The Brazilian samba that inspired Hoobastank’s “The Reason”

O Hoobastank was not a complete unknown when he released the song in 2003 “The Reason”. The American band had already achieved relative success with their first album, the same name, released in 2001. The singles “Crawling in the Dark” and “Running Away” They even entered the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, albeit in a modest way.

But it cannot be denied that the level reached with the title track of his second album, two years later, was much greater. And it would never be repeated by the group again, either with other songs from the same work or with their future initiatives.

As a reflection of this, “The Reason” is by far the most performed song in the Hoobastank on all music streaming platforms. And on YouTube, its music video reached, on August 22nd, a relatively rare mark among pre-platform artists and bands: 1 billion reproductions.

By celebrating this feat with a post on social media, the producer Howard Benson revealed a Brazilian inspiration for the track’s introduction. According to the professional — who has accumulated successful work with POD, My Chemical Romance, Kelly Clarkson, Santana, Halestorm and several others —, the opening of the song was influenced by “Samba de Uma Nota Só”, composition of Tom Jobim and letter of Newton Mendonça known worldwide for the version of Sergio Mendestitled in English “One Note Samba”.

Benson declared:

“One billion views on YouTube! When I was producing this track, I thought: ‘really good song… maybe it’ll be a hit!’. Congratulations to Hoobastank — Doug Robb (voice), Dan Estrin (guitar), Chris Hesse (battery)! And to my great team, Mike Plotnikoff It is Chris Lord-Alge. And the Yamaha by the keyboard I used to play the introduction of a note! Just so you know… I used the number one preset and influenced by ‘One Note Samba’, in Sergio Mendes It is Brazil 66.”

Initially, “One Note Samba” was launched in Portuguese and gained its first version with Joao Gilbertoin the album Love, Smile and Flower (1960). Over the years, she gained recordings of Stan Getz + Charlie Byrd, Quincy Jones and his own Tom Jobim, in instrumental reinterpretation. The adaptation of Getz and Byrd gave the song international fame, as the album from which it came, Jazz Samba (1962), won a Grammy and reached the top of the American chart in 1963. In the hands of Sergio Mendesreinforced its popularity by being reinterpreted in a medley with “Spanish Flea” (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass).

Hoobastank and the success of “The Reason”

Despite the inspiration, “The Reason” There’s little bossa nova. The hit of Hoobastank meets the typical radio pop rock format of the early 2000s, which guaranteed such success that the song has been “revived”, in recent times, by users of the TikTok.

In an interview with the website G1the vocalist Doug Robb said that no one in the band saw potential in “The Reason”. When the song was recorded, it had not even been suggested by the members to be released as a single. A “business decision” meant that it ended up becoming a work song — and it exploded all over the world.

“The music obviously exploded, it became bigger than the band itself. More people knew the song than the band. We played in small houses for young people in their early 20s, as we saw ourselves… and we went to play in these big gyms, arenas full of these people’s parents, basically pop music fans.”

Still according to Robbthe public attracted by the Hoobastank at that time it was very different from what was originally intended. They were people who were there for the hit, not for the band.

“A part of our audience that was with us before the hit left: ‘I forgot about you guys’. It’s a kind of stupid and kind of young way of relating to music, but a lot of people are like that, unfortunately. […] It was as if we had built rock credibility and almost traded it for this enormous popularity. But once that’s over, you go back to rock bottom and nothing is the same as it was before, you know? So, it was a struggle.”