How to Save a Life

Song meaning

According to lead singer Isaac Slade, the song was composed and influenced by his experience while working as a mentor at a camp for troubled teens:

Slade claims that the song is about all of the people that tried to reach out to the boy but were unsuccessful. As Slade says in an interview, the boy's friends and family approached him by saying, "Quit taking drugs and cutting yourself or I won't talk to you again," but all he needed was some support. The boy was losing friends and going through depression. He lost his best friend and could not deal with it. The verses of the song describe an attempt by an adult to confront a troubled teen. In the chorus, the singer laments that he himself was unable to save a friend because he did not know how.

While this was the original intent of the song, the band has opened the song to interpretation. They created a website where fans were welcome to submit music videos they had made for the song. This arose from the response that Slade got from the song:

From an interview with Slade by Bob Wilson in Sauce, Slade was asked, "'How to Save a Life', was apparently inspired by an experience you had as a mentor to a boy who had a drug problem. What's the story behind that?" Slade answered:

Commercial success

The song is the band's first to achieve significant popularity outside of the United States. "How to Save a Life" was a top five hit in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Due to an early leak by BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom, where it was the band's debut single, the song was released in the territory five weeks earlier than planned. It debuted at number twenty nine on the UK Singles Chart on January 21, 2007 via downloads alone. Instead of its planned release date which was to be March 26, 2007, the single was physically released in the United Kingdom on February 28 and gradually rose up the chart, reaching number five on February 25, staying there for four weeks. It eventually peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart on April 8 and became Britain's eleventh biggest-selling song of 2007. On March 29, "How to Save a Life" peaked at number 1 in Ireland, becoming their first and only number one single in the country to date. The song only stayed at the top spot for a week but sales still proved strong after it fell from number 1.

The song was ranked No. 24 on Billboard's Best Adult Pop Songs of the Decade, and No. 47 on Billboard's Top 100 Digital Tracks of the Decade. It was also ranked No. 58 on Billboard's Hot 100 Songs of the Decade and No. 56 on Rhapsody's list of the Top 100 Tracks of the Decade. The song was the 25th most downloaded song of all time on iTunes as of February 2010. The song has sold over 4.7 million copies in the US as of January 2015.

In popular culture

The song was first featured on ABC's Grey's Anatomy, after Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor for the show, saw the band perform in Los Angeles. She was impressed with their performance, particularly with the song "How to Save a Life". Alexandra then incorporated the song into "Superstition", an episode of the show's second season (first aired on March 19, 2006). After its usage in the episode, the song became a minor Hot 100 hit. The song became an "unofficial theme" for the other members of the Grey's Anatomy production after the episode aired, leading to the decision that the song would be used in the main promotion for the third season in the show. Grey's Anatomy is credited with bringing popularity to the song.

The song was also used on the NBC show Scrubs (S5 E20) entitled My Lunch, which was one the most critically acclaimed and most emotional Scrubs episode.

Other variations

Bryan Preston, a former lead blogger at conservative website HotAir.com, reworked the lyrics to address terrorism. Retitled "How to Take a Life", Preston made a video of the song, himself singing the lyrics while noted conservative pundit Michelle Malkin played the piano. The video juxtaposed images and video of radical leaders speaking and clips from terrorist training videos and camps.

Australian musical comedy trio, The Axis of Awesome, perform a number of short parodies of the song: "How to Bake a Scone", "How to Catch a Duck" and "How to Kill a Hooker".

Another version of "How To Save A Life" has been used as a tribute to those who were killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's Twin Towers, the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and the passengers of a plane that went down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with audio from shocked civilians that were recorded when the attacks happened.

Music videos

The original music video, which premiered on VH1 on 12 September 2006, featured the recurring themes of light and stopped time. This music video shows the scene of a car crash and all of its presumed victims in pause. There is a recurring light throughout the video shining brightly in the dark woods that the video takes place in. Scenes of the band playing in a dark warehouse are intercut with the story going on outside. This version of the video was placed at No. 21 of the year by VH1's "Top 40 Videos of 2006".

Another version of the music video juxtaposes scenes from Grey's Anatomy to scenes of the original music video. However, all the scenes of the presumed car crash victims are excluded and only scenes of The Fray playing in a warehouse are shown.

A third music video, directed by Mark Pellington, was released for the song on 6 December 2006. The video features various kids, most of which seem to be between 12–18 in age, all who appear to be depressed and suicidal, or possibly mourning the loss of a loved one. All of these children have lost a significant loved one prior to the video. Many of the kids cry and scream in the video, all against a white background. Scenes of the band playing the song against this same white background are also shown throughout the video. Many numbered steps are shown alongside the kids, such as "Remember", "Cry", or "Let It Go". The video ends with each child finding a catharsis and making peace with themselves or others. This version of the video debuted on MTV's Total Request Live at No. 9, and went on to top the countdown at No. 1 on 21 December 2006, becoming the band's first TRL No. 1, and also becoming the last No. 1 video on TRL for 2006.

Track listings

1. "How to Save a Life"
2. "She Is" – Acoustic from Stripped Raw + Real

1. "How to Save a Life"
2. "How to Save a Life" – Acoustic from Stripped Raw + Real
3. "She Is" – Acoustic from Stripped Raw + Real
4. "How to Save a Life" – CD-Rom

Personnel

Produced by Aaron Johnson, Mike Flynn