OneRepublic
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50 free OneRepublic trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
OneRepublic were dropped by Columbia two months before their debut was due, kept alive by being the number-one unsigned act on Myspace, and rescued by a Timbaland remix that went to number one in sixteen countries. Since then Ryan Tedder's band have turned a Hamptons writing session into the first band video to hit a billion YouTube views and a Top Gun sequel into a late-career hit. These 50 questions cover the whole story: the high-school band called This Beautiful Mess, the name change from Republic, Greg Wells and the shelved first album, Mosley Music Group, the Apologize remix and its 25 weeks in the top ten, Stop and Stare, Good Life's whistling, the three-and-a-half-year gap before Native, Counting Stars and its church-floor video, Love Runs Out in Prague, I Lived and cystic fibrosis, the Apple event performance, Oh My My, Tedder's anxiety and the end of album cycles, Human's pandemic delays, the Vienna bitcoin concert, I Ain't Worried, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Kaiju No. 8, the Spring Festival Gala and the 2025 BMG signing. Easy questions stick to the singer, the hits and the hometown; the hard ones ask about producers, studios, charts and guest features. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a pop quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder co-wrote Rumour Has It and Turning Tables with which British singer?
Adele
Adele wrote both with him for her album 21, which went on to win Album of the Year at the Grammys, a prize he shared as one of its producers.
Q 02In which city did OneRepublic's founders meet at high school?
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs is where Ryan Tedder and Zach Filkins met in their final school year in 1996; the band that made it was put together six years later in Los Angeles.
Q 03Which producer's remix turned Apologize into a global hit?
Timbaland
Timbaland dropped the guitar solo and added new percussion and backing vocals, and his remix went to number one in 16 countries.
Q 04What was the title of OneRepublic's 2007 debut album?
Dreaming Out Loud
Dreaming Out Loud reached the shops in November 2007, about 17 months late: the band's first label had dropped them two months before the album's original release date.
Q 05On which website did OneRepublic first find a following as an unsigned act?
Myspace
Myspace came to the rescue after their record deal collapsed in 2006: they became its number-one unsigned act, and the buzz brought new labels calling.
Q 06Which label dropped OneRepublic two months before their first album was due out?
Columbia Records
Columbia Records let them go two months before the June 2006 release date, after more than two years of studio work; the debut finally came out on another label 17 months later.
Q 07Which producer-founded imprint released OneRepublic's debut album in 2007?
Mosley Music Group
Mosley Music Group, then an Interscope imprint named after its founder's surname, took OneRepublic on as its first rock band after their earlier deal collapsed.
Q 08Why did Ryan Tedder's band Republic become OneRepublic?
Its label feared lawsuits
Its label feared lawsuits from bands with similar names, the drummer Eddie Fisher has said, so Republic, the group Tedder and Zach Filkins formed in Los Angeles in 2002, added a One.
Q 09Whose album gave OneRepublic's founders the school-band name This Beautiful Mess?
Sixpence None the Richer
Sixpence None the Richer, later famous for Kiss Me, released This Beautiful Mess in 1995; a year later the two schoolfriends borrowed the title for a band that played a few coffee-house shows and split up.
Q 10Which instrument besides bass does Brent Kutzle play in OneRepublic?
Cello
Cello has been Kutzle's instrument since he was a boy, but it is only part of his job: he also co-writes and co-produces several of the band's singles.
Q 11Which rock veteran, a boyhood hero of Ryan Tedder, sings on OneRepublic's 2016 track A.I.?
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel, the former Genesis frontman, was one of the singers the teenage Tedder taught himself by imitating, and a favourite he and Zach Filkins bonded over before starting a band.
Q 12Apologize first appeared on which producer's 2007 album, months before OneRepublic's own debut?
Shock Value
Shock Value carried the remix as its third single, billed under its producer's name, so the band were guests on their own song before their debut album was out.
Q 13Apologize's 25-week US top-ten stay was the longest since which Santana hit?
Smooth
Q 21On whose 2009 album Echo did OneRepublic feature on 'Lost Then Found'?
Leona Lewis
Leona Lewis wrote Lost Then Found with Ryan Tedder, who had produced her first worldwide number one and worked on much of Echo before bringing his whole band into the studio.
Q 22Which 2013 album was OneRepublic's first top-ten record on the Billboard 200?
Native
It debuted at number four, ending a three-and-a-half-year hiatus.
Q 23Part of the proceeds from OneRepublic's 2012 single Feel Again went to which charity's Every Beat Matters campaign?
Save the Children
Save the Children put the money towards training frontline health workers; the song had been meant as the album's lead single until delays demoted it to a promotional release.
Smooth had managed 30 weeks in 1999 and 2000; unlike that chart-topper, Apologize never reached number one, peaking at two.
Q 14OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney co-wrote which ballad, the world's best-selling single of 2008?
Bleeding Love
Bleeding Love reached number one in more than 30 countries in the months when Apologize was still on the radio, and Tedder had produced them both.
Q 15At which Canadian football championship game did OneRepublic play the halftime show in 2016?
The Grey Cup
The Grey Cup of 2016 went to overtime after the band's set in Toronto, and the Ottawa Redblacks upset heavily favoured Calgary to win the title in only their third season.
Q 16What was the second single from OneRepublic's debut album?
Stop and Stare
Stop and Stare spent two weeks in the British top ten on downloads alone before its CD single came out in March 2008, and then climbed to number four.
Q 17On which NBC songwriting contest did Ryan Tedder sit as a producer and pick a contestant's song for OneRepublic to record?
Songland
Songland closed its first season in 2019 with the band as guest artists: they chose a contestant's Somebody to Love and released their version the same day.
Q 18Which 2010 single made Rolling Stone's list of the best whistling songs of all time?
Good Life
Good Life was the album's fourth single and its biggest: after turning up in film trailers and Google's video review of 2010, it climbed to number eight in the US.
Q 19Which song was the lead single from OneRepublic's second album, Waking Up?
All the Right Moves
All the Right Moves came out in September 2009 and reached number 18 in the US, but it was the album's fourth single, a year later, that became its biggest hit.
Q 20Which Disney fantasy film of 2010 used OneRepublic's song Secrets?
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice used the song but left it off the soundtrack album; it had first been a hit in Germany, where a Til Schweiger film comedy featured it.
Q 24What was the first global single from OneRepublic's 2013 album, released that January?
If I Lose Myself
If I Lose Myself got the slot because Ryan Tedder could not finish the chorus of the song he wanted there; it went top ten in Germany, Austria and Sweden but stalled at 74 in the US.
Q 25Counting Stars stalled at number two in the US in January 2014 behind which song?
Timber
Timber, by Pitbull and Kesha, held it off for two weeks, so the band's biggest hit only equalled the peak Apologize had reached six years earlier.
Q 26Counting Stars topped which country's singles chart in October 2013, where Apologize had stalled at three?
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom gave the band their first number one there after the closest chart battle of 2013, in which they overtook the Vamps' Can We Dance in the final days of the week.
Q 27Ryan Tedder began writing Counting Stars while waiting for which star to arrive at a session?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé and Jay-Z had rented a vast house in the Hamptons in summer 2012; Tedder found the idea there while hunting for songs for her, thought of offering it to her and kept it for his band.
Q 28What is happening upstairs in the Counting Stars music video?
A church congregation
A church congregation is at worship overhead: the band shot the video in New Orleans in the basement of a historic African American church, with an alligator loose among the light bulbs.
Q 29Which DJ made the singles Stranger Things and Lose Somebody with OneRepublic?
Kygo
Kygo could not meet the band in the 2020 lockdown, so the Lose Somebody video was built from green-screen footage shot apart and sends him and Ryan Tedder through space on a giant ostrich.
Q 30Which TV musical ended its 2015 series finale with the cast singing OneRepublic's I Lived?
Glee
Glee set the number five years ahead: in a flash-forward to 2020, the whole cast reunites to sing it in a school auditorium newly renamed for the late Finn Hudson.