The 1990s spawned many a musical hit, with rock-laced power ballads often leading the charts.
But it was the inclusion of a song in the soundtrack of the 1998 Nic Cage/Meg Ryan film City of Angels that propelled a then little-known rock band into the limelight.
The band was Goo Goo Dolls, and the song Iris, went on to become one of the most well-known rock anthems of our times, even making the Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest pop songs.
So who are the Goo Goo Dolls, and where are they now?
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Far from being an overnight success, Goo Goo Dolls, consisting of guitarist/vocalist John Rzeznik, bassist/vocalist Robby Takac and drummer George Tutuska, first formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1986.
Takac and Tutuska were school friends who met Rzeznik when he was playing in a band with Takac’s cousin.
Rzeznik said in 2022 he couldn’t remember how they came up with the band’s name.
After starting as a cover band, they began to develop a punk sound, releasing a self-titled album in 1987, followed by a second album in 1989.
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By the time they released a third album a year later, Rzeznik was taking more of a lead singer role.
Another album followed in 1991, which was a mix of heavy metal, pop rock and punk rock sounds. The same year, they recorded the song, I’m Awake Now, for the the soundtrack of horror movie Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
Superstar Car Wash was released in 1993, by which time they were receiving media attention and critical success and good sales. A single, We Are the Normal, was played on college and independent radio and a video made it onto MTV. A song from the album, Fallin’ Down, was chosen for another movie soundtrack.
But before they would make it big, a dispute over songwriting royalties, that were meant to be split three ways, saw Tutuska leave the band. He was replaced by Mike Malinin.
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A new album, A Boy Named Goo, followed in 1995, which featured the single, Name, the first of their songs to enjoy mainstream success, and marked their move to a bigger record label.
Rzeznik was approached to write a song for the City of Angels soundtrack. Unfortunately, it coincided with a bout of writer’s block which left him ready to quit the band.
But he persisted, and Iris was released in 1998. It stayed on top of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts for a record-breaking 18 weeks and spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Songs chart. The song also received three Grammy nominations.
It was included not just on the movie soundtrack but the band’s most successful album, Dizzy Up the Girl, which included other Top 10 hits Slide, Black Balloon, Broadway and Dizzy.
In 2001, the band released a compilation CD, followed by another studio album the following year.
In 2006, the band marked their 20th anniversary with a new album, followed by a greatest hits compilation the following year and volume two two years later.
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New studio albums followed in 2010 and 2013, before Malinin announced he was leaving the band. A lawsuit alleging wrongful termination followed.
The remaining band members celebrated the 20th anniversary of A Boy Named Goo in 2015 with a special edition of the album. Their eleventh studio album followed in 2016 and an EP in 2017.
More albums followed, including a Christmas album. Their most recent album, Chaos in Bloom, was released in 2022.
The Goo Goo Dolls announced in 2023 they would embark on a tour of North America, and this year they are heading to Australia and New Zealand before returning to the US and Canada for shows.
Recent years has seen them reach a whole new generation of fans, thanks in part to Spotify. The band announced in November 2023 it had racked up more than 437 million streams and 56.7 million listeners across 184 countries via the platform last year alone.
In an interview with PBS NewsHour last year, Rzeznik said they had noticed fans of all ages coming to their shows.
“There’s a lot of younger kids, 20-somethings out there, which is, like, all right, that’s cool, and people our age and older,” he said.
“It’s pretty much like a couple of generations of people coming out to see it now. And the tours have been getting, like, incrementally bigger, despite that break during COVID. It’s been really gratifying.
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“And it’s like – it’s fun to see, like, a young kid singing your song.”
He also loves to see the audience engage with their songs, especially when they play one of their biggest hits, Slide.
“You start playing the guitar riff at the top of the song,” he said. “Because you play ‘ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding’.
“I never get sick of, like, turning the microphone around and listening to them sing it. I sat on my sofa at like two in the morning with a guitar and a pen and a piece of paper and, like, wrote this song. And, like, to connect like that, that’s an amazing thing.
“And then, all of a sudden, it’s 40 years. It’s crazy.”