Kids (song)

Kids is a song recorded by OneRepublic as the second single and fourth song on their fourth studio album, Oh My My.

Background
The single's title and artwork were officially announced on the band's Twitter account on August 3, 2016. On August 8, 2016, Ryan Tedder posted a video to the band's Twitter account detailing that the song would be released that coming Friday-August 12, 2016. On August 10, 2016, the song recieved further promotion on the band's twitter account including the hashtag "#OneRepublicKIDS" and a ten second snippet from the song ahead of its release. In an interview with EW, Tedder discussed some of the backstory to Kids. In reference to the new style of music from the band Tedder states that "it's a conscious departure...As an artist or musician, if you're not...pushing envelope to see if it pops, you're not doing it right...this album is by far our most evolved." Tedder goes on to credit co-writer Brent Kutzle with the musical direction. "He pushed me musically. It's a big credit to [Brent] for the musical direction on this album." Tedder explains that he came up with the melody for Kids in 30 secinds and recorded it on his phone. "Later...we recorded it as a placeholder on [a] laptop. But we were never album to beat that sound. It sounded so perfect for that song."

Release and Promotion
The song premiered on Fresh 102.7 fm on August 11, 2016, followed shortly by the release in Oceania. It was released globally on August 12, 2016 on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon MP3 and other services.

To promote the new single, Ryan Tedder appeared on Radio 1's Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw to discuss the track on its release day.

Critical Reception
Dan Wootton from The Sun had an exclusive early listen to the song. Wootton praised the track calling it a "stomping summer smash", and detailed some of the lyrics publicly for the first time. Wootton confirmed that the track was about childhood friendship and called the message "lovely". Concluding the article Wootton proclaimed Tedder as "undoubtedly the best songwriter of his generation". MTV UK also had an early listen to the track and called it an "epic summer tune...that will get stuck in your head for DAYS [sic]"

Genius Annotation
Ryan Tedder also exclusively annotated some of the lyrics on the lyric database Genius.