"The One" was the fourth single from the Backstreet Boys' hit album Millennium. This song was also used as the opening song in the shōnen anime Hanada Shōnen-shi. In a 2001 interview on The View, the group stated they never really intended "The One" as their fourth single. The group held a poll which allowed fans to choose what the next single off their album should be, and after Nick Carter himself called in and voted for "The One", his large fan-base followed. The song the rest of the group really wanted to be a single that the fans were voting for the most was "Don't Want You Back". A.J. McLean stated that "Don't Want You Back" was his favorite song the group had done. A sneak preview of this song was released on the A Night Out with the Backstreet Boys DVD on November 17, 1998.