let the muSSSic play

The song is about the pain of a relationship going wrong and the necessity of moving on. The group OneRepublic performs on the track.

OneRepublic was formed in Colorado by songwriter and record producer Ryan Tedder and his high school friend Zach Filkins. The pair relocated to Los Angeles, where they recruited guitarist/keyboardist Drew Brown, bassist Brent Kutzle and drummer Eddie Fisher. OneRepublic garnered much support from the online community, especially on MySpace. Their guitar anthem "Apologize" got a lot of attention, but it was still a surprise when Hip-Hop, Dance and R&B producer Timbaland produced a remix and included it on his Timbaland Presents: Shock Value album. It was this version that bought the song to an international audience.

Ryan Tedder is a Grammy nominated writer for Paul Oakenfold's A Lively Mind album. He also co-wrote and produced "Do It Well" for Jennifer Lopez and Leona Lewis' UK chart topper "Bleeding Love."

In an interview with ilikemusic.com, Tedder was asked how his collaboration with Timbaland came about: "Well I've known Tim for about 6 years. I used to be signed as a solo artist back in the day. So he just kept tabs on me as my career progressed and we used to be signed to Columbia records and we got dropped a little over a year ago, and right after we got dropped our band exploded on MySpace out of nowhere, so all these labels starting calling us. Timbaland was one of them and he offered us the most interesting situation. He told me 'Aplogize would've been a hit with or without me', as it was already a hit on the internet but what he did was speed up the process tremendously."

This was a massive international hit. Among the countries "Apologize" topped the chart in were Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland. It also spent 14 weeks at the top of the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles chart before being dethroned by Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love."

This song had a 25-week run in the US Top Ten. It was the longest any song has been in the Top 10 since 1999, when Santana featuring Rob Thomas' "Smooth" spent 30 weeks in that section of the survey.
Source:Songfacts