If any record represents the convergence of Mainstream and Adult Top 40, it’s Train’s “Hey Soul Sister,” the most surprising comeback in a year defined by Top 40 comebacks. “Hey Soul Sister” has been a hit at Triple-A, AC, Hot AC and Mainstream Top 40—the latter being a format where Train hadn’t been a regular presence for seven years. It’s been remixed for Country. And a year after its initial breakthrough, some PDs report it continuing to test well with no sign of burn. So far, it’s the biggest-selling song of the year with more than 4.3-million sold thus far, according to Neilsen BDS. And its follow-up, "If It's Love," goes 9-8 on this week's "25+ Hits" chart of Mainstream and Adult Top 40 stations.

Through the song’s rise, Train has maintained a consistent presence at radio station events, despite being out on tour with John Mayer. Radio-Info’s “25+” got to talk to Train’s Pat Monahan about the group’s history with radio, and about the surprise success of the song, and why wanting to be on the radio is not the same as writing for the radio.

Monahan grew up in Erie, Pa., listening to Top 40 WCCK (K104), then to album WRKT (Rocket 101). One of his key radio memories is returning to Erie, after living in San Francisco for years, going to the beach with his family and hearing Train’s breakthrough song, ‘Meet Virginia’ “blasting on the radio” on K104’s successor, WRTS [Star 104]. Having grown up in an era of broad Top 40 variety, Monahan now says, “I think it’s awesome that we get to share the radio with Taylor Swift and Usher and that we can be so different but that we belong in the same kind of world, and that we’re still a pop band.”

“Meet Virginia” broke through at the height of the Modern AC format. While acoustic pop acts and singer-songwriters often find themselves pigeonholed at Triple-A with only brief windows when the genre can achieve multi-format success, Monahan always saw Train as the sort of band that could be played at Top 40. “I think that any band wants to be on pop radio [or at least] we are the type of band that does want to be on pop radio—it means that more people will be able to enjoy what we do. Even as we’re getting older and have been around longer, our music is more pop-sounding than ever.”

Train’s biggest early ’00s hit, “Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me),” came at a time when acoustic pop was losing its footing at Top 40—and the Kelly Clarkson-led pop boom was a few years away. Was there ever a moment where Monahan thought that his audience would no longer include 16-year-olds? “Of course. There was a moment when Rap was at its peak. As much as I enjoyed it, I felt like ‘I don’t belong here anymore.’ And there were other parts of music that I didn’t love. Now I really love what’s happening when I look at iTunes or radio. I love how B.O.B. is still rapping but asking people to make these amazing melodies with him. Bruno Mars can sing crazy great. I like where it’s come instead of where it was.”

Monahan has talked in other interviews about the band’s epiphany—the moment after his 2007 solo album where the band members decided they wanted to continue as a band and make viable current music. It was also widely said at the time that “Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me),” was a result of the group sitting down to write a radio hit at label Columbia’s urging. With its slew of pop-culture references and its acoustic-meets-Hip-Hop track, “Hey Soul Sister” now seems like it was always calibrated for the radio as well—the song that reflected the band’s renewed determination.

But Monahan says that was never the case. Gearing “Drops Of Jupiter” to the radio “was the downfall of our existence, continuing down that path and thinking we should continue to make pop music for the radio. It almost broke the band up" when that approach didn’t yield another pop hit of the same magnitude. “If you’re not successful, then you have this unsuccessful song that doesn’t come from your heart. So who is there to blame for not enjoying it? We took our break so we could come back and refocus on why we were doing this.

“It has nothing to do with radio. We love being on radio and that they care enough to play our music. But we have to write songs for ourselves and then people will want to know more about them. ‘Hey Soul Sister’ is on the radio because we didn’t write it for the radio. We never thought a song with ukulele would matter to people and become a pop culture event,” Monahan says. When he did hear “Hey Soul Sister” on the radio for the first time, Monahan says, it was on Adult Top 40 KPLZ (Star 101.5) in his current home town of Seattle.

Monahan does credit his solo album as “the beginning of the next level,” which in turn led to Train’s renewed drive. “I needed to be in a room with a bunch of different writers to get some things out of myself that I wasn’t able to get on my own. It inspired better melodies and lyrics – I sing melodies and I write lyrics and I was able to do it in an environment that is sometimes uncomfortable because you want to be great. And wanting to say something that matters in a way that nobody has said it is inspiring, but it’s not easy.”

Asked about the band’s relentless radio schedule on behalf of “Hey Soul Sister” and the “Save Me, San Francisco” album, Monahan says, “We’ve always done a lot of radio things. This is kind of an age where if you want to be on the radio, it takes a lot of effort—everything from ‘hey, where are we going to record this song’ and every little detail about it to ‘how do we get somebody to take a chance?’ … Doing radio shows is about connecting with the listeners. We’ve always thought of that as a strength of ours. We love to perform live. And we certainly think of radio as an integral part of what we do.”

Doing a lot of radio events when you’re out on a high-profile national tour as well often means doing a lot of same day “Listener Lounge”-type events. Asked how many times a day he has to sing, Monahan says, “In the beginning of the album cycle, it’s two or three times a day every single day. It’s not singing that’s hard. I can sing all day. The more I sing, the better I get at singing. It’s the traveling, the interviews, the airplanes, the car rides, the bus rides and getting there. Then you get to do what you love to do and you’re off to the next thing. The exhausting part isn’t the work.”

Asked about his favorite record by another artist on the radio, Monahan returns to Bruno Mars. “It’s a cross between [the Travie McCoy collaboration] ‘Billionaire’ and [the B.O.B./Mars hit] ‘Nothing On You.’ I think he’s my favorite singer right now, and there’s a lot of great songs out there right now. I love LaRoux’s ‘Bulletproof.’” Is there any chance of a Train/Mars collaboration? “I hope so. We wrote together once—I’m not sure what will come of it. It was a lot of fun and I think we could do some really cool stuff together.”