The egotistical producer, Ryan Tedder, is back to putting his foot in his mouth again, this time publicly addressing the poor performance of Leona Lewis’ single “Happy”, which only managed a peak of #32 on the Hot 100.
The song also caused a ripple effect and added to the incredibly poor US reception towards Leona’s sophomore album Echo, which debuted at #13 on the Billboard charts before sinking without a trace.
“In the US, unless you’re Justin Timberlake or Beyoncé, you cannot put out a song and not be in the country when it comes out,” he told Digital Spy.
“Leona was gone for six weeks when ‘Happy’ came out because she was promoting the record in other countries – it wasn’t her fault; she just couldn’t be two places in once.
“I had radio stations telling me that they thought ‘Happy’ was the single biggest ballad they’d come across in ten years, but that if Leona didn’t come over here and promote it, it was going to fall.”
Just for the record Leona actually performed the song on some of the biggest programs in America, including Dancing with the Stars and The Ellen Degeneres Show, not to mention the Europe Music Awards which was televised around the world.
Then to make matters worse Tedder continued his ridiculous rant, pointing the finger towards the new Lady GaGa dance craze that’s so popular on the charts right now.
“On top of that, America’s consumed with Lady GaGa and dance music right now, so it’s not the best time for ballads anyway”, he said. “When everything on the radio is blasting out at 120 bpm, a song like ‘Happy’ almost sounds out-of-place.”
Tedder says it’s not the best time for ballads, yet two similar sounding ballads he produced; Beyonces “Halo” and Kelly Clarksons “Already Gone”, have both been enormous million-plus selling smash hits.
On another note, Ryan Tedder has two more names to add to his ever-expanding resume, with USA Today revealing that the hitmaker will be lending his production talents to the new albums of both Katy Perry and Jennifer Hudson.
For Katy’s album Tedder will join Dr Luke, Max Martin, Weezer and The-Dream & Tricky who have all clocked up studio time with the Hot ‘n’ Cold singer.
J-Hud however has been a little more secretive about her sophomore effort, with Ne-Yo and of course Clive Davis being the only confirmed collaborators so far.
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