A Boy Named Goo was the fifth album by the Goo Goo Dolls, released in 1995 by Metal Blade Records. No, seriously, the Goo Goo Dolls were on Metal Blade. They also were a pretty great band for a few years there in the early to mid 90s. They started out as kind of a scrappy punk band, with bassist Robby Takac doing most of the singing, but as guitarist Johnny Rzeznik took greater creative control of the band, and started singing more often, they moved along the same evolutionary curve as Husker Du and the Replacements before them, transforming into a punk rock influenced alternative rock band with a similar midwestern heartland feel. This wasn’t too surprising, considering that the Goo Goo Dolls hailed from Buffalo, NY, which was neither physically nor spiritually that far from Minneapolis.
A Boy Named Goo, along with the album that preceded it, Superstar Carwash, were the apex of this particular period in the Goo’s history. But A Boy Named Goo also contained the seeds of the Goo’s downfall, featuring as it did the ballad “Name,” which caught the ear of adult contemporary radio over a year after the album’s release and became their first big hit. I bought the cassette back when it was still brand new, and I’d hated “Name” from the first time I heard it. Not just because I’m a ballad hater, either (though I do tend to be exactly that). “We Are The Normal,” the ballad on Superstar Carwash, had charmed me immediately, though I’m sure it helped that the band had enlisted Paul Westerberg to write lyrics for it. No, there was something about “Name” that rubbed me the wrong way from the start, and when it became their big radio hit, I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I was glad to see a band that I’d supported for years get big. On the other hand, though, I knew that if it were to be songs like “Name” that made them famous, they’d stop being the blue collar alt-rock band I’d come to love.
I was right about that—today, to everyone younger than me and even to most kids my age, the Goo Goo Dolls are synonymous with Matchbox 20 or Nickelback; purveyors of bland adult contemporary ballads with syrupy production and cheesy faux sentimentality. I’d love to be able to say something like, “The Goo Goo Dolls I fell in love with disappeared in 1996, and the band you hear on adult contemporary radio now bear no resemblance to the one I loved in 1993.” But it’s not that easy; I can’t just draw a thick black line down the center of their career, dividing what was good from what is terrible now. A Boy Named Goo is still my favorite album of theirs, even with one of their worst songs sitting right in the middle of it. Its followup, Dizzy Up The Girl, cemented their reputation as adult contemporary hitmakers, and I hate the song “Iris” with a passion. But there are a whole bunch of great songs on that record, and one of them, “Black Balloon,” was a huge hit. Even 2001’s Gutterflower had a few songs on it that I thought were great, even buried underneath production the way they were. No, the truth is, I’m a Goo Goo Dolls defender, and probably always will be. Maybe you’ve thought they sucked ever since you first heard them, and maybe you will continue to after my posting about them is done, but I hope you will at least give their earlier work a chance. It deserves to be heard by an audience that will actually appreciate it.
