Counting Stars

The magic of Counting Stars begins with that contrast between the acoustic and pop sounds that hooks you from the first chord. It's not just the catchy melody that makes it special, but how the rhythm accelerates like a heart beating faster when anxiety tightens its grip. The lyrics, which speak of tossing and turning in bed unable to sleep due to worries, sound like a nocturnal confession: "How are we going to pay the bills? How will we make everything work?" It's that moment when the music becomes a balm, even if it offers no solution to what keeps us awake. The technical detail that makes the difference is the tempo change: it starts at 107 BPM and jumps to 122, as if the body itself needed to speed up just to keep pace with the lyrics.

Ryan Tedder, the mastermind behind the song, wrote it in August 2012 during a vacation in the Hamptons, in the house Jay-Z and Beyoncé rented that summer. The composer was working on the album Native when, in the middle of a session with Beyoncé, he had an unexpected idea. While reviewing material to inspire her, he came across a folk song that fascinated him with its sound and movement, though not with its lyrics. From there came the chorus of Counting Stars, which was finalized over the next three months. The track was recorded in two studios: Black Rock in Greece and Patriot in Denver, and was released as the second single from Native on June 14, 2013. The video, filmed in New Orleans, plays with the duality of two worlds: below, the band playing in a basement lit by hanging light bulbs; above, a religious congregation that seems oblivious to the chaos looming. The final image, with the ceiling collapsing and an assistant falling between both floors, is pure visual metaphor for what the song conveys: the imbalance between the spiritual and the earthly.