Taken from OneRepublic’s third studio album, ‘Native‘, ‘Counting Stars‘ clocks in at just past the 4 minute mark and comes complete with a large number of tempo changes. The formula is much the same as with OneRepublic single success stories of the past, and having hit number 2 in the official UK singles chart ‘Counting Stars‘ has actually become OneRepublic’s biggest commercial success as a single here in the UK, going one further than ‘Apologize‘ which hit number 3 back in 2007.
Whilst the track starts out well and Ryan Tedder’s vocals sound as excellent as ever, the frequent tempo changes of the track just really seem to kill the momentum of the music and the song therefore feels extremely long and meandering. ‘Counting Stars‘ is far from being a bad track, and its huge commercial success says a lot about the band’s ability to mould elements of indie, rock, and pop to produce a sound that is clearly very well received by the music purchasing public. As a piece of music this is most certainly a single that has a lot to appreciate about it, for me there have been better singles from the band in the past, however, and ‘Counting Stars‘ suffers from its sporadic shifts and bursts of tempo.
Definitely give ‘Counting Stars‘ a listen if you’ve liked any of OneRepublic’s music in the past, given the extensive radio airplay and huge commercial success of the single though there’s probably a high chance that you’ve heard and made your mind up about this one already.
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
