INTERVIEW: OneRepublic Remembers When They Were 'Kids'

By Nicole Mastrogiannis

October 20, 2016

Have you ever thought back to when you were a kid? OneRepublic has, and they wrote a song about it. "Kids" is the band's new song and is the second single off of their fourth studio album Oh My My, which was released on October 7th via Mosley Music/Interscope Records. The latest single, which was released on August 3rd, has been a worldwide hit so far, reaching the top 20 on the US Adult Top 40 Billboard chart and No. 1 on the New Zealand Heatseekers chart. Oh My My features 16 new songs, also including the record's lead single "Wherever I Go" and a collaboration with Peter Gabriel called "A.I."

[Buy Oh My My on iTunes]

On the meaning behind the lyrics for "Kids"

"Kids is an autobiographical story about kids. It's about when I was 20-ish. It's like a stream of consciousness telling a story about a very narrow window in time in between semesters during summer break. Just a ridiculous amazing summer, and experience with a bunch of my closest friends, and we were looking forward in the future about thinking about being our age now, saying, 'I hope when we're that age we don't look back and wish we could go back because our life sucks when we're older.' So hopefully, it just keeps getting better. It's kind of nostalgic, but also kind of looking down the road."

One of the song's lyrics is literally "Back when we were kids" -- so we asked about some fun moments from their childhood/teenage years. Check out what fun facts lead singer Ryan Tedder, guitarist Zach Filkins, guitarist Drew Brown, drummer Eddie Fisher, and Bassist Brent Kutzle reveal below:

Back when you were kids, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Ryan: "When I was a little kid, for whatever reason I wanted to be the President, because that was back when Reagan existed, and was bad-ass. He was the most popular President, basically, in history, so I thought that being the President was the coolest thing you could be. Then, it kind of progressed ... like in middle school, I wanted to be an actor. Mostly being an actor for years and years and years, and then eventually a musician."

Zach: "I wanted to be a professional soccer player."

Brent: "Always a musician."

Drew: "Man, first love, I really wanted to be either an architect, or a car designer. I played with too many Legos."

Eddie: "Professional motocross rider, or a football player."

When you were kids, what was your favorite thing to do after school?

Eddie: "Skateboard."

Ryan: "I would run into the house ... this is so funny. I'd go straight to the fridge and I was going for ... like 'give me my Jell-O pudding cup!' That was my immediate, like, 'Don't talk to me. Get out of my way. I want to have my treat." And then watching one of a couple of television shows, hitting up my best friends to see if they wanted to go mountain biking. I was like pretty much on my mountain bike every day after school."

Drew: "I think I spent more elective time on a bike from the ages of like 5 to 15 than any other thing."

Zach: "My friends and I would go through various different trends in the neighborhood. We'd spend probably a month obsessed with baseball, and we would play every day constantly until, one day, we decided that we're sick of this, let's play soccer. And then that would be the trend for the month, and then the next trend would be like making tracks in the dirt for our remote-controlled four-wheeling trucks. So it was a constant shift in trends in the neighborhood."

When you were kids, what was your go-to food?

Brent: "Mac and cheese."

Ryan: "Chicken fingers! That's mine. Chicken fingers is my go-to. If I'm going to have a comfort food that I know is not good for me, it's chicken fingers."

Drew: "Ryan's move is to order chicken fingers at any drop of a hat occasion and then kind of make sure that he and everybody else is, you know, complicit in it. Like, 'Hey, you guys, I've got all of us those chicken fingers that we all love.'"

Zach: "Donuts. Still donuts."

Drew: "We haven't grown up a lot, I'm now realizing ..."

When you were kids, what was your favorite artist or song?

Ryan: "The song, 'Kids,' is about being, let's say 19 to 22, like college age -- around that age, which is I think the oldest you can be and still be called a kid. That time, I think I was discovering blues, so I was massively into Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters and BB King, and then I was really into Brit rock, so I was into Oasis. I was a hardcore Oasis [fan]."

Zach: "I used to love Phil Collins's 'Let It Rain' because of the guitar solo."

When you were kids, what posters did you have in your bedroom?

Zach: "Michael Jordan."

Eddie: "Alyssa Milano. And I had The Iceman."

Ryan: "I had movie posters, so I would go to the local movie theater. I was obsessed films, I wanted to be an actor. So I would go to the local movie theater in Oklahoma, and I would just kind of work my way in with the manager of the theater to ... 'When you're done with the posters, when you take them down, can I have them?' And, whenever they would switch stuff out, I'd go to the theater, and if I was lucky, they would hand me two or three of the current release movie posters, and just say, 'Here.' Because they would throw them away. I still have the collection."

*On his favorite movie poster: "It was Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I think that came out actually way before I started collecting posters, it was like '89 or '90. But I found that one, it was in the closet of one of these theaters. It was like, 'Hey, this is from like forever ago, but you can take this.' So I had those up on my walls until I was 18. Until I went to college."

When you were kids, what did you get in trouble for?

Zach: "I threw a lot of rocks. My parents did not like that. Not at people. I just like throwing things and they hated that, because eventually you're going to hit someone with a rock."

Brent: "I always spent all of my allowance at the ice cream truck. Just in one [shot]." (FYI, his go-to were the Mickey Mouse ice cream pop and Otter pops)

Ryan: "Talking back, because I was a smart ass."

Eddie: "Yeah. It's like *Breathes* - grounded."

Drew: "Yeah, I had a pretty bad mouth. I loved, you know, the spoken word as a child."