Songfacts®:

• When the Lumineers issued their self-titled debut album in 2012, the alt-folk rockers quickly became known for two ubiquitous hits: "Ho Hey" and "Stubborn Love."
  
  While the former was disguised as a breakup song, it was really about the band's fractured relationship with New York City, whose high cost of leaving forced them to relocate to Denver, Colorado. The latter is also about a complicated relationship, as lead singer Wesley Schultz clings to the empty promises of a woman who refuses to stay loyal to him. He admits her actions have irreparably damaged him, but his stubborn kind of love won't let him give up.
  
  "It's better to feel pain than nothing at all," he reasons.
• The single, which peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #10 on the Rock Songs charts, was a radio staple but didn't reach the chart heights of the smash "Ho Hey," possibly because the band wouldn't allow the tune to be edited down for airplay.
  
  "We were protective of what we made," Schultz told The Guardian in 2016. "There's art to a song, and you lose that when it gets chopped up and molested. We figured we'd take our chances and thin out the herd for people who actually want to hear our album. Desperately trying to remain relevant is a short-term solution. 'Ho Hey' and 'Stubborn Love' were our icebreakers to the world. It's like if you're at a bar, those songs were like our opening lines when meeting a girl. You still have to back it up."
• This was used on these TV shows:
  
  The Vampire Diaries ("Today Will Be Different" - 2016)
  The Night Shift ("Pilot" - 2014)
  Nashville ("Why Don't You Love Me" - 2013)
  Danville 2nd Ward Young Men ("High Adventure 2013" - 2013)
  Covert Affairs ("Sound And Vision" - 2012)
• The Lumineers performed "Stubborn Love" on Saturday Night Live on January 19, 2013.
• Two music videos were made. The first, released in 2012, combines live performances with behind-the-scenes footage from the band's Big Parade tour. The second video, released in 2013, follows a young girl dealing with the aftermath of her parents' divorce. As she sets out on a road trip with her mother, the weather reflects her emotional state, shifting from stormy skies to sunshine as they head for a brighter future. The clip was directed by Isaac Ravishankara, who reunited with the band on "Angela" and "Cleopatra," among other videos.
• The Lumineers' rise to fame came alongside the burgeoning nu-folk movement, among acts like Mumford & Sons, Noah and the Whale, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, who dressed up traditional folk music with elements of indie rock and pop. By the time the band issued their second album, Cleopatra, four years later, the genre fell out of favor but the Lumineers persevered.
  
  "If the songs are good then it doesn't matter how they're dressed up," Schultz told BBC News in 2016. "At the end of the day a lot of those songs were just pop songs."
• President Obama included the song on his annual Summer Spotify Playlist in 2015, which led to the Lumineers performing the tune at the White House in January 2016.