​OneRepublic live in South Africa video coming

21st Jan 2018
Tags: Music News OneRepublic Rock

OneRepublic will have 'Live In South Africa' released on DVD and Blu-ray on 23rd February. 

This milestone show for the band was recorded live in Johannesburg, South Africa at The Ticketpro Dome (then known as The Coca-Cola Dome), in the closing stages of their Native World Tour. Read a press release, "Having been on the road at that point for over two years, the band brought their stadium-ready anthems and muscular live sound to 20,000 fervent fans in an explosion of light and sound; and performed hit after hit with contagious energy, including 'Counting Stars', 'Apologize', 'All The Right Moves' and 'If I Lose Myself'.

The lead singer and chief songwriter of OneRepublic is Ryan Tedder, who in addition to writing hits for his own band has penned successes for Beyoncé, Adele, Leona Lewis and others. 

Ryan grew up in a Christian family and his uncle Mark Tedder is a prominent church worship leader. The most popular OneRepublic song so far, “Counting Stars”, which received a rapturous audience response on the Live In South Africa DVD, emanates from the band’s 2013 album ‘Native’.

Somebody's gotta be singing about life and faith.

In an interview with Billboard in 2013 Tedder discussed its uplifting, faith-based message, "I felt a responsibility to actually write and sing about things that have a level of human gravity to them. If everybody sings about sex and love and lust and money, then somebody's gotta be singing about life and faith and hope and things of that nature."

The album also featured the track "Preacher" which was written about Tedder's grandfather.

In 2017, Tedder wrote on his Facebook page about the pressures faced due to an endless sequence of live dates, recording sessions and promotional appearances for OneRepublic.

I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Ryan wrote, he "hit a physical, emotional, psychological wall. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not sleeping, on meds, not happy, anxiety on a crippling level and it was triggered from sheer exhaustion. I looked at a calendar, realized I had been gone 200 days of 2016 and still had 3 more weeks of being gone. From my family, my wife, my kids, my friends, basically my life. I also realized that had been the last 10 years. At that moment I wanted to quit, and almost did."

Thankfully, the album wasn’t cancelled and ‘Oh My My’ is now considered by Tedder, and most of OneRepublic’s fans, to be their best work so far.