"How to Save a Life" is a song by American pop rock band the Fray. It was released as the second single from their debut studio album of the same name. The song is one of the band's most popular airplay songs and peaked in the top 3 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. It became the joint seventh longest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, tying with Santana's "Smooth" (1999), at 58 consecutive weeks. The song has been certified 3x Platinum by the RIAA, and has sold 4.7 million downloads as of January 2015, the fourth best-selling rock song in digital history.

It is the band's highest-charting song to date, topping the Adult Top 40 chart for 15 consecutive weeks and topping the Canadian Airplay Chart. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 2007, but lost to "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

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:

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