OneRepublic - Waking Up Review

Posted by Daniel Wilcox on 11.17.2009

The band responsible for "Apologize" is back with its sophomore effort Waking Up.



OneRepublic - Waking Up
Review by Daniel Wilcox

Ryan Tedder – vocals, piano
Zach Filkins – guitar
Drew Brown – guitar, bass
Brent Kutzle – bass
Eddie Fisher – drums

Track listing:
1. Made for You
2. All the Right Moves
3. Secrets
4. Everybody Loves Me
5. Missing Persons 1 & 2
6. Good Life
7. All This Time
8. Fear
9. Waking Up
10. Marchin’ On
11. Lullaby

Cast your mind back about two years. “Apologize” was inescapable, perhaps more thanks to the work of Timbaland than OneRepublic, but alas, the song put this band on the map in a big, big way. “Stop and Stare” was almost as big, and those two tracks alone caused the band’s debut Dreaming Out Loud to fly like hot cakes. Well now OneRepublic is back with its sophomore effort, and one that follows the same formula as its predecessor.

If fans were to judge this album purely on its merits however, you get the feeling that the fall of this band may be as quick as its rise. Lead single “All the Right Moves” is catchy enough, but its chorus simply isn’t that big and the tracks fails to resonate like the band’s aforementioned hits. The bigger problem though, is that that is one of the better songs on the album, until we get to the final couple of tracks that is. Then the really big choruses kick in and for the first time in what turns out to be a very long forty-five minutes, there is a glimpse of something, that intangible, that made the band so big in the first place back in 2007. “Marchin’ On,” is a song that big record labels’ dreams are made of, and apparently it is set to appear on Timbaland’s upcoming record, so expect that one to get quite big in the not too distant future.

The title track, however, is probably the best track on the album. Vocalist Ryan Tedder has a pretty big voice at times and its at its peak here, this six-minute plus stomper sounding something like U2 mixed with a bit of Muse, which could never be a bad thing. “Lullaby,” as you’d expect, is a soothing piece and a fun, if sedated, album-ender that serves to remind listeners of the band’s obvious talent, even if such talent hasn’t quite been displayed to the fullest extent on Waking Up.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album is comparatively flat, surprising considering Tedder is a song writer who has penned work for the likes of Leona Lewis, Beyonce and Kelly Clarkson. There’s a few more tracks that may perform well on the radio, such as the admirable “Everybody Loves Me” and the slightly less conventional “All This Time,” but as far as bettering, or even matching some of the efforts on Dreaming Out Loud, this record doesn’t really have that much to offer.

Almost exclusively, this is an album made up of middle of the road songs that very much adhere to the pop formula. It lacks creativity, which is fine, because this is a pop band; but at the same time it doesn’t offer up anything that you ever think may make significant waves on any chart, other than the aforementioned “Marchin’ On,” but even that is not as slick as “Apologize” and the like. In fairness, as soon as they arrived it was clear the OneRepublic were very much a band that had something of a limited shelf-life, but it seems to be the case that that shelf-life was even shorter than we’d initially imagined. Don’t expect this record to make too many year-end lists.

Essential downloads: “Everybody Loves Me,” “Waking Up,” “Marchin’ On” and “Lullaby.”

The 411: Without the big name record label and the Timbaland assist, this is an album I would probably never have reviewed because I would never have heard of this band. Nor would anybody else. And on this evidence, by the time they release a third album, everyone will probably have forgotten all about them completely.

Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]