Live at Spark Arena
4 February 2025
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
OneRepublic Ignites Auckland: A Night Where the End of the World Felt Like the Beginning.
There’s a quiet pride New Zealand carries as the so-called end of the world. Musicians know it. Touring crews know it. Somewhere between the jet lag and the sea air, this distant outpost has become either a victory lap or, increasingly, a launch pad. Ed Sheeran proved that only weeks ago by kicking off his global run here. On Wednesday night, OneRepublic doubled down on the idea, choosing Auckland once again as the ignition point for their brand-new world tour.
Spark Arena was primed early. As ritual demands, I laced up my trusted gig shoes, my Snoop Dogg NFT special-edition Skechers. Not for clout, mind you, but for the essential three-centimetre heel lift. On the arena floor, altitude matters. Without it, you’re not watching a band; you’re studying the back of someone’s head.
The crowd skewed young: school-age fans and twenty-somethings in force, with parents dutifully chaperoning from the edges. The last time I saw OneRepublic was Thursday, March 16, 2023. I had my eldest daughter beside me, wide-eyed, as Ryan Tedder famously wandered through the crowd, brushing right past us, smiling and singing. A core memory. Tonight, there was a shared sense of: will it happen again?
Before the band even appeared, Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger rolled through the PA, and thousands of voices instinctively took over the chorus. Spark was near capacity, seats stacked to the ceiling, though the floor felt looser than their previous visit. The house lights dropped. Oasis faded. Darkness swallowed the stage. The intro track swelled, and as silhouettes emerged, hundreds of phones snapped skyward in unison, the modern concert equivalent of striking a match. Ryan Tedder hit the stage in a yellow jacket over a white T-shirt stamped Laguna Beach, California, black pants, baseball cap pulled low. Seven musicians stood locked and loaded.
By the second song, cannons fired paper streamers over the crowd, a declarative gesture: this tour had officially begun. Stop and Stare turned the arena into a choir, fans belting the chorus like it was a personal testimony. A fan was hoisted onto shoulders, the first of the night, but not the last. As the song wound down, Tedder stripped it back, singing solo in full falsetto. I’ve seen him perform many times. It still stops you cold. This is a singer who knows exactly what his instrument can do and isn’t afraid to let it hang in mid-air.
Details mattered tonight. Drummer Eddie Fisher deserves his own paragraph. His right-handed kit, played left open-handed, lends the band an elastic, rolling groove, a subtle thing, but it shifts everything. It’s the kind of rhythmic quirk only Ringo could properly explain. Off to one side, the violinist rocked a Sub Pop T-shirt, a quiet nod to his indie roots, which added texture and bite, reminding you that OneRepublic has always lived in the space between pop band and something stranger.
The video production was relentless. Every song brought a new visual idea, some leaning heavily into retro territory. There were effects reminiscent of 1990s “paintbox” video processing, even flashes of old A-ha-style abstraction. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it overwhelmed, masking the band entirely, turning the show into a moving gallery rather than a live performance.
Tedder, ever the showman, casually tossed his tambourine toward his foot, then kicked it back into the air, catching it mid-stride, a party trick delivered without breaking eye contact. Between songs, he told stories, grounding the spectacle in nostalgia. “I love it here,” he said. “This was my dream country when I was a kid. Eventually we sold 500 tickets and convinced our manager that was enough to fly here and play our first show.” He grinned as he added that the opening band’s frontman back then was Joe Little, producer of all the early Lorde records.
During Life in Color, Tedder slipped in a lyric tweak: “Life in colour, New Zealand is like no other.” Whether intentional or born in the moment, the crowd erupted; the room visibly lifted. Later, he shrugged off musical tribalism entirely: “I don’t respect genres. I’m a cheap date.” He’ll write anything, in any style, if it feels right. Judging by the hit list, that philosophy has served him well.
Then came the proof of his affection for Aotearoa. Tedder pointed out a silver fern tattoo on his right arm, inked in Martinborough, before emerging in full All Blacks regalia: bucket hat, scarf, the lot. He handed out locally bought goodies, then booted three band-signed All Blacks rugby balls into the crowd. One sailed improbably close to the sound desk, a genuinely impressive kick, met with disbelief and cheers.
At the piano, he joked about songs he’d written for others. Halo, he said, “I don’t sing this as well as Beyoncé… but I sing it a hell of a lot better than Jay-Z.” There were moments of chaos too. Returning to the piano, Tedder clipped his mic back into the stand a little too enthusiastically, sending a brutal bang through the PA.
Apologize brought the inevitable sea of raised phones, screens blocking the stage entirely. Suddenly we were all watching the gig through a thousand tiny displays. “I don’t know why I write songs so high,” Tedder laughed, knowing full well why.
True to form, OneRepublic tested new material live. “Don’t go pee right now,” Tedder warned. “We want real feedback, not just the internet.” The unreleased track Need Your Love landed confidently, suggesting a band still willing to trust instinct over algorithms.
As the band briefly left the stage, the screens filled with everyday people talking about what OneRepublic’s music meant to them.
When the band returned for the encore, Counting Stars was sung louder by the audience than the PA could ever manage, no frontman required. Old-school, X-ray-tinted visuals washed over the arena as the night stretched on. Visuals shifted from paintbox hues to church-of-the-dude surrealism before the night gently wound down.
But then something special happened.
As the crowd began to disperse, Oasis’ Wonderwall boomed through the PA. Tedder was still on stage. Instead of leaving, he started singing along, karaoke-style, grinning, unguarded. A global superstar, fresh off the opening night of a world tour, refusing to let the moment end. The fans wouldn’t let him either. It was surreal, generous, and deeply human.
OneRepublic didn’t just launch a tour in Auckland. They reminded us why bands fall in love with this place and why, every so often, the end of the world feels exactly like the beginning.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
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