How to Save a Life by The Fray

How to Save a Life, the debut album from Denver's The Fray, came out on Epic on September 13, 2005. Isaac Slade and Joe King, schoolmates who started the band in 2002, had landed their deal the previous December after "Over My Head (Cable Car)" became a sleeper hit on Denver radio. Aaron Johnson and Mike Flynn produced, and most of it was cut in six weeks at Echo Park Studios in Bloomington, Indiana, with extra sessions in New York City and Colorado.

The piano leads everything here: dramatic melodies and slow-building ballads soaked in loss, regret and heartache, the kind of earnest, cinematic pop-rock that had critics reaching for Coldplay and Keane. Reviews were mixed, praising the production but calling the songs derivative, yet the title track and "Over My Head (Cable Car)" both earned Grammy nominations, "Look After You" and "All at Once" followed as singles, and the album went quadruple platinum.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.