While opening for the Irish band last summer, Tedder got a chance to see Bono and the guys perform in front of 80,000 people every night for three months. He told Radio.com that he watched as fans sang every word to every one of their songs. "These lyrics are so from his gut and so like honest, but poetic," Tedder explained. "They're not trying to be ambiguous or trying to be cool."

Tedder admitted that his biggest pet peeve is when a band is just too cool for its own good. Writing songs that sound pretty, but have no heart behind them.

"[That's] one thing that always irks me about a lot of bands," he said. "You look at their lyrics and I can quickly tell, because I've been writing my whole life, like those are like a string of non sequiturs that sound cool. It means absolutely nothing."