As a college student, Ryan Tedder would tell anyone who would listen that he wanted to go into songwriting, producing and performing. Now, having written songs for Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce and a host of others, the Colorado-based OneRepublic [ tickets ] lead singer is one of the most sought-after songwriters in music.

But his success with OneRepublic is notable as well. Nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Pop Performance by a Duo of Group with Vocals category, the OneRepublic single "Apologize" has become one of the most downloaded tracks of the digital age, selling more than 10 million copies.

OneRepublic is set to release its next collection of music, "Waking Up," on Nov. 17, with the first single, "All the Right Moves," poised to hit radio on Sept. 22.

Tedder, on a rare break from the studio, spoke to LiveDaily about OneRepublic's forthcoming album, traveling from country to country to produce and write tracks, and why his band's "Stop and Stare" is his favorite single.

Where are you calling from today?

I'm in Aspen, CO. I don't live here, but there's a recording studio here that's amazing. I live in Denver, but I love Aspen. I like to get away to random places that have cool recording studios and do work. You get to do it unencumbered.

Where else have you visited recording studios?

South Africa, Hamburg, Tokyo. Milan had a really cool studio. I book studios all around the world. I've been to most major cities around the world. It's a lot of fun for me to just find different places to do the same thing. I think the dude from Hall and Oates lives here. I think he helps run the studio. John, what's his name? John Oates? The place is amazing.

What are you working on these days?

The last song for the OneRepublic album. But I'm simultaneously working on Rihanna and Kris Allen.

How do you manage to balance all that?

I used to be a waiter for years. I kind of function like that. It's the same as having four four-tops. You have four different tables, 16 different orders. It's kind of a game to see if I can keep them all straight in my head.

How are those projects coming along?

Our record is pretty much done. This last song is a bonus track and I think Timbaland is going to remix it for his album. It's really different. The album sounds nothing like the first album. You can tell it's the same band, but that's about it. We took some huge risks. Huge departure. I have no interest in playing it safe and copying our last record or trying to rewrite 'Apologize' or any of that nonsense. To me, it's like, if you're not growing, you're dying. We're trying to pave new ground. Frankly, we're trying to reset the bar in terms of Top 40 radio and what bands are capable of doing in Top 40 radio, musically. We want to be the first nongenre band out there.

How did you come up with the title "Waking Up"?

We have a song called "Waking Up," which we haven't posted. It just seemed ironic because the last album was called "Dreaming Out Loud." Now we have a song called "Waking Up." It was just kind of like this stupid play on words. So we said, "Hey, that's what the album feels like. It feels like we've woken up to where we are now." Our first album came out about three years after we had made it. It was shelved by Columbia. We actually got dropped by Columbia the same day they dropped Katy Perry and the Jonas Brothers. They dropped all three of us. They had dropped Ne-Yo, like, the year before. By the time our album came out, we had already evolved past a lot of the songs on the album. We made the album in 2004. It came out in 2007. As you can imagine, there's quite a big time gap in terms of what we were doing. It would be like you putting out an article right now that you wrote 3-and-a-half years ago and your opinion on that article has already changed. So we had to live with that and tour that album for a year and a half. With this album, we've kind of woken up; this is where we are now. There's nothing on this album that I can say sounds like anyone else who's out there, whether that was by intention or by luck. We're excited.

For your songwriting process, do you know when you're writing for OneRepublic? Or do you just write songs and figure it out later?

One Republic is a completely different animal for me because I can't sit down and write more obvious, straight-ahead lyrics with OneRepublic. That's kind of the catch. We might do something musically has a vibe of some other influence. Lyrically, I can't sit down and write the same lyrics I would write for Kelly Clarkson or Rihanna. I have to do something that's my own personal take. Our lyrics are little bit more random. I don't want to say esoteric. They're not obvious. It's the best way to put it. They're not written like cookie-cutter, songwriter-for-hire kind of thing, which a lot of songs on the radio sound like. That's how they're written. They're written by two or three people sitting in a room trying to write a pop hit. I approach OneRepublic completely differently. So there's absolutely no songs on this album that were scrapped from other artists, nor are there any songs that didn't make the album that have gone to other artists. I try to keep those two as separate as possible.

Are you looking forward to your tour with Rob Thomas?

I am. I love opening because there's no pressure. I'm not stressed out about ticket sales. Rob's nice as hell. His audience is older than our audience. So we're excited to play for a different type of crowd. Our goal each night is, by the end of our set, to have won over all 6,000 or 5,000 that are in the crowd. Our goal is to win everybody over by the time we get off the stage. I take it as a challenge. It's also going to be a lot of fun.

Are you going to play songs from "Dreaming Out Loud" or are you going to focus on "Waking Up"?

Oh yeah. It's probably going to be 50/50. Because the thing is, our new album isn't out until Nov. 17. So we're like, "You know what guys? We can't get away with playing a bunch of new songs no one's heard." I try to kind of mix it up. I try to write the set list to keep everyone's attention in the audience. I try to be very aware of, like, if I paid money and I was sitting in those seats, what's going to keep my attention? What's going to entertain me? So. when you're an opening act, I think your goal is to really capture the audience, keep them entertained. I walk into each show assuming that no one in the crowd knows who we are, even though a lot of them probably do. I assume that they don't. I put "Stop and Stare" earlier in the set. People are like, "Who are these guys?" Then they hear "Stop and Stare" and they're like, "Oh, they're those guys." We kind of go on from there.

Which single are you most proud of?

I'm proud of "Stop and Stare," at least for OneRepublic. When "Apologize" came out, it became so big so fast that everyone wrote us off as a one-hit wonder. Then "Stop and Stare" came out and was actually bigger in a lot of countries than "Apologize" was. In the UK, it was bigger than "Apologize" was, which is hard to imagine. If "Apologize" had never come out, "Stop and Stare" would be looked at as a shining hit of a new band. It was exciting to me. It didn't have anything to do with Timbaland. It was just a band being a band and trying to write real songs. We try to avoid gimmicks as much as possible and "Stop and Stare" has no gimmicks. The new songs, none of them were produced by Timbaland. That was his wish as well as ours. I'm sure we're going to work with him again in the future. Of course, I think it's important for us to stand on our own two feet.