Following Rihanna’s explosive Super Bowl LVII halftime show, Hoobastank’s Doug Robb admitted the band once rejected a feature from Rihanna.
“Back when we were recording our third album, we were on Island Def Jam, and they approached us at one point and were, like, ‘Hey, would you guys be interested in putting on one of our newer artists on one of your songs,” Robb told Alt 98.7’s Booker and Stryker. “That’s pretty common,” he continued, later elaborating: “It was Rihanna. I had never heard of her. I don’t think anyone else in the band had, either, at the time.”
Robb revealed the song Rihanna recorded for them was “Inside Of You,” from the alt-rock band’s 2006 album.
Said Robb: “We sent it to her camp, but they chopped it up and rearranged some parts, [because] it wasn’t written as a duet or anything. They extended some parts and and sent it back and basically put this pre-chorus [on] where Rihanna wrote some lyrics and sang a melody. Because we were so used to hearing it the way we had it, nobody really loved it.”
Robb first shared the fun fact in a tweet that included a video of Rihanna’s Halftime performance with Hoobstank’s “Crawling In The Dark” synced to match.
“Displaying a total lack of foresight, we didn’t use that version of the song for the album,” Robb wrote.
In the comments, several fans asked if the band would be open to releasing the record or, more pressingly, if there are legal obstacles in the way: “Not sure,” he replied.
“I think if we had done a proper collaboration with her, writing the song knowing there was gonna be another artist on it and making space for it, we probably would have felt differently and used it,” Robb later told Consequence. “I think the way we did it was just wrong. The paint had already dried so to speak. Well, it was that, plus a stunning lack of vision to see what a star Rihanna was going to be.”
This would’ve been around this same time that Rihanna was set to release her career-launching 2005 album “Music of the Sun,” which included the highly successful single “Pon De Replay.” In the end, Hoobstank’s “Inside of You” was not nearly as influential as their timeless 2004 hit “The Reason,” which enjoyed a resurgence amongst several other timeless ’00s hits on TikTok in 2021.
