Music

You only have to cast your mind back to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s rendition of ‘Sussudio’ by Phil Collins, on 2001’s ‘Urban Renewal’ tribute album, to be reminded that US hip hop has a soft spot for sappy MOR. Even so, it’s perplexing when an artist as swaggering as Timbaland declares his new fave thing to be a bunch of LA-based, hair-gel-sculpted ‘sensitive’ rock balladeers. So much so that he remixed OneRepublic’s ‘Apologize’ single on his own album, and they’re the first rock band to be signed to his Mosely Music label.

So has Timbaland turned soft? Well, not exactly. It turns out that years ago, he trained mainman Ryan Tedder in production – which resulted in Tedder writing songs and producing for J-Lo, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis (he wrote her ‘Bleeding Love’). When Timbaland saw that Tedder’s own band score literally millions of plays on their MySpace last year, he knew he was onto a good thing, commercially speaking.

And in fairness, Tedder does have a knack for writing catchy songs, a whisp of Coldplay-style melancholy seeping into his super-polished arrangements for piano, guitars and immaculate drums. You know the sound: as demonstrated by the likes of Maroon 5 and Daughtry, it’s like all the signifiers for rock and soul are there, but without any of the actual emotion that gives a real rock or soul record its punch and heart.

In the end, what’s most surprising about this Timbaland-endorsed rock band, is the fact that they (and indeed the folks who buy their records) see this music as meaningful. ‘We tried to write a record about the human condition’ said Tedder recently – and ‘Dreaming Out Loud’ suggests that his experience of being human is less about joy, pain or lust, and more like a half-arsed flop through mild anxiety.