“West Coast” is the second single from OneRepublic’s upcoming sixth studio album. The song is an ode to the American state of California and evokes classic 1960s California sounds, stemming from groups such as The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas, along with inspiration from Gorillaz. It has been both a band-favorite and a fan-favorite for a long time, and it ultimately became a tone-setter for their sixth studio effort.

OneRepublic first started working on “West Coast” during the production process of their 2016 album, Oh My My, but ended up shelving it for later. An earlier version of the song was used for U2’s 2017 hit, “Summer of Love,” which actually turned the original demo into an anti-war track.

On March 17, 2020, bassist Brent Kutzle provided the first small preview of “West Coast” during Ryan’s Instagram livestream, as the song was expected to be on their fifth studio album, Human. Three days later, Ryan and producer Tyler Spry played snippets of various new songs off Human during another IG stream, including “West Coast” itself.

On April 27, 2021, Ryan did a promotional IG livestream, launching his first NFT collection: towards the end of the stream, he previewed “West Coast” once again, along with the single “Run.” When Human was eventually released, Ryan spoke on the status of “West Coast” during their YouTube Premium Afterparty for the music video of the song “Someday:”

The reason it hasn’t come out yet is because it’s such a unique sound, it’s so different than all the normal OneRepublic stuff… we decided to make a whole album that made sense for “West Coast” and that’s the album that we’ve been working on for the last four months… “West Coast” is one of the key singles on that album and the sound of that album we’re slightly switching up to match with “West Coast,” because we think the song is so good.

In the end, after years of anticipation and re-tooling, the final version of “West Coast” was officially made public on February 25, 2022.