This year marks the 24th year since the formation of the Goo Goo Dolls, which will be celebrated by the release of their ninth studio album, Something for the Rest of Us on August 31. To promote the album’s release, the band is touring relentlessly this summer, hitting major venues across the U.S.
Singer/guitarist John Rzeznik, bassist Robby Takac, and drummer George Tutsuka initially formed the band in the degenerate city of Buffalo, New York in 1986 and called themselves The Sex Maggots. Eventually, both the band’s name and drummer were ditched to help the band garner enough success to become one of the most popular adult alternative rock bands of the 1990’s.
Although the band’s first four albums were given little attention, in 1995 they landed their first hit song, “Name,” off their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo. Prior to the album’s release, drummer Mike Malinin joined the group and has been a Goo ever since. The album sold over 2 million copies and the acoustic-driven song climbed the charts to the #5 spot.
Three years later, the band landed a second hit song, “Iris,” which was originally created to be part of the City of Angels soundtrack. The song spent 18 weeks at the #1 spot on the Billboard charts and was later included on the Goo Goo Doll’s sixth studio album, Dizzy Up the Girl. The LP remains the band’s most successful album ever, selling over 3 million copies. Like “Iris,” multiple songs from the album were top ten hits on the charts.
Although the band became less popular at the start of the 2000’s, their seventh studio album, Gutterflower, still went gold and included multiple hits such as “Here is Gone”. In 2006, their eighth studio album, Let Love In, was released and was similarly successful. Since then, the Grammy-nominated band has been hard at work on Something for the Rest of Us.
The recording of their newest album took place in multiple studios in Los Angeles as well as the band’s new studio in Buffalo. The Goos worked with multiple well-known producers such as Tim Palmer, John Fields, and Butch Vig to produce well-crafted songs and enduring lyrics that have been such an essential component of the Goo Goo Dolls’ ongoing success.
To spark interest in the album, the band released the single “Home” on June 8 on iTunes. A music video for the single was also released on Billboard, but fans were disappointed to find that the band is not shown in any part of the video. Apparently, the pretty shots of highways, flowers, and a brooding young woman were not enough for hard-core Goo fans.
Something for the Rest of Us delivers another bout of great songs such as “Soldier,” “One Night”, and “Nothing is Real”. With his lyrics, frontman Johnny Rzeznik addresses some of the issues that are familiar to many people. “I wanted some of the material on this album to address the disillusionment of the difficult period we live in; I wanted to give a voice to the emotional uncertainty that accompanies hard times. So many people are struggling to keep it together through tough economic conditions and two wars that seem to have no end in sight. The ones who bear the brunt of these burdens are everyday people. That’s who I want to speak to.”
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