OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder dropped the wildest sentence in an interview, and people are quite rightly losing their minds. When radio station Z100 fished for some “secrets” about the band’s upcoming album, he unblinkingly replied, “We’ve got one song featuring Beyoncé and Adele, with a Chris Martin piano solo in the bridge.”
Ryan, you can’t just do that to us! That’s pop royalty you just name-dropped virtually unprompted – I’m surprised the end of the clip wasn’t the interviewer collapsing to the ground with heart failure. Instead, you can just hear Ryan say, “I don’t want to talk-–” before it cuts off.
This has to be BS, doesn’t it? You can’t tell us that someone who has been in the music industry as long as Tedder, someone who has written 150 songs for more than thirty artists, would just ‘accidentally’ slip-up with that kind of a bombshell.
We’re not talking an NME or Billboard interview here, either – this was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it backstage festival chat. Sure, the radio station is the highest rating in New York, but in the grander scheme of things…?
As crazy as it seems, the idea of an Adele/Beyoncé collaboration isn’t totally outside of the realm of possibility. Legends support legends, and Adele would definitely consider herself a member of the Beyhive. Remember when she split her Grammy in half to honour the queen?
Beyoncé and Adele would seem like ridiculous pulls for a single track, were it not for Ryan Tedder’s musical history with both. He wrote ‘Rumour Has It’ and ‘Halo,’ which he conveniently played at the festival where the interview took place. So either Bey was already on his mind, or they were dropping hints onstage too – which doesn’t really help us narrow it down.
Maybe I could suspend disbelief for a Beyoncé feature, but my limits were tested with Adele. She’s really going to come out of a four-year hiatus for a track feature? It’s just not realistic. Then he throws in Coldplay. It’s too much, I tell ya! Should’ve included the tooth fairy and Santa Claus for good measure.
Even if, and that’s a big ‘if,’ this turns out to be true, are we sure this is something we want? Society just isn’t ready for this kind of collab. This is a stellar collision right here, we won’t survive. It’ll break the internet. When Ed Sheeran announced his No. 6 Collaborations Project, people went wild with speculation and hype. Scale that up to Beyoncé levels and you’ll see my point here.
Only time will tell if Tedder is trolling us or not. Honestly, I don’t know if we even deserve that much sonic goodness.