Hoobastank - The Backlash Against 'The Reason'

Hoobastank would return in November of 2003 with their album The Reason - an album that would be both a blessing and curse. Prior to the record’s release the band submitted what they thought was the finished record to their label who thought there were no singles on the album and so they asked teh band to go back and write a few more tunes - it’s not clear whether the reason was done by this point but based on the interview the band gave to the All Good Things Podcast with Jason Nash they kind of made it seem like the Reason was written around this time or at least finished. By this point the band didn’t think the title track was anything special and it was pretty normal for them to have a few ballads on each of their records while feeling their harder rocking tunes better represented the band.
The first single released from the reason would be the track out of Control which was a modest hit peaking at number 16 mainstream rock tracks chart. The song would be about opening your eyes after being blinded or devoted to something. The record according to Robb would contain several songs that deal with religion and his lack of interest in it and this seems like a good tie in.
Then at one point shortly after the album’s release the label was considering do we keep pushing the single, something the band wanted to do or do we release the second single. The reason teh discussion came up was because a radio station in Utah started playing the title track and it started to pick up steam. The band ended up flying to new york to meet with their label to push for out of control to continue to be marketed, but ultimately the label convinced the band to release the reason as the second single. The band members by their own admission didn’t think much of the song, let alone believe it had single potential since it was normal for them to have a few mellow songs on each of their albums up until this point.
The Reason would be a multi-format hit peaking at number 4 on the mainstream rock tracks chart and number 2 on the hot 100 chart. The single spent an impressive 38 weeks on the charts. It soon became the second most played song on radio in 2004, only trailing usher’s tune yeah. The song according to billboard was the only rock song in the past several years to reach the top 2 spots on the hot 100 chart. The song got a massive boost when it was also used in the series of finale of the tv show friends, which was watched by over 50 million people. But Robb would admit he never watched the episode and the only show he was interested in having the band’s music in was the simpsons.
The Reason, a tale of redemption and second chances blew up. It would be one of the fastest songs Robb and Estrin had written together with it’s origins dating back to shortly coming off the road for their previous album with Estrin telling us weekly.
he was still living at his mom’s house and was “constantly just working on music.” One day when sitting in the guest room he came up with something on his guitar recalling “It was somewhat unique or different to what I had been coming up with,” he says, “or maybe it was an evolution of what I had been doing already because the riff -on a song from the first record called ‘Crawling in the Dark,’ it’s not terribly different…I found these other chords and just started going between these things that spoke to me.” What resulted was a chord progression that Estrin recorded and sent over to Robb. As for the lyrics they aren’t about a particular person but rather from a series of lyrics, poems and phrases that were stitched together by Robb. It’s also more introspective track with Robb recalling to Us weekly The song is about my own issues of messing up, and having to readjust my own behavior to make things work.”
The title track’s success helped push their album to go double platinum, peaking at number 3 on the charts and earned the band a slew of grammy nominations.
The band were mixed on the album’s success not being happy with the Reason compareing the song’s success to band extreme with more than words. Both songs were not really being representative of each band’s work. They also feuded with their label over the videos for the record initially wanting to create a trilogy starting with the reason and going into the high energy Same Direction which featured cameos from Linkin Park’s chester bennington, Kanye West and Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden. The idea was that the end of the trilogy would be made into the music video for Disappear, but their label pushed the band to do a boy meets girl, girl meets boy storyline for the trilogy, but they fought back wanting as grammy.com put it proposing an ultraviolet Matrix-type action video with a doomed bank robbery in which they all die. The label rejected the idea so only two of the videos are related.
In addition to that Robb would talk to g

[@slimbob777]

I love "crawling in the dark" and "first of me" and never understand and never love "the reason"

[@aaronscrewface]

poopastank

[@George-de6hd]

They were the opening act for everyone back then (I’m not even into them and I’ve seen them in concert like 3 times opening for different bands) they never went to that next level and there time came and went…..and they have one of the worst band names ever 😂 and they were just all Around pretty bland and generic

[@Immirex]

The song was everywhere, EVERYWHERE, you had a ridiculous name Hobostank, and they sounded like a rip off of Incubus. Really just bad timing and awful luck for these upstart Guys.