OneRepublic’s Counting Stars passes one million sales: Ryan Tedder reveals the story behind the song

Counting Stars by OneRepublic has become one of the UK’s biggest-selling singles of all-time, OfficialCharts.com can reveal.

The US band’s track has broken past the million copies sales barrier in the UK, according to Official Charts Company sales data, joining just over 150 other records to reach this milestone in British chart history.

Counting Stars first entered the UK Top 40 in August 2013, eventually hitting Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart seven weeks later, spending two non-consecutive weeks at the top. To this day, it is still inside the Official Top 100 chart, having never dropped out since it entered some 61 weeks ago.

On hearing of hitting the chart landmark, the band's frontman Ryan Tedder said: “That’s crazy! When we recorded the song we had no idea it would have this much success. At the time there was nothing else in the world that sounded like it, so releasing it felt like a bit of a risk.

"What I’ve learnt since is that the most un-safe thing in the world as a musician is to play it safe. The only safe thing is to be risky as hell!”

Explaining the story behind Counting Stars, revealed that he started working on it whilst in the company of Beyonce and Jay Z. Ryan explains: “I had the idea for Counting Stars originally in the summer of 2012 when I was in the Hamptons. I was working in the largest house I’ve ever stepped foot in, which was being rented by Jay Z and Beyonce.

"I was in the middle of working on my most recent album with OneRepublic, Native, and during that time I was determined not to work with any other artists. I broke the promise because I also did sessions that year with Beyonce. When Jay Z and Beyonce invite you to stay with them in the Hamptons, you don’t say no!"

He continued: “I was out there for about five days and on the second day I woke up early and I started combing through the internet, searching for stuff that would inspire me for Beyonce. I ended up coming across this weird song – I don’t even know what it was called – that had this indigenous folk sound to it that just struck me like lightning. I didn’t like the verses or lyrics, but I loved the feel and movement of it. That ended up inspiring Counting Stars.

“I debated playing it for Beyonce and putting it forward for her album, but it didn’t feel like a song Beyonce would record. I immediately came up with the chorus idea, went home and for the next three months finished the Native album."

Ryan concluded: "During that time, I recorded something like five different versions of the song, each with different choruses and using different instruments. We ended up finishing it in Santorini in Greece. All of the accordion and harp and other instruments in that version were recorded by local Grecian musicians. That ended up being the final version of the song."

Meanwhile, Official Charts recently unveiled the Now That’s What I Call A Million compilation album, which contains 61 of the UK’s 153 million-selling songs, including Oasis, Take That, Cher and Ed Sheeran. Click here to view the full tracklisting.

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