It was written by lead singer Pat Monahan, Amund Bjørklund, and Espen Lind.

The single received a 11× platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on October 5, 2022, signifying sales of over eleven million copies.

[4] After collaborating with the Norwegian production duo Espionage (Espen Lind and Amund Bjørklund) in the writing and recording of the track "Brick by Brick", Train's lead singer Pat Monahan decided to record another track with the duo.

Written in the key of E major,[6] the beat is set in common time and composed in a tempo of 97 bpm.

Scott Mervis, writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, praised the song as a welcome comeback from the band's hiatus, calling the track "joyous" and "bouncy".

"[11] The Village Voice derided the song, quipping "'Hey Soul Sister' is an orgy where bad ideas trade STDs, and the most syphilitic brain-fart stumbled in drunk from a Smash Mouth show ... From Smash Mouth, Train picked up an earworm that burrowed into society's asshole, laid 4.7 million iTunes eggs, and gave birth to a grey cloud of banality that covers the Earth.

Graham strongly opposed the song and its lyrical content and called the scene the worst part of the novel.

The video intercuts images of Train singing with a woman (Kiana Bessa Chastain) walking around her apartment and a man (actor Andrew Craghan) painting the words to the song on the landscape.

Train performed the song on the show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld on Fox News which aired during the early morning broadcast on April 20, 2010.

"Hey, Soul Sister" can also be heard on "Ko'olauloa", the sixth episode of the rebooted Hawaii Five-0, where it was sung and played live by Aidan James.

A cover of the song was also performed by "Munch's Make Believe Band," the animatronic show located at Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants.

In Fox's TV musical-comedy series Glee the song has been covered in the ninth episode of season two, "Special Education" (aired November 30, 2010) by actor Darren Criss (as his character Blaine Anderson) singing the solo in a performance with the fictional show choir Dalton Academy Warblers (voiced by all-male a cappella group Beelzebubs).

[21] "Hey, Soul Sister" was also covered by 2010 X Factor Australia winner Altiyan Childs for his self-titled debut album.

In October 2024, the American late-night TV series Saturday Night Live spoofed the song in a sketch titled “Forbidden Romance”, where a white man (portrayed by Andrew Dismukes) in an interracial relationship in the 1950s woos his disapproving parents by performing the song on ukulele, dedicating it to his black girlfriend (portrayed by Ego Nwodim).

[23][24] "Hey, Soul Sister" debuted at #98 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ended October 17, 2009, becoming their first charting single in five years.

It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week of April 10, 2010, and it is their highest on the chart to date, even surpassing their 2001 hit, "Drops of Jupiter", which peaked at #5.

As of the January 20, 2011, issue of Billboard, "Hey, Soul Sister" had spent 22 weeks at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.

[28] In addition to revitalizing Train's career in their native country, "Hey, Soul Sister" has also become a big international hit; it was #1 on the official Dutch and Australian singles charts for 7 weeks and 4[29] weeks, respectively, and also became their first Irish number one single.