Hoobastank’s hit song, The Reason, from the band’s 2003 album, is still considered a classic 20 years later.
The band’s Doug Robb and Dan Estrin reflected on the success of the song on Friday on the special 20th Anniversary Edition, on Us Weekly’s Anatomy of a Song. The song became a radio and commercial smash, hitting No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and going 4x platinum in the United States.
The duo shared that they “wish we knew exactly what it was” that made it a hit, admitting that they’re “guilty of trying to deconstruct” it.
Lead singer Robb explained that the songwriting process was natural and not written under pressure to make it a success.
“It wasn’t like, ‘what does the audience want? What kind of tempo is good? Major minor chords, what chords work together?’ People do construct songs that way,” he explained.
“‘What’s a hot topic now? What’s good, what are phrases you can use’ – everything! They break it down to a science. They take all the ‘romance’ out of it.”
“It was pure in its writing and its message,” he continued. “It was one of the fastest songs from conception to finish that I think we’ve ever written. There wasn’t a lot of second-guessing — going back and going, ‘you should try this chord, try this word.’”
Robb surmised that the song’s success is due to “just the authenticity of it. It’s a message that was true to me but not intended to be universal. It wasn’t like I needed to write something that a lot of people could relate to. It was never intended that way.”