Train’s Pat Monahan Reflects on 25 Years of ‘Drops of Jupiter’ (Exclusive)

A quarter century after its creation, Train‘s lead singer, Pat Monahan, still feels the palpable power that “Drops of Jupiter” has, as both a single and an album of the same name.

The Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter, 56, tells PEOPLE in conversation at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville — where he and Train made their debut performance on Friday, Sept. 19 — that despite being 25 years removed from crafting the now-9x platinum hit with the world, he is still as close as could be to its influence: his late mother.

Though “Drops of Jupiter” was officially released as the lead single off the album of the same name on Jan. 29, 2001, its origin story began a few years before that. Monahan’s mother, Patricia Ann Monahan, died in December 1998 from lung cancer while Train was touring. Within just a year of navigating that tragic moment, Monahan and Train felt the pressure mounting from their record label to create a new project.

“We didn’t have a single at the time, and that’s what the pressure was about. We had an album that Columbia Records liked, but they were like, ‘We don’t have a song to start with.’ And so it was months of me just grinding away,” Monahan recalls of that key time formulating the track. That’s when inspiration came by the way of divine intervention, according to the star.

“It felt like my mom wrote that song with me,” Monahan shares. “And we were kind of talking back and forth about [it]. She was basically telling me, ‘It’s okay, I’m gone, but I can swim through the planets and come back with drops of Jupiter in my hair. There are things out here that I can do that I couldn’t do before.’ ”

He continues to note, “I guess the one line that means the most to me is I was singing to her, ‘Are you lonely looking for yourself out there?’ But I think after time, I realized maybe it was her singing that to me.”

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With a surefire hit inspired by his mother’s love under his belt, Monahan returned to the label and effectively shaped the future of Train via one key interaction.

“I was supposed to go to Columbia Records, and the guy who was running it at the time was about to tell me, ‘I don’t care what your band says, you’re going to have to go write with some other writers.’ And I just happened to have the demo of ‘Drops of Jupiter,’ ” he shares.

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After hearing the demo, Monahan jokingly recalls the Columbia executive remarking, ” ‘You just brought me the song of the year, so I don’t need to tell you that anymore.’ ”

All in all, the singer comments about his mother that fans “can thank her” for “Drops of Jupiter” existing, but he remains grateful as a whole for the staying power that it and much of Train’s catalog have had throughout the years, continually inspiring new and old listeners alike.

“Young people are so funny,” he says. “The big trend a few years ago was ’50 Ways to Say Goodbye.’ And it was basically these kids filming each other with their boyfriend or girlfriend saying, ‘You better not leave me. If you do, I’m going to tell everybody you fell off an airplane.’ And that trend was really cute and funny … I love seeing young people interpret it the way they do. And I remember at the time I wrote, ‘Hey, Soul Sister’ … and texting had just started to become widely used, and people would be like, ‘Hey, Soul Sister!’ And then the response was, ‘Ain’t that Mr., Mr. on the radio?’ ”

Monahan surmises that “it’s hard to make an impact on anyone at any moment, but to make an impact that lasts is something that you can’t really put your finger on … I have nothing but respect for anybody who’s able to make an impact. And the fact that I’ve been able to do that is such an honor and something that I can’t [fully] explain.”