The song came out at a very particular moment for the American charts, and that gave it a strange commercial history. In the 90s, many record companies deliberately refused to release certain songs as commercial singles in America, so that people would be forced to buy the full album. Promotional singles were sent to radio stations and those stations played them nonstop, but for a song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 it had to be sold as a single. So a track could completely dominate FM radio and still not appear at all on the main chart. That is exactly what happened with “Iris.” On the Billboard Airplay chart it reached the top on August 1, 1998 and stayed there for 18 weeks, nonconsecutive, a truly enormous number. But it could not appear on the Hot 100. When Billboard removed the rule requiring a song to be sold as a single, during the week of December 5, 1998, “Iris” finally appeared on the Hot 100 at No. 9, months after the peak of its popular impact. It is almost certain that if it had been eligible from the beginning, it would have reached No. 1, since during August the top spot was held by “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy & Monica, which had already been sitting there for months.