“The Reason” is a song about a breakup, during which the narrator asks for forgiveness, and was seemingly written for this very purpose. Sometimes they were full biographies, sometimes they were just a block of text, often lyrics to the person’s favorite song. In the four seconds before Myspace took over and the phrase social media came to be, AIM profiles were getting more and more complex by the minute, sometimes featuring click-through blog-like portions of text. You probably also read the song’s lyrics during the era of AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, in someone’s profile or away message. If you haven’t formally heard of them, you’ve probably heard “The Reason” one way or the other. The group has a name that likely makes for the best 10-finger knuckle tattoo money can buy. Hoobastank was (is?) a band from Agoura Hills, California.
It should be noted, probably, that they weren’t spinning through the album “The Reason,” but rather some weird mix CD featuring “Out of Control” and probably something off of Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson’s “The Massacre.” Furthermore, someone had probably opened their CD player while testing it, running a sharpie over the disk to create what probably could pass as a modern art piece at various museums across America.) (“Out of Control” was also on that record, released shortly before the special aired, and was listened to that following high school football season by junior varsity players who weren’t going to play, but also owned walkmans and also had to ride the bus to games. Of course, “The Reason” was on the episode behind a montage of the series’ more romantic moments.