"I Ain't Worried" is a song by American pop rock band OneRepublic, released on May 13, 2022, through Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records. It is the second and final single to the soundtrack for the film Top Gun: Maverick (2022). The song was written and produced by Ryan Tedder, Brent Kutzle, and Tyler Spry, with production from Simon Oscroft and John Nathaniel. The song also contains elements of Peter Bjorn and John's 2006 hit single "Young Folks" and features background vocals from Tedder's son; Copeland Tedder. Copeland Tedder is the only other background voice apart from his dad, Ryan Tedder. OneRepublic was the only band to present an original song for the film.
The track debuted on the UK Singles Chart on June 3 and on the Irish Singles Chart on June 10, climbing positions until it peaked in the UK top three and the Ireland top five. It became the band's biggest hit in the UK since "Love Runs Out" (2014). "I Ain't Worried" debuted at number 76 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number 6, becoming their fourth top ten hit there. While on the Canadian Hot 100 the song debuted at number 41 and peaked at number 3. "I Ain't Worried" also peaked at number 1 in Belgium, Hungary, Iceland and New Zealand, and reached the top ten in other countries, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Japan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan.
Upon release, "I Ain't Worried" received highly positive reviews from music critics, being praised for its sunny production and upbeat melody.
Background and music
In an interview with Ryan Seacrest on On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Tedder revealed that the idea for the song started during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic after one of his friends at Paramount Pictures invited him to participate in the soundtrack of the new Top Gun. At that time, Tom Cruise had turned down about thirty songs for the soundtrack, and was looking for a band to create an original song for the new film, specifically for the beach scene. Tedder said that "I Ain't Worried" was "written with the characters in mind relaxing and having fun in the scene for the first time in those two hours of film", making the song manage to make the scene memorable in its own way and at the same time fit in with the action and emotion scenes throughout the film. The band recorded the song during the 2021 MTV Europe Music Awards in November at the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus in Budapest, where they stayed during the song's release on May 13. The song also featured the band's frontman Ryan Tedder's son Copeland, who was credited as one of the backing vocals. Following the release of the lead single from the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack "Hold My Hand" on May 3, "I Ain't Worried" was officially released as the second single on May 13 by Interscope Records and Mosley Music Group, the label on which the band is part. The song, along with its music video directed by Isaac Rentz, made its global debut on MTV Live and MTVU, as well as on the billboards of the Paramount Theater Manhattan on Times Square.
"I Ain't Worried" appears during the scene where Maverick and his students play football at a beach. Tedder felt that illustrating the song worked with the film was important, given the traditional Hollywood wisdom that "you can lose a song if it doesn’t play to picture." Given the film's secrecy, Tedder found this hard to convey: initially, they were not allowed a copy of the segment they were writing for. In a Zoom call, he was played footage from the scene, and decided to take matters into his own hands: he used his smartphone to record the scene from his computer screen, and then edited that sequence to the song himself with help from his co-writers. "We edited it, trying to guess what the film editor himself or herself would do," he explained to Variety. Cruise was thrilled with the results, and found Tedder's determination riotously funny, remarking, "Well, that's a first." Tedder estimated that most of his edit made it into the film unaltered.