Modern Rock No. 1s: Goo Goo Dolls and "Name"
Goo Goo Dolls usher in the end of grunge -- and muddy the waters of post-grunge -- with "Name," a treacly pop/rock confection that feels out of place on the alternative charts, much less at the top
Goo Goo Dolls - “Name”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 4 total weeks (October 7 to 13, and then October 28 to November 17, 1995)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Bush and “Comedown”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Mariah Carey - “Fantasy” (starting 9/30/95, includes all 4 weeks listed above)
Based on the headline, you might think I’m about to crap all over this week’s #1 Modern Rock Tracks chart hit. But the truth is a little bit more complicated than that, and it all revolves around how memory plays tricks on you. It sure did with me as I was playing back the music of my teen years and realizing I’d misplaced everything.
For starters, I didn’t know “grunge” as a “thing” was over by the end of 1995. Quite the opposite: I thought I was getting in on the ground floor right when my musical antennae started picking up modern rock music in late 1994 into 1995. At the time, bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were in heavy rotation, but only because their songs were getting a second wind coming off of Kurt Cobain’s death, the explosion of other grunge acts, and a shift toward grunge becoming more pop-sounding — what I’ve referred to as “post-grunge” in the past few weeks and months.
The grunge movement, which is easier to identify now more than 35 years after its infancy, really only lasted from, say, early 1991 to Cobain’s death in spring 1994. You could make an argument for bands to slip through with some grunge-sounding shenanigans, like Silverchair or even Bush, deep into 1995, but effectively, everything that “grunge” supposedly stood for and sounded like was pretty much gone by the fall of 1995.
By then, I was fully invested in modern music, and was riding the post-grunge wave as much as I could, thinking I was listening to “grunge” but really getting invested in the bands who came of age in the alternative music realm because of grunge, not because they were grunge. I will always think of bands like Green Day, Offspring, and Live as “grunge” acts, but they most assuredly were not. And I didn’t make that realization till much, much later, which makes me feel a little silly in retrospect.
Another movement I didn’t see coming at the time and wasn’t obvious until I started reviewing these #1 songs was the fragmentation of post-grunge into myriad offshoots that varied so wildly it was hard to categorize them. In a pre-internet, pre-YouTube, pre-Spotify, pre-everything world, with no easy or succinct way to sub-categorize every piece of music that sounded alternative, everything became alternative.
Among the things that became alternative: pop-rock songs. Sure, there was some crossover from the alternative charts into the pop charts, but songs like the B-52’s “Love Shack” or Sinéad O’Connor’s timeless “Nothing Compares 2 U” felt like alternative songs at heart that happened to find some crossover love. But “pop rock” as a genre never seemed to be much of a thing before the post-grunge wave, and one of the first acts to really lean into that idea was Goo Goo Dolls.
So while their first Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 hit, “Name,” might be an alternative chart topper, it feels like a pop song first, and that’s what makes this week’s discussion feel like another big shift in the history of the chart.
Maybe I’m projecting too much here. You could easily make the same argument for Soul Asylum’s terrible “Misery” being the turning point for alternative rock going full pop, but “Misery” felt like a blip in the midst of the still-grungy post-grunge wave. Maybe “canary in the coal mine” is the apt phrasing for what they did, a harbinger of things to come.
“Name” feels like it’s the alternative chart’s full swing toward the mainstream. Everything that gets churned out from here over the next couple of years, with a few exceptions, fits just as perfectly on mainstream pop radio as it does on alternative channels. Maybe moreso; consider the following chart positions for “Name” during its run in 1995 and 1996:
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5
U.S. Billboard Adult Contemporary peak: #5
U.S. Billboard Adult Pop Airplay peak: #2
U.S. Billboard Pop Airplay peak: #2
Make no mistake that Goo Goo Dolls play rock music and fit the mold of alternative, but there’s no confusing them for Nirvana or Pearl Jam. This is rock with a clear-cut pop sound, so much so that, years later, “Name” would be recognized not for its four-week run at the top of the alternative charts, but for its pop legacy, placing #24 on Billboard’s “Top 100 Pop Songs 1992-2012” list. You’re not going to find XTC or Robyn Hitchcock or Elvis Costello on a list like that, even if you pushed it back to 1987.
And that’s fine, but it does have implications for the alternative charts. What was once a bastion of uniqueness and occasionally odd-sounding tracks not quite fit for mass consumption was starting to become the mass-consumed list of songs, and I think “Name” is the real bright line between eras.
It is worth admitting, though, that “Name” is a solid track, and even though it blurs the lines of alternative and pop, it has a way of sticking with you and tugging on the heartstrings. And the guitar strings, as Goo Goo Dolls frontman Johnny Rzeznik recounted for Guitar World magazine regarding the composition of the song:
“It was weird, I was just sitting on my couch randomly twisting the tuning pegs, and I couldn’t figure out what notes the guitar was tuned to, so I had to grab my tuner to find out, and then I jotted them down on a post it. ... I just sat there and let my fingers play the fretboard openly, and that is what became the progression of ‘Name.’”
While the music for the song came from a bunch of fretboard adjustments, the song itself was inspired by Rzeznik’s relationship with MTV VJ Kennedy, which is in itself interesting, as Kennedy was the primary host of MTV’s show Alternative Nation, a block of alternative music videos. To have a ‘90s alternative-music TV host be the muse for a pop song with alternative undertones is a remarkable and fun footnote on the track.
The song itself, outside of Rzeznik’s guitar lead, is pretty straightforward. There are occasional flourishes of Robby Takac’s bass and George Tutuska’s drums, but the acoustic plinking of Rzeznik’s lead acoustics steal the show. The lyrics talk of the relationship but they have applicability to anyone who feels lost of nameless, which may have added to its mass appeal. That, and most everyone loves a good love ballad.
And scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
And did you lose yourself somewhere out there?
Did you get to be a star?
And don’t it make you sad to know that life
Is more than who we are?
These lyrics are perfectly primed to suck in hopeless romantics, starstruck teenagers, doe-eyed love interests, and folks like me who may have found the lyrics to be an impressively deep well of introspection and creativity at that time in my life. Turns out, with 30 years of hindsight, the poetry is nice, but it’s not especially deep. Sucks growing up.
In addition to the accolades mentioned above, “Name” managed a rare feat of hitting #1 on the Modern Rock charts for a single week, giving way to TWO other singles hitting the top, and then returning for a second run at #1 for three additional weeks. We’ll have a similar back-and-forth battle between two instantly recognizable tracks in 1998, both of which fall so deeply into the pop-rock realm that one of them also topped the Hot 100. We’ll get there soon enough.
Do I hate “Name”? Not really. It was omnipresent on the radio stations I listened to in late 1995, so I might be a little bit burnt out by the song, but it did introduce me to the band, and I’ve been fortunate enough to see them a couple of times over the years. They put on a good show, though I tend to heap more praise on Dizzy Up The Girl than I do A Boy Named Goo.
“Name” also catapulted A Boy Named Goo into new heights of sales and airplay, as previous singles “Only One” and “Flat Top” barely garnered any radio spins. Going forward, future singles “Naked” and “Long Way Down” would get a lot more airplay, and Goo Goo Dolls became a household name in both the mainstream and alternative realms.
In some ways, I lament the blurring of the lines between alternative and pop. Music cred is such a weird thing, and it’s hard to sit back and say you were “into alternative rock” at a time when alternative was the mainstream. But, at the same time, it was kinda cool to come of age at a time when alternative was supremely popular. The entry point into this style of music was so easily accessible, and it created a gateway to grunge and earlier alternative rock that might not have existed were it not for acts like Goo Goo Dolls.
And rest assured, pop rock will not dominate the top spot in perpetuity. Like grunge and post-grunge, pop rock dominance will come to an end as well, especially as mainstream tastes pivot to genres far removed from the guitar-and-drums-based music that defined alternative for so long. But “Name” clearly shifted the zeitgeist, and it deserves credit for its crossover success, even if it doesn’t hold up as well as I would have expected.
Rating: 6/10
Chart Check
Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
After last week’s relatively short “Chart Check” review, I’m happy to bring back some old favorites and offer “alternatives” to the treacly pop-rock confection that topped the charts in October and November of 1995. That said, there are definitely some confections here that feel out of place.
“Bullet With Butterfly Wings” by Smashing Pumpkins (#2):
So much for what I just said about pop-rock taking over! Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Smashing Pumpkins get as close to the top as possible with the lead single from their Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album: “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” This was my introduction to the band; for whatever reason, I’d missed out completely on Siamese Dream at this point in my musical formation. But after hearing this track, I was all on board with them, and they remain an all-time favorite thanks in large part to this song and its instantly recognizable music video. Notably, this is the last music video with band frontman Billy Corgan sporting hair. God, this song freaking rocks!
“Geek Stink Breath” by Green Day (#3):
Former and future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Green Day, fresh off the promotional cycle for Dookie and a slew of #1 hits, launch their follow-up album Insomniac with first single “Geek Stink Breath.” I have to admit, I didn’t realize this was the first single from that album. In my mind, I remember MTV making a big deal about “Brain Stew” being a world-premiere new video from the band, but perhaps I’m just remembering it as the first video because I didn’t quite get into MTV until that time. Nevertheless, “Geek Stink Breath” was the fifth top-5 alternative hit for the band, and it peaked at #3 behind Goo Goo Dolls.
“A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins (#7):
By every measure, I should love this song. It has a cool, ‘60s vibe to it, a unique singer in Edwyn Collins, and a wild mix of instruments that evoke several different genres. That said, I really disliked this song when it was at its commercial peak, and the years have not softened my feelings — it sounds like nails on a chalkboard, musically. Regardless of my thoughts, the song was a legit crossover juggernaut, peaking at #7 behind “Name” on the alternative charts and #32 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Time Bomb” by Rancid (#8):
Rancid reach their commercial peak with “Time Bomb,” a song I love tremendously, as it is a solid mainstream-ification of pure punk rock, and it’s a genre I’ve come to love the most out of the post-grunge sub-genre explosion. Despite its upbeat tempo and fun vibe, the song is actually about a friend of the band whose life was ended at the hands of gang members, an association I hadn’t made till fairly recently. Nevertheless, this timeless punk-pop classic peaked at #8 behind the Goo Goo Dolls.
“I’ll Stick Around” by Foo Fighters (#8):
Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artists Foo Fighters follow up their previous top-10 hit “This Is A Call” with “I’ll Stick Around,” arguably my favorite song off the band’s debut album. Every time I think of this song, I think of “Weird” Al Yankovic’s “Alternative Polka,” which is also terrific. “I’ll Stick Around” peaked at #8 behind Goo Goo Dolls.
“Rock And Roll Is Dead” by Lenny Kravitz (#10):
Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Lenny Kravitz hits the top 10 with the lead single off his 1995 album Circus with “Rock And Roll Is Dead.” I’m not the biggest Kravitz fan outside of the major hits, so I heard this for the first time in its entirety today, and it’s pretty solid, though not an immediate new favorite. It peaked at #10 behind “Name.”
“Good Intentions” by Toad The Wet Sprocket (#20):
The lines between alternative and pop are almost always blurred when it comes to this band, and former Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 artist Toad The Wet Sprocket returns to the poppier side of the line with “Good Intentions,” one of the band’s last big mainstream hits. Benefiting from placement on the Friends soundtrack, the track became a bigger hit on pop radio, peaking at #23 on the Hot Airplay chart in the U.S. (it was not eligible for the flagship Hot 100). It topped out at #20 on the alternative charts behind the Goo Goo Dolls.
“Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something (#30):
Speaking of pop-rock confections, is there a song more confection-y than “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something? I still appreciate and enjoy this song, despite its massive overplaying in the winter of 1995 into the spring and summer of 1996. The song managed to squeak out a #30 peak behind Goo Goo Dolls on the alternative charts, but it would go on to be a pop sensation weeks and months later, peaking at #5 on the Hot 100 in early 1996.
“Just” by Radiohead (#37):
I’m on record stating that I didn’t really pay any serious attention to Radiohead until the late 2000s, so I’m not going to tell you that I was even remotely aware of the band and their single “Just,” which peaked at a surprisingly low #37 on the Modern Rock charts. But when I did finally start diving head first into The Bends and came across the music video for this track, I was BLOWN AWAY. I don’t know that they’ve ever addressed the mystery posed by the video — what did the guy know that affected him so deeply? — but it’s still a fascinating piece of video art and a tremendous rock song.
Actually the song I like most from this list IS "A Girl Like You!" I even put it in my Top Ten that year. Have I listened to it a lot since then? No, but I still enjoy it when I hear it. I also remember the comparisons being made to David Bowie's voice when this came out. Not sure if people would agree today.
The reason you don't really remember Geek Stink Breath on MTV is a good one, because it only aired a handful of times. The song's lyrics were heavily edited as it's basically about being a meth addict, and the combination of that and the unpleasant close up bloody dental work...and yeah MTV wasn't really feeling this.