It served as the lead single for his debut solo album, Grand Romantic (2015), which peaked at number seven on the Billboard 200 and saw positive critical response.

Ruess has also co-written a number of commercially successful singles, including "Die Young" by Kesha, "Stay the Night" by Zedd and Hayley Williams, "Walk Me Home" by Pink and with Keith Urban, Maroon 5 and Ellie Goulding.

[9] In 1986, his family moved to a farm in Glendale, Arizona, due to repeated bouts of pneumonia Ruess faced as a child.

[11] During his time in school, Ruess played in punk bands and upon graduation chose to pursue music professionally.

In an interview with American Songwriter Ruess states, "I'm not one to take lessons, so I decided that the only way I was going to learn how to sing, if what they were saying was true, was to go in my car and put on any sort of music from a vocalist that might be really hard to mimic, turn it on as loud as possible and try to hit all those notes".

The band's fanbase began to grow, and the Format released their second EP, Snails, with Atlantic Records in April 2005.

[15] Immediately after the split of the Format, Ruess contacted Jack Antonoff of Steel Train and Andrew Dost, formerly of Anathallo, to form a new band called fun.

The song was covered on Glee in December 2011, featured in a Chevy Sonic commercial during the Super Bowl in February 2012, and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 8, 2012.

After the success of "Just Give Me a Reason", Ruess was featured on Eminem's eighth studio album The Marshall Mathers LP 2 on the track "Headlights".

Many of Ruess' lyrics were borrowed from a previously unreleased track, "Jumping the Shark", written during the Aim and Ignite sessions.

In 2014, the band released the single "Sight of the Sun" for the HBO series Girls after being approached by show creator Lena Dunham.

[21] On June 18, 2014, Fun debuted a new song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon called "Harsh Lights".

It would be the last new Fun song performed before Ruess' pursuing his career as a solo artist, however the band has made it clear that they are on hiatus, not splitting up.

[22]In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ruess added, "You get a little selfish about the songs that you write, and it's really hard to do that in a group setting, where there are two other people, and you have to think about everybody else's feelings.

On June 1, 2015, Ruess released a new track from his solo album "Grand Romantic", titled "What This World Is Coming To".

On January 12, 2016, he released a music video for his song "Take It Back" starring actor Patrick Fischler[28] and also features a guitar solo from Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco.

In 2019, he collaborated again with Pink for the track "Walk Me Home", which was released in February for her eighth studio album, called Hurts 2B Human.

[31] Hayley Williams from Paramore believes that Nate secretly used a moniker Benjamin Eli Hanna to co-write the song "Stay the Night".

[32] In November 2021, he appeared on Saturday Night Live as part of musical guest Young Thug's performance of "Love You More.

Ruess provided vocals alongside Raina Douris on the episode-exclusive track "All the Bubbles in the World", though he remained uncredited in the public-facing marketing of the episode.

[42] Rachel and Ruess both provided backing vocals for the song "Dakota" from the 2007 album Trampoline by Jack's band Steel Train.

Rachel and Ruess collaborated on The Ally Coalition, an activist project to raise awareness of LGBTQ issues.