Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3/5 Released: November 13, 2007 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
Every once in a while a band comes along that influences mainstream radio, but as the Goo Goo Dolls prove, more often than not it’s the other way around.
Greatest Hits is predominantly populated by songs from the band’s last three albums, Dizzy up the Girl (1998), Gutterflower (2002) and Let Love In (2006), as well as a reworked version of their breakthrough single, ‘Name.’ Even though it’s the last thing that the band wants to believe, even the new version of the song that launched them to fame in 1995 is still the best thing they’ve ever done, proven when lined up against the band’s other hits as it is here.
John Rzeznik’s esoteric grade school poetry is still the band’s chief failing – “I’ll do anything you ever dreamed to be complete / little pieces of the nothing that fall†from 1998’s ‘Slide’ is a particular example – but there’s no denying that the band understands their way around mainstream radio. ‘Broadway,’ ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Black Balloon’ all shine with the lustre of Lite FM hooks, and the mega-ballad ‘Iris’ is surely still a staple at high school dances.
Inevitably, in every conversation about the Goo Goo Dolls, somebody will feel the need to smugly announce that the band was around for a decade before they hit it big with their fifth album, and the aforementioned ‘Name.’ While this is undoubtedly true, it’s also irrelevant – even the Goos don’t want you to remember their first four albums. For better or worse, the band’s strength is in writing catchy and disposable pop hooks, and they do it as well as anyone.
