How we wrote OneRepublic’s ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by Ryan Tedder

This article was first published in Songwriting Magazine Summer 2025

When lockdown led to a video call with Tom Cruise, the superstar songwriter delivered a blockbuster anthem within 24 hours

Whether judged by accolades or artistic merit, the songwriting of Ryan Tedder stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest this century has produced. As the frontman and creative engine behind pop-rock outfit OneRepublic, he has crafted a formidable catalogue of songs. Counting Stars, Apologize, Secrets, and Stop And Stare are just a few examples of the band’s gift for creating music marked by bold melodies and soul-stirring lyrics. Beyond the group’s success, Tedder has become a sought-after writer and producer for a veritable who’s who of global superstars. Adele, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson – even Paul McCartney – have all benefited from the unmistakable sprinkling of his pop alchemy.

As if that weren’t enough, Tedder has also proven himself a deft hand at writing for the screen. One standout example is I Ain’t Worried, penned for the 2022 Tom Cruise blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. With its breezy, sun-drenched vibe perfectly attuned to the film’s beach scene, the song’s whistled hook and laid-back groove have helped to establish it as a modern summer anthem – equally suited to road trips and high-octane aerial dogfights in a F/A-18 Super Hornet. The numbers tell a similar story: a global hit certified three-times Platinum in the UK and four-times Platinum in the US, the track has already amassed nearly two billion streams on Spotify alone. Here, we explore the origin story of a song that serves as further proof of Tedder’s singular talents as both a songwriter and a relentless hustler…

First published in Songwriting Magazine Summer 2025

Released: 13 May 2022
Artist: OneRepublic
Label: Mosley/Interscope
Songwriters: Ryan Tedder, Brent Kutzle, Tyler Spry, John Eriksson, Peter Morén, Björn Yttling
Producers: Ryan Tedder, Brent Kutzle, Simon Oscroft, Tyler Spry, John Nathaniel
UK Chart Position: 3
US Chart Position: 6

“It was Covid. We had all gone into complete lockdown. It was, I want to say, probably early summer of 2020. The week that Covid started, we realised, ‘Oh shit, this is going to last a long time.’ We wouldn’t be touring. I didn’t have the balls to release new music because the news cycle was so overwhelming about Covid that you couldn’t cut through. It just wasn’t a good time, personally, to go, ‘Hey, check out my new music. I know people are dying, but check it out.’ I decided, with intent – with my bass player Brent Kutzle – let’s see how many original songs we could commission in movies and TV, like Super Bowl commercials, big film projects… We started texting and calling all of our contacts.

“I just don’t do well with boredom. After two weeks of lockdown, I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do this. I have to make music. I have to write songs.’ What could we do that’s guaranteed not a waste of your time, meaning we get paid, the song gets released, we get exposure, all those things that songwriters want. I thought, well, TV, licensing and sync, which is how I started in music.

“All my first cheques came from writing songs for commercials and TV and stuff like that. We ended up doing songs for Clifford The Big Red Dog, and I did the theme song for the Hertz commercial. If you’ve seen the Tom Brady commercial, that’s the Hertz rent-a-car thing where he plugs himself in; that’s me singing in the background. That’s my song. Also, the T-Mobile Super Bowl campaign with Bradley Cooper. I was shaking all the trees, and I was probably doing a song a week for a movie or a TV commercial.

“Anyway, we get about two months into that, and the guy from Paramount Pictures is a friend of mine – I’ve done a lot of songs with him – he calls me and says, ‘Hey, we can do a Zoom with Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer. I’ve got a potentially huge opportunity for you with Top Gun 2.’ Sure, we do the Zoom. Watch the film. Watch the scene, the beach football scene.

“When it comes to prescriptive TV and film music, I’m a sniper…that’s the analogy I use. If you’re going against me for one of those placements, don’t! We watch the scene, and then Tom asks me to describe, ‘What do you see in this scene?’ I’m not thinking OneRepublic at this point, I’m just thinking, ‘Nail the brief.’ What do you see in this scene? What kind of music should it be? And I’m watching it, and I go, ‘You know, I kind of want to hear the indie-pop scene from 10 years ago.’

“I probably namechecked Foster The People, and Gorillaz, and Portugal. The Man. I’m naming the groups that I listen to. Even though I write all these pop songs, I don’t listen to pop at all. I listen to alternative music. I’m naming all these groups, and he knows the songs I’m referencing. He’s like, ‘Oh man. Yeah, dude, that’s the energy.’ And he’s like, ‘Hey Jerry, you see what I’m talking about? Man, this is the sound. This is what we’re talking about!’

“Now I’ve just got to write the song. So we have the Zoom, and Tom’s like, ‘What’s your timetable? When do you think you can get this to us?’ I said, ‘Well, man, I mean, I don’t know if you heard, but there’s this whole global pandemic, and I can’t go anywhere.’ And so I was like, ‘I’ll get this shit to you yesterday, like, immediately.’ And he was like, ‘Well, listen, don’t rush it, just take your time. Be comfortable with it.’

“He was thinking we were going to send it in the next two to three weeks. He was used to that kind of turnaround for this type of stuff. I sent him the song the following day at 5pm. I texted it to him. He called me five minutes after getting it. ‘Dude, what the hell!’ He said, ‘Wait, so you already had this written, didn’t you?’ I was like, ‘No, dude, we wrote it this morning.’ He’s like, ‘That’s impossible.’ I was like, ‘No, I promise you, I was there. It’s not impossible, we did it,’ and he freaked out, ‘I’m gonna cut this in the picture tonight. I’ll hit you tomorrow morning.’

Ryan Tedder: “When it comes to prescriptive TV and film music, I’m a sniper”

“The next morning, he texts me, ‘Oh my God, dude, one and done. Bullseye. This is the song, can you send it to us to edit to picture?’ And I said, ‘Well, we could just edit it to picture on our end, and I can make the edit perfect for you, and you could replicate it.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, but you don’t have the movie.’ And then I was like, ‘Actually, I do. I filmed it on my iPhone. When you were showing it to us yesterday on Zoom, I was filming.’ I know that that’s technically illegal, but he just died laughing. He’s like, ‘Alright, that’s our secret, don’t tell anybody.’

“I wanted to secure the placement so bad that me and Tyler [Spry] and Brent, the writers on it, we all sat down and edited every football catch and chest bump. We edited the conversation that took place between Tom and Jon Hamm – all the way until they pull up to his house on the motorcycle. We did all of that. Pocketing every nuance, every sound, doing the volume, automation, all that stuff, so that there would be no doubt – just serve it to him on a silver platter, and that’s what we did.

“In terms of writing it, the next morning when I watched the scene, in my head I heard that whistle melody. I texted it. I said, ‘Hey, Brent, what if we start the song with a whistle?’ We had done a song years ago called Good Life that had a big whistle in it. I was nervous about over-utilising that, but, I’m a sucker for a good melody. So, I sent in the whistle and I beatboxed the drums. I said I wanted it to be live drums playing breakbeat. I had some semblance of a bassline in my head, and, of course, Brent’s a bass player, so he augmented that and did his own thing with it.

“The lyrics came together from my typical gobbledygook of gibberish and slowly coalesced into the song. As far as the movie’s concerned, the whole movie is very stressful, and it’s the only three minutes that’s not stressful. So, I just came up with the phrase, ‘I ain’t worried ‘bout it.’ Like, whatever happens, I ain’t worried. Right now, we got this. And the rest is history.”

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