The Goo Goo Dolls

The ‘90s saw many alternative rock bands take tentative toe-dips into Top 40 pop, but none made as dramatic and extreme a leap from the left to the right side of the dial as The Goo Goo Dolls. In their late-’80s infancy, the Buffalo natives were a ragtag power trio flexing enough hardcore heft to get them signed to heavy-music imprint Metal Blade. But as irreverent bassist/singer Robby Takac began to cede lead vocal duties to the band’s resident rugged romantic, guitarist Johnny Rzeznik, their sound settled into a more tuneful style of punky power pop. Once the band scored their first hit single in 1995 with the wistful, Westerbergian serenade “Name,” The Goo Goo Dolls became a bellwether for a new strain of post-grunge, adult-contemporary rock that reached its zenith with 1998’s string-swept power ballad “Iris”—at which point the group seemed less like a replacement for The Replacements than a big-brother act to emergent TRL phenoms like Matchbox 20 and Third Eye Blind. And they’ve continued to finesse that formula into the 21st century, cementing their rarefied position as the only band that started out playing punk dives with The Dead Milkmen and ended up headlining amphitheaters with Daughtry.