Songfacts®:

• Hoobastank struck gold with this emotional ballad, which peaked at #2 on the Hot 100, spending 38 weeks on the tally. It also reached the Top 10 on charts worldwide, peaking at #1 in Italy.
• The romantic lyric finds lead singer Doug Robb confessing to his shortcomings within a relationship. He regrets upsetting his lover with his failings and vows to change. Robb tells her she is "the reason" he is determined to be a better person.
• Hoobastank released the song as the second single from The Reason on April 26, 2004. After the band dropped the album on December 9, 2003 it originally peaked at #45 on the Billboard 200, but the success of the title track sent the album back into the charts, this time to #3.
• "The Reason" got a huge boost when it featured in the final episode of Friends on May 6, 2004. Robb admitted to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that he wasn't one of the 52.5 million people who tuned in to watch.
  
  "I've never seen a single episode of Friends. I just don't watch sitcoms," he said. "The only sitcom I watch is The Simpsons. I rarely watch TV. I got more calls and e-mails about that than a lot of other things that were happening to us that were more impressive. But it was a good way to get the song out to a jillion people."
• This was Hoobastank's biggest hit by far. Their only other songs to reach the Hot 100 were "Crawling in the Dark" (#68) and "Running Away" (#44).
• In 2021 "The Reason" found a fresh surge of popularity when it became the soundtrack of choice for TikTok users posting confessional videos. Under the hashtag #NotAPerfectPerson, people admitted to failings and embarrassing moments from their past to the song's opening lyrics, "I'm not a perfect person."
  
  Hoobastank uploaded their own video in the #NotAPerfectPerson challenge on January 27, 2021. They posted the clip with the caption: "Realizing 20 years later that you named your band Hoobastank."
• "The Reason" plays in the first episode of the 2023 Netflix series Beef, garnering new interest in the song. The series soundtrack is loaded with tracks from the '90s and '00s, including "Lonely Day" by System Of A Down and "Drive" by Incubus.