Buffalo, NY · alt-rock · pop-rock

Goo Goo Dolls

3 festivals played ↓

'Iris' at sunset on the beach — you already know you're singing it, along with more '90s radio staples than you remembered they owned.

The Goo Goo Dolls started out in Buffalo, New York, in 1986 as a covers act before turning into a punk-influenced trio, with George Tutuska on drums alongside John Rzeznik and Robby Takac. Takac sang lead on their earliest records, released on small labels including Mercenary and Celluloid, before Rzeznik gradually took over as the band's main voice.

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s the band worked the American punk circuit, opening for acts like Bad Religion and Gang Green, and picked up a co-write from Paul Westerberg of the Replacements along the way. Their sound loosened from hardcore into something more melodic as the decade went on.

The turning point came with 1995's "Name," and then "Iris," written for City of Angels, which spent eleven straight months on the Billboard Hot 100 and eighteen weeks atop the airplay chart. In 2012, Billboard ranked it the number-one pop song of the previous twenty years.

"Slide," "Black Balloon" and "Broadway" followed from the same album, Dizzy Up the Girl, extending a run that has produced seven top-40 Hot 100 singles, three of them top tens, four Grammy nominations, and worldwide sales put at fifteen million records.

Rzeznik and Takac have remained the band's constants through all of it, still writing and touring together decades after the Buffalo bar circuit.

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alt-rockpop-rock