The Goo Goo Dolls

The Goo Goo Dolls are an American rock band formed in 1986 in Buffalo, NY, during one of Buffalo’s most prolific underground music phases. The band was formed by John Rzeznik (Also known as Johnny Rzeznik), lead singer and songwriter for the band, with bassist/vocalist Robby Takac, and drummer George Tutuska. Mike Malinin later replaced Tutuska as the band’s drummer.

The band has released twelve studio albums between 1986 and 2020, but they are best known for platinum-selling A Boy Named Goo (1995) and Dizzy Up the Girl (1998). These mid- to late 1990s albums contain the Goo Goo Dolls' biggest hits to date – Name and “Iris” most notably, but also “Slide,” “Black Balloon,” and “Dizzy.”

These hits made the Goo Goo Dolls a household name for radio-friendly “prom night power balladry” (as one Rolling Stone review put it), but the band’s early output was often far rougher musically, melding the band’s edgier punk influences with an often soft sensibility in the mold of the band’s early heroes, The Replacements. One can hear these influences on many songs on A Boy Named Goo though these affinities would fade after Dizzy Up the Girl.