looking for 100% of the pie when you have six or one of seven that's the percentages you're talking about

here's where the middle class gets destroyed in this and this is why I said in our last first half of this I funny enough I do think this is an interesting conversation those who are like oh my I have no idea. Go ahead and replay those numbers as you learn this. Watch. This is the business. Watch where I go with this. Okay. In 2005, well, first of all, like my first platinum record, I did 100% of a song that was on tattoo, tattoo's last big hit.

Right. And I was the B-side on the thing, and it ended up doing 1.5 million copies. So you can do the math. I made like 120 grand off just a B-side on a tattoo single, right? 2004, I think it was. 2005, I'm doing this because we're in 2025, so I want to use 20 years, right? It's an easier number for everyone here to digest. And that's about when you and I started getting into music full time, right?

So in 2005, in L.A., anywhere in the world, if you wrote a third of a song on an album that sold 5 million copies, you would make $150,000. $150,000 for one-third of an album cut on an album that sold 5 million copies. There were loads, hundreds of albums that sold 5 million copies. You could move here with medium ambition and land an album cut and get one-third of it. Because here's the important fact. Follow the data. In 2005, the average amount of writers per top 10 across the entire Hot 100 for the calendar year was 3.2. in 2025 the average amount of contributors per hot 100 per top 10 in the hot 100 for the calendar year

7.2. 150 million streams equals a million units sold so you can make this comparison. 150 million okay that's the that's the album or single equivalent to to platinum. I'm using the number 5 million so like a hit a hit album right you're on you're on the Kelly Clarkson's album 2005. I think that did probably 5, 7 million, something like that. You did one third of the song of one album cut. You made 150 grand.

$150,000 in 2005 when you factor in inflation in 2025 is $255,256,000. $25,500, something like that, right? Round up, say $260,000. That is a 60% decline in the value of the dollar since 2005. 60% decline because the government keeps printing money whenever we need it. So equivalent in 2025. So keep the number. One third of one album cut on a 5 million copy selling album in 2005 nets you approximately 150,000 or in 2025.

The average amount of songwriter is 3.2 on the top 10 in 2005. 2025, 7.2. the equivalent of 5 million albums sold is 750 million streams 150 million times 5 right so 750 million if you own 100% of a song

of in on an album cut there is no album cut that streams maybe bts yes is the only bts or taylor might be the only album in the world where an album cut might stream 5 million times or 750 million times sorry so if you have a song if you're lucky enough to have 750 million streams

you're and you own 100% of publishing you're going to you're going to make somewhere between 450 and 700 grand in there depending on what dsp it streamed the most on did it stream mostly on apple was it mostly on spotify so on so on so forth but let's just say for argument's sake 600 grand okay roughly 550 600 000 okay now if you divide that by a third you come close to the equivalent you landed about 200 grand $175 to $200,000 if you wrote a third of a $750 million streaming record, right? So 175 to $200 is approximately what you would make. So you're still 20 to 25% below what a writer would make in 2005, but here's the problem.

You aren't dividing $600,000 by three. You're dividing it by six or seven. So when you divide that 600 grand by let's just use number six, right? Let's just say round down. I'll be nice, generous. Six writers per song.

Round down, you have 100 grand. You have $100,000. But $100,000. Now think about $100,000 in 2025 money is $60,000 in 2005 money. And that's really, more often than not, that's a smash. That's a smash.

$150 million straight. Exactly. So the number is you went from, to compare 2005 to 2025, factoring in inflation, the power of the dollar purchasing, whether you want to buy a car, house, a hamburger, hot dog, factoring in inflation. The average writer in 2025 on an typical,

or 2024, sorry, in a typical top 10 streaming, a billboard record, a record that does 750 million streams, 5 million equivalent sales, factoring in six writers, which is less than, than the actual data, you are making the equivalent of 60 grand in 2000, and that's a smash

in 2005 money, whereas the average one third rider of a, the same equivalent hit in 2005 is making 2025 money, 255 grand. 60 grand, 255 grand. You can live off of one. What I would say, one can buy you, can down payment on a house. One might get you a car. but bottom line is getting a song that streams 750 million times in this era is crazy

and then then you better pray you better pray that they go to radio with it I have a song right now that's at we're at 2.2 billion I'm not going to say who the artist is on the label never went to radio 2.2 billion streams

I mean why would that? It came out it went viral a year and a half ago this is the thing like why would you ever go if you're a label, why would you go to radio on a song that's just printing cash? Because like you just it costs a fortune to go to radio. 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars.

Just everybody knows. So why would any label ever go to? So check it out. So here's another thing that writers should understand and artists and managers or whatever. Songs on radio initially started as advertisements for an artist's album back in the 50s.

40s, 50s, 60s. You would put an Elvis song on radio. You'd start playing it to advertise the album. That would trigger album sales. Only way you can get this song, go down to your local record store. Labels would pay the radio stations to play the song. That's the payola. It was legal until it wasn't because they're paying for advertising.

Like they have the regular scheduled programming and their news hour and their entertainment hour and, you know, all that stuff. And if you want us to interrupt regular scheduled programming to play music, you better pay us. So that's how it started. It was to advertise the album. And obviously then it shifted when radio programmers realized, oh, humans like music, we should play it all the time. Let's just, let's hear, here's Z100, you know. The problem is in the U.S., you know, different countries are different, but labels don't make a dime from, from radio. They make a fortune from masters and 360 deals. They don't make anything from radio.

radio is like the last bastion that's the cherry on top of the whipped cream on top of the ice cream sunday as as one label executive put it to me two years ago i said do you even care about radio be honest with me i'm not going to say who this person is do you care about radio and he goes not really man and this is label exactly and then he goes then he paused and goes wait a minute actually that's not true it it is that last push is like it really helps holistically for the artist when they're touring radio really helps an artist like selling tickets. Yeah, you want to sell it arenas.

You want to sell it arenas. You need radio. Power Radio. Sell those tickets, right? But it costs to go to radio in the U.S. is approximately top 40s, about 150 grand. Okay? Not crazy, but how many times can you throw out 150 grand before you're upside down?

You need to know that the song has traction first. So then a lot of times artists and writers go, why is there a dislocation between radio play and streaming? And I follow a lot of blogs and a lot of people are angry. They want their artists. They're like, already. Why, like the song's top 10 US Spotify. Why aren't you going to radio?

And labels still will go, if we don't have to spend $150,000, I don't want to, I want to make sure this song is sticking before we go to radio and drive it away. And then a lot of times what happens is the streaming story might come and go and then you're trying to march that song up the radio charts. The radio programmers, they go,

the programmers look at Spotify, they go, well, the song's dropped to number 40. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? So you miss those windows and then the writers miss out on the compensation. But the middle class for me, what can I do? How can I, so I've kind of outlined the problem, right?

Yeah. And I'm using real data here. We went from $3.2 to $7.2.2.2. From $255,000 equivalent income off one third of one successful song just from sales alone to $60,000, right? you know which is obviously tremendously terrible and when you factor in inflation 60 grand you know it's probably more like 25 30 grand right so it we can't we can't control inflation no but what you can control but here's what else got inflated inflation doesn't just you know

the CPI the consumer price index is what dictates inflation by the way inflation is also i think fairly false, two, three percent. The government can control what they put in the baskets that determine the CPI. So if you can control the thing that goes in the basket that tells you how much money is going up or down, that's rigged. Like, that's not fair. Anyway, that's a different topic. Going to inflation, how does the inflation, like financial inflation, right, the U.S. dollar parallel songwriting inflation. well it takes more writers now two times as many to just yeah two times as many three point two to

seven point two roughly takes twice as many writers to achieve the same to buy the same you see what mean it takes it's it's kind of weird it's kind of weird it's almost because we're pretty much in a two to one from 20 from 2005 now it cost you $200 in 2025 to buy a product that was $100 in 2005. We are now using double the amount of people in the room to achieve the same song. Are songs twice as good now, or did I miss something? No, there's some interesting things about looking at the songs that were nominated for Best Song of the year. I think it was last year. I don't think one of them had more than three writers or maybe it was two years ago. And that's so interesting. Lookers in the room determining best song.

Oh, totally. But I mean, the initial vote. is everybody. And then the, you know, you've got veterans in a room going, wait a minute, I remember when songs had three writers. But I've been in that room. Yeah.

And I do think that there's some of that. But there's also the quality of the artists. Yeah. That often get that songwriting nomination are ones that are, you know, the obviously the tailors and the adels. and, you know, some of these people, you've written, the Ed Shearans, like, some of these people, you know, tend to write with fewer people. Correct. And their identity shows more because the song's not diluted by five other, you know, opinions.

And I think that takes a strong artist, a strong artist manager, a braver record label, a more protective publisher. all these things need to happen versus like, I write really well with 50-50s. And whenever I book a 50-50 with specific writers, like inevitably some publisher somewhere says like, hey, can we add this person to the room? And I'm like, I think we can just do.

I write 50-50s. I can, we don't need the other person. And I like that other person. I mean, I guess we can add them, but why did we just do that? Yeah, I had an, artists asked me last week to do just me and them. And it occurred to me when the manager or label asked me,

would you do just a two-way with this artist? I wrote back, this is the first time I've been asked to do two people in a room in probably two years. And so I do, I try to at least once every three to four weeks do a 100%er myself. I did one two weeks ago. Right. You know, and sat down, I did one after our last thing. And it was like, yeah, it's refreshing. It was refreshing. You kind of, it's like a muscle, you have to prove like sometimes it's like, I don't, I don't, I'm a runner. I don't run eight, you know, eight miles every day, but every now and then you're

like, I wonder if I could do eight miles. And you just do it. And I'm not saying that, that's the bar. By the way, the bar isn't go do 100% songs or you suck. That's not the deal. That's not the I keep saying this like no be cautious beware of the vibe guy in the room

it's not but it's not even just that it's not just the vibe guy it's the fact that we're there's always there's that it's the idea that um and what you're saying with that

is the dilution of splits happen when not upsetting the artist by saying well you're not a writer on this not the guy who does co-producing additional production, drum programming, mixing, vocal production. They are not part of the song apparatus.

And it has become, there's a bullying aspect to it. There's a fear. Go back to the French fry, though. Yeah. The reason in their defense, I can kind of steal me on the position of the additional production, sorry, co-producer track guy. When streaming has diluted how we make a living so significantly, there's still that one French fry and we're all the seagulls, right?

And so that is the reason. It's literally grasping at straws. What's the solution? So, you know, when we've posted clips where I've said, drum programmers are not songwriters. What I mean are people who add to an existing song. Correct. Not the guy who's in the room who's like starting the song from scratch.

Who's really part, it was basically doing the, you know, the guy who's sitting at the piano in 2025. And somebody else writing a song with them. I can tell you some ideas. But the people who add on after the song is written, why are we so afraid to say no?

I say no quite a bit to those guys. It depends on obviously who it is. It makes a difference, right? It's funny, though, because sometimes you'll send stuff to, I mean, listen, I probably produce two songs a year that I get called into produce on, and I don't take publishing. Because I acknowledge what it is.

I'm doing production on this. I'm adding to the production. I've done it even with artists. I'm executive. cruising like Tate, where go on her last album, you'll find a song that, like, not listed as a writer whatsoever, but I did a lot of production on it. And because I'm a little old school in that way, and I'm not trying to eat off everybody's plate. And I'm also acknowledging my position. I'm okay. I don't need it. So I'm not trying to do that. I think that one potential,

well, two things. Number one, writers and artists have a very difficult time being straightforward with people. We're all like afraid of, kind of afraid of her own shadow, don't want to offend anybody. You got, if you're not going to be the person to do it, let your manager be the, the, the, the bad cop, good cop, bad cop, but you need to be straightforward with people. And I can tell you some writers who have held their ground for years, even when they weren't as big as they are now. And so is their management. Amy Allen's one of them. Like, you know, Amy, you know, Gabs. She just has, like, certain lines she won't cross. And she's, when you cross them, she gets pissed. And she, she will like dig her hilton and stick up for her own rights that takes a spine so part of it is

some people need to grow a spine and if it's not you then it's your manager and if your manager isn't why are they managing you first of all there's a whole other uh podcast about like a songwriter management that we could get into but like um ultimately someone has to be the bad cop and the artist needs to be protected and be the good cop it's when it all when you can but at some point you have if you have lines, don't let people cross them. That's number one. Number two, from a financial engineering standpoint, how do you create, it's 100% pie,

you can't turn into 120%. So I look at all the different pots, and I go, okay, artist, if you're the one who desperately wants this other person to come in and do other production, and you're going to add people after the case when we thought the song was done, which happens all the time. You have a pot of master point ownership that I don't have as the producer. I have my points, but you have a much bigger pot.

The label, hey, label has all the flexibility in the world, frankly, and I don't care. I'm friends with, I work with every label. I'm friends with all of them. I know all of them. I'm not, you know me. I actually don't go around bashing labels. But let's call spade a spade if the label needs solution number two the label needs is like production's not quite there we need to bring in you know I'm making up a name

we're going to bring in Mike Dean I love Mike we're going to bring in Mike Dean to do this thing or we're going to bring in Lewis Bell to do this thing cool it's not songwriting you own 80 points or 75 last time I checked you can afford more than anyone in this equation

those buildings are built and paid for all the decorations all the parties on the backs of songs they're the songs that built them period so how much will it hurt the bottom line to take here's an extra point in a half here's two points off the master's side we have a bucket of them to get this song to be amazing instead of mid we have a hit now we brought in lewis bell we brought in he's done production but like he's a he's a big boy and under stands like the song was fully written and done and Lou is one of the good guys and we broke him off freaking two points for additional production and also gave him whatever the case is 20 grand whatever whatever whatever it is right they they can afford it more than anyone the artists if they don't have a jv deal they're getting anywhere from 16 to call it 22 points so artists management are going to be way more way more saber tooth tiger about protecting those points some artists that were cool and they'll be like you know what, just give them a freaking point. But the labels have the, that's where you can push.

Well, I think the point should also sometimes come off the top. You know, when I've been talking about giving a point to songwriters, I think that point should come off the top, not from, you know, whatever the deal is, if it's a 50, 50 deal, 80, 20 deal, the point comes off the top. Yeah. And it reduces everybody's. 99. Yeah, yeah.

I think that that's where the songwriter point or the additional production point or whatever, sometimes if it doesn't come out of the artist's share, that it can be split in some way to take care of that. I've done that with writers. I've been, I started the first time, I think was probably a year and a half ago, maybe a year and a half years ago where I finally convinced the artist, the label, and everyone was like, we are giving this writer a point across these three songs. So it is doable. I think writers pushing for points. I will say this. Like, it's easier to do obviously if you've already been a proven hit maker right it's no different than increasing your fee your producer fee per song or the points per song the the the longer you get in your

career the more hits you stack up the more consistent you are the more your points go up the more your guarantees go up it's just like just like artists touring the more your ticket price goes yeah um it's easier to do it's harder to do when you start i hate to say it just because this is a town where like you can very quickly i know i'm saying good cop back cop you should you're manager should be the one sticking up for you or you should dig your heels in, read the room at the same time because early in your career, the worst thing that could happen is you get known as being very difficult to work with or your manager becomes, is caustic or something. You don't want that. The last two songs that I produced, I said to the label that I went in saying that

we need to give a point to the non-performing songwriter. Because I'm trying to set a tone that as somebody who's getting credited as a producer that I'm looking out for the person who has the least amount of protection in the negotiations. I think if the driver for the change for songwriter points will be producers and producer management who demand that their co-writers get taken care of. Now, obviously it gets really shady. and weird when you have six writers in a room. And you're going to have to say,

you're going to have to say, okay, one point divided by, or you're just going to have to read the room, be like, it's just too complicated for this one point. But in a case where you can limit how many songwriters are on a song, you have the opportunity as a producer to stick up for the writer who may not be where you're at. And therefore,

you can say, I'm not, this writer shouldn't be asking for it. I should be asking for it. I should be asking for it on behalf of them. It's not going to come out of my deal as a producer. It should come from you guys and you need to take care of this person because the song wouldn't be what it is without it. Correct.

It's just like anything, you have to start, there has to be enough producers to start pushing for it. And executive producers have the power, the leverage to do that more than anybody. Nobody is trying to burn down the house that they're sleeping in, right? It does us no good to be at odds or at war with record labels. There are partners. I see it as a partnership. So partnerships is a two-way street. So going forward, enough people ask and push for that.

It's just a matter of time. It's just like anything that changes in this universe. Enough people have to be loud enough for it to change. And I will say this, going back to the six, seven writers per song thing, we're not going to be able to, us executive producers and producers in general, we're not going to be able to push for point compensation with writers. it's just not going to happen when there's six or seven riders. I'll just kill it.

Divide the point, bullshit. No, it's not going to happen. So, like, the thing that I try to tell every writer that I've signed or that from day one and that it's currently signed to Runner, or my publisher's company, I tell them, so you're a great producer, you're a great track guy, and they're like, yeah, I don't really do melody or top line, though. I go, starting today, you do top line of melody.

What do you mean? I can't sing. I don't care. I don't care. Yeah, we could list a few great songwriters who are not good singers. Yeah, exactly. I don't care. We, you have to make yourself indispensable in the difference, what the internet has done

and what like crowdsourcing ideas and songs and collaborations, crowdsourcing everything has done to the songwriting community has, if I'm being honest, made all of, it's easier, it's easier than ever to be lazier than ever. Yeah, that's true. Easier than ever to be lazier than ever. So, well, I don't need to worry about updating my sounds and my beats or like figuring out what the new wave is on drums and 808s because like that other guy that's probably going to join the session, he's like the 808 guy. Come on. No, get better.

Just be better. Like put more time in, be more diligent. if you outwork everyone you will take home much bigger splits you will go further your career will last longer it's that simple if you allow yourself to just kind of be the one sixth piecemeal of every song I'm the guy that just does the saucy guitar shit

it's like get better man when um when we talk about the 7.3 one of the loudest of the 7.3 are artists that aren't writers and we know a lot of artists who are great writers. That's not a real thing arrives. That's not a real thing.

What do you think of artists who make writers sign NDAs? I've only ever signed one ever. I've been asked to sign... Who is it? You could, I mean, you could guess. You can guess who the one...

This is the moment it all melts down. My career comes crashing down. You can guess who the one person is ever. and I'm aware of other NDAs, like recently, of NDAs that were flying around for another act that was, you know, doing stuff. I don't, if I'm being honest, Ross, I don't really have an opinion on that. Like, I don't feel that strongly about it one way or the other. I kind of laugh and just go, okay, whatever.

You know what I mean? Like, it's everyone talks. Everyone talks. And so all the people are going to talk. talk about is the fact that you made a sign an NDA. That's just the way it is. Are you afraid of AI? I am uniquely afraid of AI from an existential standpoint. I'm very deep in it, like from an investment standpoint. Like there's companies that I've early on kind of bet on because I liked what they were doing and I found what they were doing to be interesting and unique. Open AI is not one of them,

by the way. So let's clear the air. I did not. Like, I've actually... As you took the helicopter and landed on top of our house. No, no, no. Yeah, I'm not... I'm not like... I have friends who've put a fortune into that company and I passed on that. But the... I think that we're at a existential crossroads as a species. I can just hold a separate podcast, but I won't go down that rabbit hole on things that are non-musical, but I will just say that, um, AI as an agent. I mean, I've already watched it. You know, in one post three weeks ago,

I watched meta more or less drop a timed grenade in the advertising and marketing entire industry when they announced that they are going to now be doing super affordable AI generative advertising campaigns and marketing, complete animated video, picture, layout for anyone selling on any meta platform. right, which will then cross into Alibaba and Asia and whatnot and U.S. and eBay and it's going to go on and on and on. That I've already watched. I have family members right now who's marketing and advertising businesses are imploding. The money's just vanishing like week over week. So I'm watching it in other interest.

I'm watching phenomenal benefits when it comes to health and medicine, communication. I use it daily, but I use it as now it's kind of replaced Google for me. I use it more like anything I'm curious about. Dual citizenship. Tell me the countries that are like the most beneficial for dual, you know, all this stuff. Given all the like global unrest in the last three weeks, I think I saw an article that like the term dual citizenship, like the Google searches for that went off the charts in the last three weeks.

I'm one of them. and even though I love it here. So I think as it pertains to songwriting, I posted something that Rick Rubin said yesterday or today. It's like, you know,

one of the last few things that makes us human. And I sat with a major, major company a year ago who was pitching me on their AI in the music world, their AI music product. And on the second, first meeting I was kind of blown away. And on the second meeting I had with him,

I won't say who it is. I got pissed. And I actually was a room full of executives from this company. I just said, you think I'm going to sit here and help you replace me. You're absolutely out of your damn mind. And I said, furthermore, the product sucks right now. And they're like, how can we make it better?

I was like, you won't. I was being a total dick. Because I was just literally like, I'm over this, over this as a tool. as a tool there's some new product that you know now you can type in type in prompts i was texting either circuit or somebody the other day we were talking about this one thing i was texting straighting dms with marshmallow i sent him the link to this thing i was like do you use this is like bro i use an older version of this it's crazy you type in prompts and it generates any vibe you want Now, I am using Suno in sessions, but I'm the one feeding it.

I'm feeding it. You're my original idea, and I'm like, I need this added to it. And what is it doing? It's saving me a buttload of time. Here's where AI can be tremendously beneficial. If you are, unless you were a DJ or like a artist who specifically wants to use a sample that pre-exist that you're using it intentionally, knowing you're going to be giving up, you know,

50% to 100% of your publishing, knowing that the label's going to get bang on the master. And sometimes that just is the thing that you're doing, right? Unless you need to do that, there is no reason to accidentally give up the farm on publishing or master sampling anymore, in my opinion, because of what the capability of AI has right now. And I'm not going to get into the detail,

of how I do it and how my team does it because everybody has their own sauce and how they do it. But I've kind of unlocked a way of figuring out how to create samples that basically the moment you hear it, you swear to God, it's from Motown, 1965, and you know the record, but you don't because I just wrote it. And so. Yeah, I think that we're, and I've, we've done that tune. It's wonderful. I think, and it's, I mean, it's so brilliant. We'll talk about it after this, But I think one of the parts that is legally complex with it is that, in theory, that sample isn't protected by you. Correct.

And so that means that, you know, I actually think any of these companies that charge you for uploading the song where you have commercial rights, you have commercial rights anyway, because nobody has those rights. Correct. They also, like, there's no, like nobody really, you upload that to Spotify. You don't make money just because you upload. upload it. Yeah. I do know that there's one song on TikTok in the last month that charted that was a Suno one.

Yeah. I'm not, but like for the most part, the one legal issue with using that is that someone could use your sample and you would not make money from that, but you probably don't care. I don't care so much about that. Look, here's what I think. It's moving at such a rapid pace. It's, you know, I can pick your analogy.

Once the dam has cracked whatsoever, you can't put the water back in. So I don't have the time in my life right now to sit around and worry about things I can't control. I'm also not going to be like the loudest person in the industry of railing against AI. It's coming. So the only reason I've had a career this long

is because it's just survival. I literally just like, whatever's coming. I'm just like a person who's like deflecting and like zinging and zagging like in bumper cars. And I'm just adapting. I'm like, okay, everyone else get mad and rail and rant, whatever. I'm just going to go try and write another hit. I'm going to try and run another hit tomorrow or today. And until someone says I can't.

Now what I'm not doing is at all trying to replace writers or producers. I have nothing else has changed in my songwriting like world or economy in terms of excuse me, in terms of like, oh, you know what's so sick about AI and music, I just replaced three people and I dropped three writers. Like, no, that's not happening. I don't see it as this villain. I'm also not launching AI artists.

Here's what I think is going to happen in the music industry. What do you think of AI artists? I think that, you know, there's a number of things happening like animated stuff happening in Japan right now that's going off like crazy. And I'm in Japan. I was just there last week frequently. So I see like the Asian market's way more open to that type of thing than the,

than the Western market is thus far. There's V-tube stuff happening and, you know, also anime culture is so much bigger over there. I'm more, my instinct leans more that direction. Like I'd sooner do an anime music project than I would in AI. AI still is too random to control it. I had a long zoom with the open AI, like the big, people who are overseeing all the video generative stuff. And I just kind of quiz them for 20 minutes. This is like a few months ago. Even they can't control it. So to circle back to your first

question, are you afraid of it? Are you embracing it? My underlying fear with AI is I personally believe that the line will get, A, they don't still know how it does what it does. And I'm talking about open AI. They don't know how it's doing what it's doing a lot of the time. or where it's going to go. Sam Altman will even talk about he's kind of quietly freaked out. Elon's obviously very freaked out, although he lowered his percentage.

He went from 85% chance of total annihilation of our species down to 60 or 65. He's lowered it a little bit of that, thank God. I think zooming out from my selfish music world endeavor like monofocus, myopic view, as a species I'm more concerned about AI because I fundamentally believe that it will blur the line between

you know as it approaches becoming sentient it'll blur the line between human and machines so quickly and I think that the convergence of the giant leap in robotics with AI are both going like this and they're about to meet they already have met when it comes to like um you know, weapon companies and drone companies and U.S. industrial, you know, military complex, they've already met. I go out of music and my brain goes towards decline and birth rate, and I actually think our species, I think that 20 years from now, when a lonely guy or girl can purchase an AI, a, like, crazy accurate, AI-fueled robot, I don't know how else, to say it, but like robot, that is everything they've ever dreamed of, that knows exactly how

to balance out their personality, and that gives them what they need and companionship and everything, but then doesn't come with all the other baggage that humans come with. We already have this, like, birth rates are falling off a cliff in Southeast Asia, and, you know, the U.S., they're barely hanging in there. So I'm outside of music going to come. Everyone's like, what about music? I'm going, guys, music, no, species. So for me, that's where I go. I think that there's going to be a... People will get married to... I think your grandkids...

100% think that your grandkids and my grandkids, there's going to be laws that will have to govern can humans marry AI robots? And it's going to start with, like, I kind of picture like the kind of dude who's a coder who hangs out in a basement who just isn't good with the opposite sex or the same sex and they're just not...

You know, we all went to college or our friends or know those people. And I'm like, it's going to start with them and it's going to be super taboo at first and then like everything else in the history of our species slightly less taboo with each passing year to the point where you're like

dude I actually like went on a date with it I can't believe I'm saying this I went on it like it's coming and then once that happens I'm more I'm very interested in how governments respond to like

the human the humanhood Korea's birth rate is like 0.78.78 children born for every two people. You're losing your population at, what is that, 120%. I can't even do the math. And that's a lot of countries, man. And it's a lot of countries. And I don't see the younger generation, young Gen Z is not stoked on marriage and family thus far. So I think my thing with AI is going to solve a hell of a lot of problems. It's going to potentially cure cancer. I want them to like put the, put the like afterburners on cancer, Alzheimer's,

ALS, get rid of this shit. Like come on. Our grandkids, I think, will be incredulous. They will not believe that we dealt with cancer or were, we're afraid of it, or lost family members to it. So that's where my brain goes with AI. And I think, you know, autonomous driving obviously, and I can go to a billion other things. You know, the advancement of warfare technology using eye as so nuts now that I think in a perfect world, it leads to a higher level of mad, mutually assured destruction. So we don't even need to, I'm hoping that it, this is sounding way too optimistic. I hope it removes the chance of us ever, of anyone wanting to go to war because there's the drone, the AI drone game is so nasty. You just don't want to do it. Yeah, it may have, it may have a similar nuclear war

type capabilities that if you have the AI capabilities to, you know, maybe it's that mutual destruction. Yeah. Yeah. But as it pertains to music, Lucian and Stringer and a lot of the guys that run the big labels

so far have drawn a line in the sand. When it comes to AI, we can't use them for music videos. You know, I fear for music video directors the most right now because Hollywood. Like we both live in L.A. check it out. You're telling an artist, you have a stable of artists, right?

You're telling that, like, say, low, low, mid-level artist who's recently signed, who doesn't, you're not giving them the budget to shoot the content they want, but then you're also telling them they can't use AI. How long is that going to last? That's another dam that 100% is going to break, 100%. And it's not if it's when. So, you know, the guys that run those labels, they've been there forever, they're smart, but they're trying to hold back the water. They're also, like, the amount of a quality AI is one of those things where they probably see a lot of the music videos that they get in. They're like, wow, this is fantastic.

And they just like the video and move on and don't even ask necessarily, was this part AI? Was that? Well, they're being very careful. They're being very cautious with it now, trust me. Here's where it's going to happen. It's going to start with special effects. Yeah, yeah. And then it's going to become location.

oh, I wanted to shoot in Nepal. We're not going to go to Kathmandu. We're at Everest Base Camp. How did you do that? It looks amazing. Don't ask, don't tell. Like, it's going to start with effects and then location and then eventually

it'll be like, this is a self-automated, prompted music video that I shot using XAI or perplexity or open, you know, whatever it is. And it's not if it's when. So the first thing I think that, unfortunately, I've friends that are music video directors who've been doing it for 20 years,

if I'm them, I'd be nervous. We're refusing to do that. We're still paying and hiring and whatever. But I think that as it pertains to music, I think that there will, I wish I could look you in the face and tell you that I don't think that AI artists will work or AI songs will work.

They will. We're not there yet. I couldn't guess. I would say probably in the next three years you're going to hear like an AI hit. The lyrics right now that are, I don't care what platform it is. All the three big ones, lyrics are trash so far. But you got them learning at a pace that humans have never learned out in history.

So it's only a matter of time. NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again. What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do with songwriters anyway? Well, unlike artists who can be unsigned artists, There is no such thing as an unsigned writer. You can be a self-published, a co-published, or a published writer. Publishers only make money if songwriters make money.

So NMPA goes and fights for you. They go to Congress, they go and support the community. They fight DSPs to get you paid more. That's what they do. They fight for you and they fight for this podcast. So thank you for fighting for songwriters NMPA. Thank you for fighting for us too. Okay, so I use Splice, and I'm pretty sure every producer who listens to this uses Splice, but if you don't, you need to start using Splice.

They have the most incredible licensing library that you can go through for any kind of samples you can think of. But they take care of their original creators. In fact, they just came out with a beta version of their AI suite. Unlike its competitors that we know that may not take care of the original creators, every time you use Splice's AI tool, It triggers a licensing event for those original creators. So there's not a better company that I can think of right now that you can use, where you can use the efficiency of AI and also know that you're taking care of the creators. And that is Splice.

You'll still need, this is why building a world around an artist has more value than it's ever had. because if a song were to go viral that was created on AI, and I don't think that it really will last for very long. Maybe there's something that's just so brilliant. There still needs to be like an, maybe there needs to be an artist around that, that song. There needs to be world. You just hit the nail on the head, though. Back up to what you said, world building.

The two things are the most important right now, I think within the music industry for artists, success of hits, songs, you name it, artists. World building, unique world building around the artist and super fandom. We are in the era of fan engagement, super fandom, and world building. Those two things coexist. When you get it right, you're unstoppable. You know, you pick your, Hib, I think, mastered the fan building with the K-pop phenomenon in the last decade.

Taylor obviously was crushing it from Chapel Rhone to Vincent Boone and so on and so forth. the unique identity, the world building, leaning into memes, all of it. Like, that's so critical now. It's not, it used to just be, this is a beautiful girl with a great voice and then a hit song. And you could, boom.

Like, put her on, put her on the voice, on Leno, put her on the voice finale, and the rest is history. If you don't do all the other theatrics and world building now, it falls flat and it just kind of comes and goes. But I think, again,

as it pertains to, will there be a successful AI artist? Look, there was a Michaela, the world's first AI influencer, a guy that I know, buddy I know, built the company. I think it started in 2019, I want to say, maybe 2018, sold it for 130, 150 million a year and a half ago. She was like the face of Dior and, like, Chanel, got all these brand deals and started generating crazy revenue.

The whole thing is AI. The whole thing is an AI-generated influencer. It was more like a test, like them building the company. It was like, how far can we take this? And that was in AI's infancy. Imagine what you could do now. So I think it's, I think that AI, I think the biggest thing in the next three years

will be AI influencers. Probably 50, 60% of the stuff that you hear now on YouTube is AI generated. I think AI influencers will probably supersede normal influencers. I think that in terms of music industry, that's the weird news. The good news, is I predict, I think, and there's a lot of people that think the same,

this whole AI explosion, there is going to be a massive recoil by humans back to being human. And what makes us human more than anything are live events where we're together. I think the future of live sports and music is going to explode. whatever, however good this year was for Live Nation, I think Rapino had the best year of his life, it's going to get 10 times better. I would double and triple down on live concerts

and live events and fan activations and festivals. I think it's going to go nuclear personally. In the next three, four, five years, I think it'll be hockey stick growth. And I think there's going to be more venues that are built. And I think that we are going to run into places that make us feel human. people will definitely crave other people.

Yeah. Until we're dating robots. Let's go with some songs. Let's talk about songs, man. This is crazy. We can talk forever. So this is your fourth episode. If you include this as part two as like as its own episode.

And I feel like we, yeah, I feel like we never really, we've gone over some songs from the beginning, but I just want to ask some weird questions about some of these songs. Well, not that weird. Yeah.

I mean, we get weird, but anyway. I was naked. Was that the reason? Wait, let's start with Ryan Teter in 2020 5 has to play apologize in front of

15,000 people. What goes on through your head? That's one of my still favorite moments in the show because I'm calm. I know that everyone knows the song. And I I really, because that was the song that broke us and that changed my life forever,

I take it in. And it is three and a half moments of appreciation. Sometimes I literally will say a prayer while I'm singing. And like, thank you, God, you know. And I look at the audience and a lit up arena or a festival or, you know, whatever, the venue is. And I'll just kind of think, wherever I am in the universe, Toronto, or Hong Kong and I'm just like, I can't believe I'm here. So it really is three and a half minutes of reflection.

Have you ever tried to count stars? Yes. You know, like anybody does occasionally absurdly, you know, on like a cold Colorado night in the mountains where you can see nine trillion and you just try to count, you try to count one millimeter of them and you're like, I give up. Yeah, I think you're at like $3 billion or something like that on that. but who's kind of three a three billion spotify yeah yeah that's that's that's still it's like yeah i don't

it's funny the the billion thing the the you know we used to be all be about like x amount of millions and like that was such a quantifiable number for 70 years and now the numbers just don't make any make any sense it's like you they're getting they're just getting ridiculous what's a better soundtrack top gun or the remake of top gun oh man i'm gonna get murdered i mean okay you know what Top Gun Top Gun, the original one. Because there's like what the remake has like two original songs

that's just us and Gaga. So like not to shit on our song I mean thank God for that record. But I think Top Gun 2 is a better movie. Period. Wow. Period. Yeah.

When did you decide that? Controvers. Agree or disagree? What's your take? Actually I mean the remake's incredible. I think it's no contest. I think it's no contest. No contest. Wow.

Yeah. Other than my undying crush on Meg Ryan when I was a little kid, that points in the Top Gun 1 round. But like I think the remake is just nuts. Did you ever fight the spelling on rumor has it? It was one comment. I typed it out. Like in the bounce that I sent Adele.

And she looked at it. She goes, I said, I don't know, darling. If I'm going to do this song, it has to be with, like, spelled properly. Like, rumor, R-U-M-O-U-R, hello? And I was like, okay. I was like, I ain't going to, and I was like, and I kind of looked down. I was like, oh, yeah, it's way more British. It's cool.

When the lyric of Bleeding Love feels like that might be controversial in today's world, like people might not say that. When you hear that now, does it make you feel any which way? The phrase, bleeding love. it makes me I know you cut me open and I keep bleeding and I mean I

I didn't know if you knew that song No I don't know that song Yeah I sing it every night I do like a chorus of it You know I have thought about the fact that there's like There's like two or three songs that I've had

That were hits that Lyrically or concept wise I don't think you could get away with now What are they? What songs were hits at one point that would not be today. Oh, that's a really good question.

Well, it's crazy because, like, you know, Battlefield, Dorden Sparks, that was going to be Rihanna's lead single. And, like, it, it was, that was, you know, at that time, things happened that made that entire song go away

from a concept and lyric point of view. And that is kind of a two-part answer to that question. That was a song that like thematically was not aligned with culture at the moment from her perspective. And then it came out and thankfully, you know, it did really well with Jordan Sparks,

But that type of production right now, I don't know that it would hit the same, that it would cut through. There's like records that I think, there's records that, I'm trying to think from like a one republic perspective, I think like a song like that was a hit for us like, good life.

I don't know that that would cut through right now. Especially, I mean, honestly, and I'm talking about like, culturally, it would sound just like, I hate to say, like, that chorus right now, sadly, people be like, yeah, but it's not a good life. Like, there's enough people that are bummed out about stuff and just like the world. It's like if I, I couldn't be just some random dude on a mountain singing, yeah, this is a good life. You know what I mean? Like, like, I don't even know if I could take myself seriously, right? Because I'd be thinking about all the

unjustices and all this all stuff you know what I mean like there's some lyrics that you just can't get away with now it seemed like a little tone deaf um and we're in the era of don't dare be tone deaf for one second you can't do it and um you know I think that there are some songs that uh though that I legitimately think that like still would cut through like bleeding love is interesting though you know uh sucker I feel like would could work now you know what I mean like again like something like that could work again. But I think that like, um, like, it's, it's so much now, you can't look at songs in isolation anymore. Because to your previous comment, my brain goes, but what's the world? Like instead of the end, because then I think about like,

Leona one, you know, incredible singer, beautiful, just one X factor. But I just one X factor is no longer a world that exists. I won any TV show doesn't matter. So I'm like, you could drop bleeding love. The thing that breaks my heart about now is so many of the hits that all of us

have written or been a part of in the last 20 years, everyone's like, no, a great song is a great song. Yeah, but 100,000 songs come out a day. And I guarantee you that the best songs that came out yesterday, what's today? music Friday coming up here this Friday there will be some songs that don't get new music Friday they don't get the page there will be a song that comes out this Friday that is by far the

best song that came out in the world that day you will not know that it came out neither will I what song came out with an artist that should have been a one republic song uh exo Beyonce and that's only because my demo on that on that record is nuts my demo like and I I plan on, I am going to release my version of that song. That will happen. We performed it one time at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony. I think it's on YouTube, actually. You can see it.

But my demo of it, I did it in a hotel room in like Australia and Sydney. And I remember when I sent him, my wife was with me, she's like, God, you could pull that off. And I'd have to change a couple of lyrics. There's a couple of lyrics that clearly gets a girl sing into a guy. Change a couple of lyrics. and XO, like, I was like, oh, when it, I mean, I got the call finding out. I was half hoping that it wasn't going to make the album.

And then I found out it was the lead single. They put that and drunken love out the same week. And I was like, God, I should have done that. You know, John Mayer's version is pretty dope, though. What's the sexiest song you've ever written? Whoa. What's the sexiest song I've ever written? The sexiest song I've ever written?

I did some, I have like, there's a couple Tate records. There's one that if it comes out, I hope it does, I think it might, I think it's going to. I know that sounds terrible because it hasn't come out yet. Like, for sure is like, in recent memory, the most innuendo record I've been part of in forever.

like it's like I listen like and blush oh my god let's see if we get away but like um some of the Tate stuff for sure because I'm like working with like you know an artist who's in early 20s and she's is a very

you know has a very sexy presence and and um you know exudes femininity and is living her life and has a you know a love interest and all these other things so so I'm a part of that world conceptually now

you know significantly more than you know I work with a lot of different artists but like it's like I'm not you know I'm not going to like sensuality land you know with a lot of other artists I'm working with fair amount with her Gabby and that's we got some good stuff there

like that kind of deal but um the most sensual stuff I did though for sure was like back when I started Because you remember, we moved here about the same time. Bro, it was all R&B. And I was signed to Timbaland doing hip-hop records. All my first records and beats that I, all the money I made was on hip-hop for the first two, three years of my existence in L.A.

And I was taking, making hip-hop beats and then writing, like, super sensual shit over the top of it. You know, the most sensual video of anything I've ever done was J-Lo do it well. The video was so over-the-top sexual. that my aunt told my mom she was praying for me. She's like, you got to tell Ryan I'm praying for him and that I rebuke this video. I was like, oh, God.

You know you've won when your aunt says, I rebuke this video. I rebuked this video. That's fantastic. I mean, the little gnaws, that's what I want video. That was super, super sensual too. The lyric is not sensual, but when Nas sent me the video, I was like, oh my God, my mom's going to,

my aunt is literally going to be praying for me. And do your family members still care about your career? Yeah. I mean, lately, they always care that they care more so that, like, they know that I've always been kind of a workaholic, so it's more like, you just need work, you know, just like take more vacations, chill out. They still care about my career, but it's not nearly like it was when it was,

you know, when I first started, because that was such a new world for them. I'm like, you know, put him on a plane and come come to some far-flung place in the world and come see me in Vienna. You know, it's like it was a different vibe. But my dad loved music and was a songwriter, so I'd say he still cares more than anyone because he's still just like, what do you got coming up? Who you're working with? Like, when's your next show? That's cool. We're playing Cabo this weekend and he's flying down to Cabo.

So, like, he's definitely way more plugged in. What are your kids' favorite song you've ever written? my my kids' favorite songs I've ever written um funny enough I've a 10 and a 14 year old they both are going into music um as far as I can tell

that's that they're full obsession um they like in the last six months discovered uh like all my back catalog for one republic um they my oldest is obsessed with native

which was our our big album, our third album. And his favorite song is a song I did with Cassius on the deluxe album. I was really, I'm obsessed with French house music and French house producers and writers and artists. That's my favorite genre. And so I became very close friends with Cassius, and then sadly, Philippe Zadar died accidentally a number of years ago. And one of the last songs I did with was this song called Something's Got to Give. And it's this perfect blend

between like One Republic and a French house producer doing down tempo. Like it's very viby. And I wrote it in Paris and recorded it at their studio. So if you want, if you get bored, Google, Something's Got to Give

or go on Spotify and or Apple. I think it's on Apple actually. And that's my 14 year old's favorite song and then my 10 year old loves the first song that we ever put out as a band when we were an alternative rock band. Back when you and I were like kicking it, we had a song called Sleep. It's like five and a half minutes long and it's basically

you can tell that I was listening to nothing but Jeff Buckley and Radiohead. And it's the most alternative rock record we have ever dropped. It's nuts and it's called Sleep. It's on YouTube. So that's my 10-year-old's favorite song. I don't know if the glacier hiking has saved some featuring Ryan Tudder's out there, but that would be somebody's. It's a target repack. Just saying, that's if we ever want to do a repack. I love that. The, my wife has one song where she's out when, whenever she makes a joke about, when I'm like,

oh, man, I'm a failed songwriter. She'll be like, well, you did write blank, this one song that she just thinks is the worst song I've ever done. Yeah. And it did really well. Like, I made some, so that's why it's funny. Yeah. Yeah.

Because both of us, we both thought this song was not. great and it came out and it did really well and so it's been like an ongoing joke for us that's hilarious is there a specific song that that your wife is like that's a terrible song or is there any song that anyone that you're close with is like that or that even you well you can't say it is it you don't have to say the song but like is there a song that is like a joke 100% there's a song that um no what it's like it's like it's not that it's like a, it's not that it's like a terrible song. It's a, there's a, a joke that I have, like, if someone's like, if you're like making the phrase that it's like, yeah, I know,

I know I don't, I know I'm not the number one songwriter on Billboard Hot 100 songwriters today, but, or this week, but like, hey, at least I did most girls by Haley Seinfeld. Like, and that's kind of like become like, it's just me and Zach, one of my old former writers who did the song together, that became like a calling card just kind of as a joke. Because it was like a third single on Haley Seinfeld

like 10 years ago. And actually she streams like, like she, low key Haley Seinfeld quietly racks up crazy streaming numbers. Her fan base is nuts. And so like I would like make this comment, like kind of say it as a joke.

You know, for no reason. I don't even know why we're taking the piss out of the song. But like, because I didn't do the lyrics on that song at all. It's one of the only songs where I did the music, no lyrics, no top line. I think I tweaked like two melodies. And so that's part of the jokes,

because I actually didn't write it. It's the most girl, like, girl lyric ever. And if you read the lyrics and then imagine me writing it, you'll start laughing. Like, it's uncontrollably. Because it just, you're like, how did Ryan? And because I didn't. And so that's become the joke.

What's the biggest surprise in your career when it comes to a song's success? It's a really good question. The biggest surprise in my career when it comes to a song's success? I would say where I was truly like, oh my God, this went crazier than I, like so much crazy than I thought. It's going to be a, it's going to be like a. it's a three-way tie because they're all the same they all I remember I had the same reaction

like what? Like I just didn't see it coming I'll go in reverse order from like most recent greedy Greedy to me was a record that it's like I would drive from the studio down Sunset Boulevard blasting it the demo and be like

I love this shit so hard like this is I love this kind of Swaggy Pop music, but like, like, we were already in the era. Yeah, nobody was really doing that. Bro, nobody was doing, nobody was doing it. Okay, so I was like, one, two things is going to happen. This is either going to go, or I'm fired.

Like, it'll be like, Ryan, thank you, but like, I'm going to go hire a different producer. And I remember thinking, but God, like, I like this one so much, it's passing the car test for me. I keep listening. I don't listen to my own demos on Loop unless they're hits. The only ones, I do almost two songs a day. So like I forget, literally forget that, I'll get a cut and be like, I don't remember writing that, send me proof.

Like, because I did, it's like, that's how many songs I do. And that one, I couldn't stop playing it. And I just remember thinking, I'm so used to failure at this point. Like, I'm so used to, I know it sounds crazy to say that, but like, I've embraced failure to such an extent that it doesn't affect me anymore. and I'm so used to things, the more someone hipes a record to me, the greater the chance it's not going to work. So I just had zero expectations,

but all the love in the world. And I did everything I could and I hit up my friends at TikTok and anything we can't. I landed in Udaipur, India, the day I'd hit number one Spotify Global. And I literally hit refresh. Someone texted me and I was like,

yo, check Spotify. And I was like, I literally couldn't believe it. I was like, there's no way this song actually is smashing and text to Tate. And I was like, so that was surprising. I ain't worried. I mean, of all the songs, of all the songs, I didn't write it thinking it was a Wonder Republic song. I wrote it for a movie.

And I'm like going, there's no way a song I wrote specifically for a movie is going to go crazy. Like in Wonder Republic. Also, I don't have any preconceived notion of what I am or what I'm not. I'm grateful for every day that we get the band. keep like from a touring perspective keeps getting bigger and streaming keeps going because people are discovering our old stuff when you get 17 years in on an act you're not counting on hits like oh man we're going to have a smash this year unless you're david getta so like the fact that went crazy

i told my wife this is not a hit i told everybody i told the freaking label i'm like it's not a hit you know but it's a good song like and then it went crazy didn't see it coming and i would say the last going taking it further back um uh oh yeah um adele 21 i'm quoting myself when we wrapped 21 i i was like yelling at my frantically my manager get this mixed we're about to miss deadline didda da da they go she goes have you seen this deal that xl's giving you it's like the least you've ever been paid for any song in your career. And like, you know, they're giving you standard points, but they're screwing you.

Sorry, XL, but you know what the deal was. It was pretty trash, even for then. And I said to her, don't you dare respond with anything other than thank you, my old manager. She's like, what? I don't want to say, you make four times this for a thing. I was like, if, if my producer advance on these songs is my, money that I need to live off of, then I've been doing it all wrong. And she said, why? And

Adele didn't mean anything in the U.S. really at that time, right? She won best new artist. Chasing pavements, though, I don't even know what it did at U.S. radio. I don't think it did that much. Yeah. She was like this random one-off British girl, and I was living in Denver, and I told, I said to her, it's my favorite artist I have ever worked with. It's my favorite thing I've ever done. I know it's not, there's hits on the album. This is quoting me. There's no hits on the album. She had played me all the songs. And I said, this is that, like, tasty. I'd had a lot of pop hits at that point. And I was like, I want to do something that, like, is what I would listen to religiously. I can listen to her voice on repeat. I listened to hometown glory 30,000 times in a row over six months. And all I cared

about was how much I loved her in the songs. And I declared there's no hits here. It's not about, I was like, it's not about the hits to my old manager. It's, um, it's, um, Um, this is one for my soul. And when it dropped, when rolling the deep dropped and the album went vertical, no one was more surprised than me. And Adele, by the way, I was with her. And she's like, she was cackling. She was like, ah, can you believe it? It's crazy.

Like, nobody just, I remember I had breakfast with, uh, um, where am I spacing on his name? I was just, uh, Paul Epworth in London. We, Wonder Public was doing a tour months later. Um, had been number one for three months. we grab breakfast and he's like he's like mate do you have any ideas going to do this he's not the foggiest so i'm i'm still just like what like we nobody nobody nobody nobody the impression is that that you have this ability to find the next project but and know what's going to work are you like forest gump or what how do you possibly always end up on the project

that I was like, what a surprise. It's funny. Watt said the same thing to me through somebody else the other day. I would say it's like... A fellow Forrest Gumpian. Feltz, Foss, Gumpian. Yeah, Watt, same deal.

I'm like, pot, meat kettle. I would say it's like this. Look, if I could reset 2025 to be like the 1960s and 70s, L.A. or the Brill building in New York, I would do it. My selfishly, my favorite days are when every room at Runner Studios is buzzing. You've got four rooms cooking, all the writers, or there's a camp, and I get a pop from room to room, and sometimes don't touch it and be like, that's out of here,

or move on, or I know what to do here. Let me fix this. That's what I wish I could do. And I wish there was enough artists that took songs like the 60s and 70s, I would like give probably that pinky, that one, not this one, to have it be where I could send a runner across town in L.A. to drop the song off to Sinatra as he's walking into the vocal booth or the Bernie Top and Elton thing, just like, here you go, hear the lyrics. I would kill to have that, right? Because that's functionally, I feel like what I was built to do. I just love it. That's not the case. So I've done my best to recreate that in L.A. And I would say to answer your question, because to answer your question how,

the reason I think I still pick, my timing seems to keep looking lucky or like figuring it out, aligning with culture, is I'm quietly mapping, paying attention to global, pop culture in real time way more than anyone thinks I am. I'm paying attention to it like a DJ, like a getter or a diplo, the guys that are bouncing around the world who genuinely are in it in tracking the guy, not the obvious guy who popped off and is the biggest afrobeat guy, but the guy that's coming nine months from now. Yeah. And so curiosity is what got me here. Curiosity is what keeps me here and I'm equally parts frustrated by the industry but also still

fascinated by it and that's it and so like with picking the right projects it's like you just you know when you play basketball enough like if you've been playing for a team long enough or just long enough on the court you regardless of your skill set when you first step on the court at some point you can read the court and you can just read plays and be like I think there's a guy running behind me right now. Man, there's this book called Strength to Strength. And I don't know if we talked about it the last time,

but, you know, it basically talks about, you know, these younger, use the court analogy, young Steph Curry or young Steve Kerr has this ability to just drain threes for the Bulls, wins some championships, becomes a bigger role player in the Spurs, wins another three championships. Coach.

And then becomes a coach because it's, You go from fluid intelligence where you're using your body and intuition, and you're just that good. Yeah. And at some point, you have some cognitive decline, whether you admit it or not, or you have some sort of stamina decline or something that starts to just, even just time management decline. Yeah. And you become more efficient with the time you have.

And you start to play the game and the sport. Yeah. And you start to become, I don't know, anybody who says, you know, anybody who says, you know, successful in the music industry that doesn't somewhat love the music industry. And they can say whatever they want, but you have to know the business. And actually enjoy it. I'm going to ask two more questions. I'm going to start with something that's a little...

I'm good. I moved my thing today, this afternoon. Oh, perfect. What's the worst point of your music career? end of 2016 and I'd say the talent of 2016 going into

2018 I had like a like yeah pretty much the majority of 2017 was the worst part of my career I made the mistake after Native

was our third album you know exploded once Counting Stars came out. Well, we had already done a full year of touring releasing the wrong singles until that single came out,

reignited the other singles. Like if I lose myself, Alesso did the remix, boom, now you've got the biggest dance hit in the world. I lived. Leverin's out, so on and so forth. It ended up because of I always picked the wrong singles first for my band. I do it great for other artists

for my own band. I'm not the best. And so we took what could have been a 12 to 15 month, very successful album cycle, and turned it into two and a half years. When we finished touring native in 2015, it was the fourth longest tour in history. Not a record that I want to have or be near,

especially as a dad with two kids. It drained me to the extent, and I was riding on the road nonstop, and then the pressure to beat that, became so massive and we made through that process my favorite album we've ever done

which was oh my my my but once again picked the wrong first single and which history reveals later right and this is at that time we're in that narrow window of time where well we're still there to an extent all the artists out there if you think you can drop a setup

let me just say this if you think you can drop a set up single tastemaker single and it's not the best song in the album you risk the whole album. Don't convince yourself you're too big to fail. You're never too big to fail. Best song wins always. Trying to like drop teasers and like we're going to get to it. Like you bit it can work. Put the parentheses around this. It can work, right? If it gets the internet and culture talking. If it's a culture record, it can work. But you run the risk of derailing the album.

No matter how you do it, if you're big enough, all of the DSPs, all the partners, all the radio, all the energy, the wind revolves around that first single. And then no matter what, there's a loss in momentum following it. So that was extremely relevant 2005 to 2016. We picked this song that I loved and made this crazy video. It was the wrong first single. Ended up doing okay. But not enough to like put it.

a jetpack on the album. So then we're really grinding it out. I end up going from two and a half years of album cycling straight into promo for the follow-up. And the promo lasted from September through second until December 18th. I was gone away from home all but like maybe seven days. And at this point, two kids. And at this point, already a decade in on One Republic. And the other mistake I made is that year I only did One Republic. And part of my, My secret to the band continuing to have success and hits is I never really get out of the flow of writing songs for other artists. So no matter, I don't sit down and go, what's coming in 2027? You just feel it because you never leave the river.

You know which direction it's going. That's been the secret sauce with Wonder Republic. I didn't do that for oh my, my. I kind of pulled myself out of writing for other people. I went all in, picked the wrong first single, doubled down, and felt, myself mentally unraveling towards end of 2016 because like oh no we got to do it again you know we know which song is the the big one we got to get to it before we got to it i flamed out i sat down with janic i went into the interscope and we had an album dropping in two weeks and i said i'm not going to

promote this album i am about to have a mental breakdown i see it coming i'm so fried i can't even handle it. And I'm so mad that, you know, I didn't take the reins on picking the first single. And I let the label choose. That was my biggest mistake. Because that is how it happened. So anyway, long short, that burned me out going into 2017. I'm also moving from Denver back to, I was living in Colorado for years. I'm moving from Denver to L.A., January of 17. And that same year, I walk away from one republic. Not sure. not sure by the way if I ever even want to do it anymore. Because the other thing that happened to me

and that happens to all artists and it's not popular to talk about but artists should talk about it more is if you write your own material and unless you're Taylor Swift who just literally doesn't run out and her brand is basically writing from her diary of her daily life

and the world wants it, my perspective in Wonder Public Songs were so much about my stories over my life on this earth. And by the end of Native, with five singles, and at that point, we'd probably drop like 12 over the course of seven years, I was getting sick of hearing myself. I'm like too left-brained to just live in that creative right space. So I would literally be like, bro, you've already said that. Shut up. I'd sit down to right one or public stuff. I'd be like, you've kind of already covered this topic. Are we going to keep doing this thing? And like,

I didn't have the agency to write songs that weren't my own story at that point. I remember looking at like, I think even asking Chris Martin one time, how, like, where are you pulling stuff from? And Bonn, I was producing a YouTube album at this time too. And I, and I, Bonn was just like, I just keep writing about love, different ways of approaching, you know, this. And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. And so I had nothing, no gas in the tank for my own band.

after our most successful album, I was emotionally fried at the point of like I had to get on like Xanax just to like even sleep because I couldn't even sleep. And then I go jump back into the writing for other artists thing

in 2017 and in three months I went from having six first singles across like six different artists. It was like the most successful. I was like I'm going to have the craziest comeback ever. Every one of them pivoted and then one of them dropped

two of them dropped three songs at the same time because Ed Sharon had just done it. And so all of my potential success in 2017, I didn't even fail. I couldn't get an artist to commit to anything because every artist at this time was just dropping two and three songs because they didn't want to fail.

So 2017 was disaster for me, emotionally and personally, which led into the beginning of 2018, I literally had been investing heavily in real estate for a number of years and reading books on real estate and development, the opposite of music. I need something binary that I can touch.

And for probably three or four months, I was going to my studio, which you've been to, my studio complex in LA, I was going to turn it into a real estate office and I was done. I was just like, I can't take the heartbreak anymore

of the music industry. I can't take it. Like the wheels have come off, artists will do whatever they want, they won't listen to A&Rs, they'll incinerate a perfectly good hit record because they want to drop three at the same time. And if you look at the timeline of who I was working with,

you can probably figure out the projects I was either involved or not involved on. But it was just like everything that could go wrong went wrong. Everything. Even on like the Wonder Public Front, the video that we had for what we thought was going to be, the hit, the director hijacked it

and it became the most expensive video Interscope has ever shelved. He turned it into a political statement video while we weren't watching in Mexico City and derailed a nearly a million dollar music video on our behalf. So everything that could go wrong went wrong and

how did you get out of it? It's funny you mentioned Watt or I did. He was one of the people, Andrew Watt, Ali Temposi, Lewis Bell, Watt hit me. We had hung out the Grammys in New York, the year it was in New York, and done one song together. And, uh, and I hadn't talked to

him in nine months a year. And out of the blue, he's like, called me. He's like, dude, can we talk? I'm so sure. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, what are you, what are you, what are you working on? What are you doing? I was like, I'm not, man. I'm like, I'm just, I'm doing a lot of real estate. He's like, what? He's like, fuck that, man. Real estate. Like, anybody can do real estate. He's like, and I, you know, what would it take for me to get you to come over and write tomorrow. And I was like, I don't know, man. I was literally just like,

I'm just this close to being completely checked out of music altogether, other than Wonder Public Live shows. And he talked me into, him and Allie, talked me into going over, and that day we wrote Easier, which became the single on five seconds

of summer. And Charlie Puth came over and then the next day we did a song that became Winter Public, and then the next week we did Miley Cyrus and Angels like you and it just all kind of that would have been actually a little bit months later but like it all snowballed into a season of me doing a lot of songs with Allie and Lewis Bell and Watt and that was fun too for me because for the first time I could show up at 2 p.m. leave at 6 and I didn't even want to produce first songs ever that I had no production in I just Watt's like you want to stay and help produce but he's nuts he'll stay up till 5 in the morning and finish records and I was

like I'm not going to do that mean you just do it and so that was that was kind of, I definitely owe to that squad Lewis, Bell, Allie, and Watt was a big, they were one of the things. And at that same time, I had done one random song with one of my writers. I had helped fix the song that became the Jonas Brothers Lynchpin record, it's called Roller Coaster, on their album. And Wendy Goldstein calls me, good things happen in Paris, bad things happen in Paris, right? Sometimes triplicates. So as my first, session leads to, oh, I got five seconds of summer, had just had that Youngblood song. Boom, now we have easier. And teeth is the other one we did. I mean, that same time, I get the call

from Wendy. Now it's probably, I'm probably getting my timeline off. It's probably later in 2018. I get a call from Wendy Goldstein saying, what do you think if I was to tell you that the Jonas brothers are coming back and doing a surprise comeback? and we just sign them. What would you think about executive producing their comeback record doing my best

Wendy Goldstein? Would that be interesting to you? And I said, let me think about it. And I said, why don't I send you a few more songs to see if we're even on the same page? And that day I sent her sucker.

So that was kind of 2016, off a cliff going down in flames. 2017, absolutely atrocious. Like, screw the music industry. 2018, back. And then I, since 2018, I've kind of just made a mental decision. I literally looked in the mirror one day and I go, stop being a bitch. Stop complaining. It is what it is. Like, either

shut up and play the game and be smarter and just suck it up and just write my solution to dealing with the heartbreak of this industry. My magic trick that has me here today, was I'm going to increase, drastically increase the volume and pace that I... I'm going to work the same amount of hours, but I'm going to get better and faster at writing and producing songs.

Because, like, not to... Woody Allen's a divisive character, so I'm not quoting him because I think, you know, all the other stories about him aside. There's one thing that he said that stuck with me decades ago. He said, Woody, how do you deal with the failure

criticism of your movies and the praise he said I don't and they said what do you mean he goes I learned years ago that the only way that I could survive in this industry and not have my heart

ripped out from my chest because something didn't pan out at the end of every movie we throw a rap party like you do on TV shows and movies everybody does it throw a rap party I go out that night with the crew we have a drink toast we have a good time

I desperately want to go on vacation the next day because I'm exhausted and I force myself the next morning I get up I have a coffee I sit down with a typewriter and I start writing my next script by the time you've hated or loved my movie I am two movies further past you

I don't give a shit and so I remember him saying that and I was like okay that's what I'm doing and a lot of songwriters are empaths. We're emotional right-brain people, right? And you know me well enough, and even in this interview,

you can see I flip back and forth and toggle that switch. But like, I had to divorce myself from my songs. That was it. That's the only way to survive in this industry. You have to divorce yourself. But this one's such a smash. It's such a hit record.

How are they? Oh, my God. They switched the single. I'm going to be buried in track seven on the album now. What if, oh, my God, like, it's not even going to see the light of day. Oh, no, now they fumbled the first single and the album's toast. It happens to me every year to this day. Your 10 and 14-year-old want to do music.

Yeah. What advice do you give to a 10 and 14-year-old who want to pursue music in 2025? My kid asked me again last night about it to make sure he's super aware. and Keen and AI trips him out and he uses AI to analyze when AI will take over music it's so bad but um I I uh hung out with him yesterday at the studio and he worked on music and he was making a like a dance record he does like hip-hop and dance and um and I was like helping him like you know just giving him some commentary on the record on the production and um on the drive home we were talking about it and he said this is the this is what I want to do dad 100% and I said to him I said now do you understand

why I never pushed you to take lessons piano lessons like we offered it never pushed it I've never I was like can you think of one time in your in your upbringing that I told you that I said I hope you do music he said not once I said you know there's two things I'm not going to force on you is is passion or religion you know what I believe and he believes in God and considers himself a Christian. But I was like, I'm not indoctrinating you because it won't be real. And someday the bubble bursts, I'm to blame.

So with music, what I tell them is, if you're going to do music, first of all, I say, I don't care what you do. He knows the rule. I asked him, I was like, what's my rule about what you do with your life? He said, 100% passionate. I said, that's it.

I don't care what you do, man. If you make tacos, I want you do open the best damn taco stand in southern California and then I want you to just like rip like I don't care what you do just be passionate and my advice to my 10 year old who is there's

he's never going to do anything but music he is obsessed is start early um I'm not going to uh I'm not a fan whatsoever of nepotism and my kids are also the nepo baby thing and they hate that

so I just tell them I was like you know come up with an alternate name if you want to. Nothing will be more satisfying than the first check you get from your effort because you were great. And what I tell them is, AI, as fast as it's growing, the human component when it comes to music

will always be the most viable component. It will, I fundamentally believe that. And if you outwork everyone, same thing I think we talked about before, I said, Copeland assume that there are 10,000 14 year olds more talent than you

right now. How do you differentiate? And he's like, outwork them. I was like bam, that's it. Outwork them. So if you care about this and you're that passionate you control the amount of time and dedication to your craft. And, you know, I think I've made them watch

Giro Dreams of sushi three or four times. So good. So the Japanese approach to craft mastery is, I caught that too late in life, but I realized that I've really been pursuing that this whole time. And so I just tell them, anyone you work with, if they know a trick or a method or a thing that you don't know how to do, you make it your own. You take it. I was like, you steal that. Whatever it is, you put that in your bag. Now that's one of yours. And that's it. And I said, if you aren't passionate about this

if you don't daydream about it, get out. Because I said to my own kid, the last thing the city needs is another mid-songwriter. That's so funny. I always say that to my writer's like, you don't want to be part of the race to the middle. The race to the middle is actually going to be, because of AI,

because of AI, the race to the middle is the race to nowhere, period. Like there will know, it's like, we can fix it. summarizing the whole this whole time we've had together can we get less songwriters in a room

yes we can is there is there enough space for producers and additional people to be taking care of if people slash labels do the right thing yes there is but you you can't fix a problem if you're not aware of how you got there and the size of the problem

you have to acknowledge it exists and how do we get here to undo it and I think that's the most important thing but like are you a proud dad oh super proud dad super proud dad yeah it's like they're both i genuinely couldn't be could not be more proud they're both such good respectable people and intelligent and and kind and you know we get comments every time they go anywhere like all the teachers I wish all my kids were like this, you know, they call out acts of unkindness in front of other people.

So we've just, I don't know where, whatever the, you know, the molecular, molecular soup is that made them up between myself and my wife. I'm thankful like forever that it turned out to be their, my wife and I've talked about, they're both better than either of us. we started the podcast for part of the thing was that I was obsessed with this DVD box set about the Brill Building that my mom didn't know that my mom gave me this box set that was a deep dive into each writer that were part of the Brill Building yeah wow and I know part of why I wanted to do this was like man I've I've I wore those DVDs out. Yeah, man. And I was like, I really want to do something where we just interview our friends was why the first, you know, the first episodes were just the group. You know, it's just like 300 people are going to listen to this.

It's just our generation of writers. I just think it would be good because I think our kids will be able to look back and say, wow, these were our parents in their prime talking about like their life. craft in their life. They're craft in their life. Yeah. And I now know some of the children of those Brill Building writers, which is a fascinating journey to be like, oh, there's them and how they talk about their parents.

But what I hope if there's one thing that happens with this is that your kids can look back at that moment and know that the sacrifice that you've made for your family. has been about them. And so I appreciate you doing this podcast. Yeah, man. I mean, you'll be back on, I'm sure. I need at least two more hits and then we can talk about those. Dude, this is no joke.

I think you've had two number one songs since we did the last episode that we recorded that we haven't even released yet because we just recorded it. Yeah, yeah. It's been a crazy, I mean, yeah, I'll give a lot of credit. Do you remember, like, I don't know if there's like, if you look up, you know, Max Martin hits by years. And I just remember people would be like, oh, yeah, well, he had a lull here, a lull there. You're like, go look. Yeah.

Go look at that from 1996, 97, 8, 9, all the way till now and tell me that there's a real lull in any. That year that you were like, oh, well, it, you know, it was a. you know, he had, it'd be a Bon Jovi and a Celine Dion hit. It'd be like, not, it's like, oh, right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you kind of have like a career that's, that's like, that even when you're, even when you have enough time, we've probably spent more time together this year and then we have the last couple. And it's like, I don't know.

You know, it's interesting. Max could tell you, Max could tell you what his lull was. I could tell you to. it was after the after the world decided that boy bands weren't cool anymore and the strokes was everything he went back to Sweden

or was already there signed his own artist which he advised me to never do because it was disaster for him and that was his lull period because the world the pendulum swung so hard away from Bob yeah except for that band

three of those if it's not Carolina Laird no it's different it's a different three of those writers are massive it was a I believe a solo artist back in Sweden a lot of time of money

it failed nobody was calling because he was responsible for back street and insick and the world swung the opposite direction and it was I asked him this question

and he told me and he said it was I went ice cold I think I want to say three four years and then since you've been gone and then from since you've been gone

till now like I mean look all of us you know Max is a different beast and his his like hot 100 number one

which as you know is a completely different feat now than it used to be it's near impossible now to like predict it no one other than McCartney I think has outpaced him on a hot 100 number ones

and it's funny because what you get is the energy you put out is what you get he was obsessed with billboards and hot hot 100 number ones

from day one my best friend was the radio as a kid so I was I was obsessed and Omer and Blake and a lot of the other writer They know this about me.

And now they're hip to it because they know why. But like, I became obsessed with like top 40 number ones. I want to be in, I want to be. I mean, you have? I, I, I haven't counted in years. I know, I know that the thing that I was the most proud of, like, of all the other accolades, if anything that could happen, beyond the Grammys, more than the Grammys, and I mean this, like, the thing that I was, that has, for me from like a,

I did a mom thing was I had you know in the last 15 years 16 five of them I had the most played song at radio globally and that was my that's my that's my weird like thing because that was what I was obsessed with as a kid making mixtapes off of radio and listening to Casey Kaysom top 40s I was like I want the most played song I want to be I want to be in a tuck tuck in India or like Bangkok and hear the song playing

from the Tuck Tuck Driver Well I'll end this on on this I don't know if you remember I probably said it in the first interview I don't know but I was visiting

I was in my family was from Transylvania like from Western Romania The dude that literally this is the weirdest tangential thing The guy that when I'm in Europe and we're doing TV and you have to hire hairdressers

and you have to hire style, we fly in this guy from, I think he lives in Paris or London, he's from Transylvania. His house is two blocks from Vlad the Impaler, Dracula's house. Yeah. Crazy.

I didn't know you're Transylvanian. That's crazy. Well, it was Western Romania. It was Eastern Hungary and then Romania annexed part of it during World War II. and if you were part of that annexed region, you survived. And if you weren't, you were killed if you were Jew. And so my relatives in Budapest were all killed.

The ones that were in Timeshwara all survived. And so we went to go visit, like, see where my grandmother and grandfather were from. And I don't know if you remember this, but it was an old cell phone version of it. It must have been, well, I mean, I can tell you what it was, because we could look it up. But I was, we were looking through, we got to a, like, what's a restaurant on the side of the road

that was, had the world record for the largest bowl of goulash for a Guinness record. In Romania. We walk in there and apologize was on. And it was the first time I heard on the radio. Yeah. It probably was there before it was here.

Probably. Eastern Europe's crazy. And I, I'm sure that if we looked back at our emails, although it probably was like a hot mail. You probably sent me an email about it. I'd probably send you an email or text. I wouldn't have texted you. I would have called you or something. For sure, yeah.

But I do remember that moment where when you were trying to tell me to do writing for other people. Yeah. Like, I don't think I understood what it meant until I was like, oh, we're in a place that took, like, eight hours to get to. Eating a bowl of goulash. Yeah. And you hear your friend on the radio, you're like, oh, my, oh my God. Yeah.

This is crazy. Like, this is insane. And so I think what's, you know, you can, you're, you can be proud of the fact that you have the, had the top five, you know, or five number one songs. but I don't know if your mom ever had a goulash from that place. On that note, I don't think she has. I appreciate you, man. You know, shout out an MPA for supporting our group.

We're actually trying to figure stuff out. And I appreciate you, man. Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me. That was fun. enjoyed this episode. It was produced by me and Joe London in association with Mega House Music Group. If you liked this episode, go give us a rating at wherever you listen to your podcast and make sure to follow us at And The Writer is on all your socials. We'll see you next week.