How do you give the brush-off to other artists wanting a Ryan Tedder track on their album?
Now I just balance it out. I’m only working on stuff that I absolutely love now. I get hit up for songs every day, probably four or five times a day. And they’re all huge artists, so it’s really hard to pass on a lot of them. But now I say if inspiration hits me and something absolutely magnificent raises its head, then I’ll do something. But what I’m not gonna do is hand in a B+ song just for the sake of handing one in. So who’s getting your “A” material these days? I’m working with Adele right now, who’s inspiring me like crazy. I hadn’t written a song in about a month, literally, until yesterday. The less I write, the better the songs are. When “Halo” came about, I hadn’t written a song in two months. Then two months after that I wrote “Battlefield,” and two months after that was “Already Gone.” When I don’t do a ton of writing, then typically the quality of the song is a lot better. You’re very tight with Simon Cowell and you work with all the artists coming out of American Idol. W
