This was released as the lead global single from OneRepublic's third studio album, Native. The song was premiered by the band during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on December 31, 2012. The track, which was produced by their frontman Ryan Tedder, was debuted online on January 9, 2013.
The band recruited a wide range of people from neighbors and friends to record execs to listen to Native to help them pick what song to lead the album. This was chosen as their first single after OneRepublic's engineer, without the group knowing, had played the song for his twenty something friends who thought the song was really good. "That's kind of a good test for bands," Tedder explained to Radio.com. "If you can get guys in their early 20s to believe in something, and to be like, 'Yeah, I'd get that or I'd go to see that'... it's not lame."
The song was recorded on the island of Santorini, Greece, which lies south of Athens in the Mediterranean Sea. During a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the track, we see at one point Tedder telling the band that they'll record part of the song using the Garage Band program. The verse Tedder is referring to is: "Take us down and we keep trying. 40,000 feet keep flying. Take us down and we keep trying. 40,000 feet keep flying."
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