00:00I'm pretty sure puns work in every culture, right?
00:03Yeah.
00:04Oh, technically.
00:05Pun.
00:06Drop.
00:07Yeah.
00:08Okay.
00:09It just keeps going.
00:10We love it.
00:11It just gets deeper and deeper.
00:17So we're going to do a couple touristy things, trying to track down a gold bar vending machine
00:23somewhere.
00:24They have one in Abu Dhabi, I'm aware of.
00:27They have one at the Burj Al Khalifa.
00:28Really?
00:29I can't believe it or not, unless they removed it, it's still there.
00:35Because why not?
00:36You're going to get my arm stuck in it.
00:37Yeah, I'm going to get my arm, trying to get my arm stuck in there today.
00:39Yeah.
00:40We'll do some touristy stuff and we're very excited about Jazz Fest.
00:44We'll have a little bit more time when we come back for that and more things to do.
00:49I want to go dune bugging.
00:50I want to do some other crazy Dubai desert stuff.
01:00By then, yes.
01:01Yeah, you will.
01:02By that show, absolutely.
01:04And we'll be probably, given the date, likely putting the finishing touches on the album
01:11in Dubai.
01:12Really?
01:13I mean, if I'm doing the math right, I think that would be within three weeks of our deadline.
01:17So yeah.
01:23I did not think it would go viral at all.
01:26That was really...
01:27And none of you stopped him.
01:28No.
01:30None of us really stop any of our jokes and that was not the least appropriate of the
01:39jokes that day.
01:40No, that was, yeah, that one was a couple of steps up above the Punjab joke.
01:50From the people who've been around us for a long time, who've heard a decent handful
01:56of these songs, I think you're going to be, based on their reactions, I think people,
02:01our fans will be very happy.
02:03It very much sounds like One Republic.
02:06It sounds like us in the modern world.
02:10It's not us mining the same territory that we've gone a million times, because I could,
02:16Lord knows I could never do that.
02:19But it is very much us finding our way in 2020, really, is what it will be, because
02:28we know it's coming out in 2020.
02:30So it's like, yeah, it's us finding what pieces of production and music today that we can
02:39incorporate.
02:40We always incorporate bits and bobs of what's happening, because it's just part of reflecting
02:43the world that you're in.
02:44And my favorite bands always manage to evolve and do that.
02:47They would evolve and sound like themselves.
02:49It's so hard to sound like yourself 12, 13 years later, to still sound like yourself,
02:56but also sound like you could be a new band in 2020.
03:00Those are hard.
03:01That's hard.
03:02That's really hard.
03:03But I think that we're finding our footing in that, and definitely going to give it all
03:09of our efforts.
03:10And right now, based on the quality of the songs, I feel very, very happy with it.
03:18For sure.
03:22I think our situation is probably unique.
03:24I think we have less involvement from our record label.
03:29They can hear me.
03:30Can they?
03:31We can.
03:32Yeah.
03:33Okay, good.
03:34We have less involvement and less people chiming in than other acts with maybe more development
03:45on that record label side.
03:48In general, I don't think anybody would ever put as much pressure on us as we put on ourselves.
03:55Without question.
03:56Yeah.
03:57So I think that's one thing about our situation.
04:01Even from other bands, there aren't a lot of other bands that are left at a certain
04:08global level.
04:09But I think of all of those, we probably have more autonomy.
04:18I think that, again, I don't feel any extreme ancillary pressure that I wouldn't apply
04:27to myself.
04:28So any amount of ambition or need to desire to connect or succeed or deliver something
04:41exceptional, the drivers that I have within my own brain and that we have within ourselves
04:48as a band to not put out some substandard whatever music exceeds any type of external
04:56pressure.
04:57We don't have...
04:58And we were thinking about our fans who just waited long enough for new music and a new
05:02tour.
05:03That's the thing I'm most focused on is we've left a lot of people hanging out who've loved
05:06us for a long time.
05:07We haven't been to those countries.
05:08We haven't been to Europe in ages.
05:09We used to tour Europe four times more than we toured America.
05:12We haven't been there in ages.
05:15There's a lot of places around the world, Australia, South America, that we have just
05:21taken our sweet time to get back to.
05:24And I'm only focused on how do our fans react to this?
05:28How do people, your average person living their life, how does our music connect with
05:35them?
05:38And I'm very keen and focused on us sounding modern.
05:42But not sound...
05:43It's that thing.
05:44Sound modern even though you've been around for 12 years, which in music industry terms
05:47is like dog years.
05:48So that's like, you know, that's ridiculous.
05:50It's like 86 years.
05:52But sound modern, but sound authentic.
05:58If a song is truly great, it will spread virally.
06:08I know that's hard to digest because you go, well, you know, basically it means that
06:14if I put out a song, it needs to be one of the best songs in the world.
06:17Yeah, but guess what?
06:18We've been signed for 12 years and every song we put out has to be one of the best songs
06:22in the world.
06:23We put out Rescue Me back in May or June and it got to 30 on the global Spotify chart.
06:30And I remember looking at that and had that one moment where I go, we had nothing behind
06:33it.
06:34We weren't pushing it.
06:35We weren't like...
06:36There wasn't some huge marketing campaign.
06:38That was our marketing campaign.
06:39And then when I was looking at it on the charts, I go, we haven't put out a new song in a long
06:43time and this is in the top 30 in the world without a feature.
06:50We don't have a rapper on it.
06:51We don't have J Balvin.
06:53We don't have a movie.
06:55And I let myself be happy for like a week, which is rare because I'm always thinking,
07:00yeah, but what did we not do?
07:02And it's easy to think that way.
07:05At the end of the day, any new artists, we're all competing for the same thing.
07:092007, when we signed, I'm not worried about new up and coming artists who are releasing
07:14songs by themselves independently.
07:16I'm not competing with them because they couldn't be heard.
07:19But now, if you're a new artist and you like OneRepublic or you know who we are, we are
07:25literally peers.
07:27We're competing for the same oxygen of every other song.
07:33And social media, without question, if a new artist is grinding and you're 18 or you're
07:3825 or whatever you are, and you're not on Instagram, posting the videos of your original
07:45songs or TikTok, all those things are just tools.
07:47You can love them or hate them.
07:50I don't like the fact that social media now is a thing.
07:54I was just fine before it existed.
07:57But if MySpace hadn't existed when it did, 99% chance we would not be sitting here today.
08:03We would not be a band.
08:04It was the necessary means to an end for this band.
08:08Because when we drove around for six months or a year, posting stapling posters of our
08:15band on telephone poles in Los Angeles.
08:18We met a lot of people.
08:21You go around handing out cards, come to our show, come to our show, come to our show.
08:24And then people, you see them, throw them in the trash.
08:27Every time we post a thing on a telephone pole, I drive back an hour later, it's been
08:30torn down.
08:32And I just remember thinking, this is never going to work.
08:34And then MySpace, we go, oh, if we put a song up that's good enough, it will go viral.
08:40People will share it.
08:41And God willing, we'll be heard.
08:44And we put Apologize up on MySpace.
08:47It went viral.
08:48People shared it.
08:49We got heard.
08:50It became a hit.
08:51And then it launched our career.
08:52So it is, I would say, no more easier or difficult today to get discovered.
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