My Top 100, No. 18: "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls

Are the Goo Goo Dolls corny now? I mean, beyond how their music sort of feels dated because of how wholly '90s it is.

Maybe there's sort of a Coldplay thing going on, where the audience changes but the band doesn't, and we rebel against the thing we used to love because it reminds us of the people we used to be and have tried so hard to forget.

(HUUUUUGE bong rip)

But seriously, the Goo Goo Dolls were hugely popular in the 1990s. Not having thought the matter through that seriously, I might posit that "Iris" is the greatest slow-dance song of that decade, which if nothing else has inspired me to write an answer to Shea Serrano's The Rap Year Book about the most important slow dance song of every year since 1979.

But "Name" always got me in a way that "Iris" never did, because the entry to the chorus is an absolute killer. Going from the picked verses to the strummed chorus requires a moment where you really buckle down and put that sonofabitch in gear, and "Name" actually gives us that moment by stopping and giving the two quarter note drum hits and three and four on the measure before the chorus. 

That was one of the first musical moments that made me think about how to write rock music. I realize that the Goo Goo Dolls make milquetoast pop-rock for boring white people, but I'm a boring white person who, at age 13 or so, hadn't expanded his musical horizons beyond milquetoast pop-rock. And honestly, I'm not sure why I feel so defensive about ranking this song this high--it's got dynamic contrast, fun guitar parts, and an all-time great sing-along chorus. Go ahead and get through "A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio" without wishing you were 15 again and on a bus to camp or whatever people who are cooler than I am did when they were 15. 

Sometimes the culture decides something is corny and dated before you're ready to stop enjoying it.