Rocky road to the top

Ryan TEDDER, the frontman and founding member of the alt-rock band OneRepublic, is first and foremost a writer. He's penned tunes for such pop starlets as Natasha Bedingfield and Hilary Duff, co-wrote with Jesse McCartney a U.K. chart-topping hit ("Bleeding Love") for Leona Lewis, and collaborated with rappers Lil Jon and Bubba Sparxxx. OneRepublic's high-profile cameo on Timbaland's album "Shock Value," a remix of the band's string-soaked lament "Apologize," which has been holding strong on the charts, is a testament to the versatility of Tedder's compositional skills.

In OneRepublic, Tedder uses this talent to fine-tune the traditional ingredients for pop stardom (giant choruses, suave fauxhawks) and snip off anything or anyone that gets in the way. As modern rock becomes harder to sell in huge numbers, and professionalism is quickly overtaking spontaneity, the most popular new bands know that hits don't come accidentally. The potential of OneRepublic's debut album of meticulously earnest ballads, "Dreaming Out Loud" (released today), will depend on the 28-year-old Tedder's ability to single-handedly script his band's rise to fame.

As his story goes, OneRepublic was formed by high school buddies in a bucolic Colorado town and teased with early success upon moving to Los Angeles, only to be shattered by major-label politics. Then the band climbed the My- Space Unsigned charts and scored a life-raft record deal and remix from Tedder's longtime mentor Timbaland.

That story leaves out a few of the realities of how a talented, sharp-dressing and fiercely ambitious songwriter reinvents himself and his band -- a route involving a fundamentalist Christian education, the affirmation of 'N Sync's Lance Bass and booting a longtime friend from the band for crimes of fashion.

"Nowadays, everything I do is very calculated," Tedder said. "Back then, I'd see any opportunity and jump at it. But I swore to myself I wouldn't do anything but music, that until OneRepublic paid my bills, if a director showed me a scene for a movie and asked me to write a song for it, I'd say 'Cut me a check and I'll do it.' "

Tedder seems to have covered all his bases: "Dreaming Out Loud" consistently hits the high points of '90s and '00s dorm-pop groups like Oasis and Coldplay with hints of modern soul and electronica gleaned from Tedder's years writing and producing with Timbaland. But are a photogenic quintet of bandmates, a crafty songwriting and production mind and a thick Rolodex of industry contacts enough to will a rock band into popularity in 2007?