It’s too late to apologize, but it’s never too late to join the Billions Club. OneRepublic’s massive 2006 power ballad “Apologize” has entered that prestigious tier by surpassing the billion-streams mark on Spotify. It’s the Ryan Tedder-led band’s third song to reach the billion stream threshold following “Counting Stars” and “I Ain’t Worried.”
OneRepublic first released “Apologize” in 2006, a year and a half before dropping their debut album Dreaming Out Loud, for which it served as the lead single. In the interim, the song went viral on MySpace, and Timbaland remixed it for inclusion on his own 2007 album Shock Value at a time when his own hit-making stature had never been higher.
“Apologize” went on to become one of the biggest hits of the 2000s, peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100, landing at No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Songs of the Decade, and cracking the magazine’s list of the Billboard Hot 100’s All-Time Top Songs in honor of the chart’s 50th anniversary. For a while, it also stood as the biggest radio hit in the history of the Mainstream Top 40 chart with 10,394 plays in one week. In addition to all its chart success, “Apologize” was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
Tedder spoke about writing “Apologize” in a 2024 appearance on the podcast Behind The Wall. In 2003, after winning an MTV competition and signing a production deal with Timbaland, he realized he didn’t want to be a solo artist and therefore needed to start writing music with a band in mind. He sat down at his dad’s piano, closed his eyes, and began playing the chords that would become “Apologize.” As he told host Daniel Wall, “I was chasing melancholy.” The result made him jump for joy in his father’s basement. “I listened to it for about two hours on loop,” he recalled. “For the first time ever, I was like, ‘This is me. This is what I sound like.’”
