Ryan Tedder found it "difficult" to produce Adele’s music – because everything she does sounds like "a hit."
The OneRepublic singer worked with the ‘Hello’ hitmaker on her track ‘Remedy’ – taken from her third studio LP ’25’ – but found the whole process "harder" than he’s done before because anything she sings is exceptional and makes his writing sound "better than it is".
He explained: "It’s difficult to produce Adele because everything she sings sounds like a hit, so it’s a lot harder on the songwriting process. She could sing ‘Feliz Cumpleaños’ in Spanish and somehow you go: ‘That is probably a top 10’.
"Her voice is that damn good. So you have to be harder on yourself and the songs, because her voice will convince you that what you’re writing is better than it is."
Meanwhile, the ‘Counting Stars’ tunesmith admits that when he’s writing for other artists he never listens to pop music as he fears that if that’s all he listened to he’d no longer be able to make "great songs".
Talking about his band OneRepublic’s forthcoming fourth studio album, which is still unnamed, he told Newsweek: "To this day I don’t listen to pop. I know the day that I start listening purely to pop is the day I stop writing great songs. On this new album, my inspiration is more LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk and Peter Gabriel… That’s the stuff that I listen to, but it informs pop."
The hunky songwriter also admits that listening to more "left-to-centre bands" has inspired the hits he’s written for the likes of Leona Lewis, Birdy and Ella Henderson.
He said: "As they say in the UK., I’m a punter [customer], I have a punter’s set of ears–my default setting is your average human being. When you combine that with my taste in music, listening to more left-of-centre bands, the juxtaposition of those two things equals the records I’ve written, from ‘Bleeding Love’ to Ella Henderson’s ‘Ghost’, to Birdy’s ‘Wings’. These wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t listening to more left-of-center stuff."
Ryan Tedder: Adele is difficult to produce
