Goo Goo Dolls

The Goo Goo Dolls formed in Buffalo, New York, in the mid-1980s — briefly and gloriously named the Sex Maggots — around guitarist/singer Johnny Rzeznik and bassist Robby Takac, grinding out scrappy punk-leaning records on small labels for a full decade (Paul Westerberg of the Replacements co-wrote 1993's "We Are the Normal" with them, a hint of where Rzeznik's songwriting was headed). The break finally came in 1995: "Name," a bittersweet acoustic ballad born of an accidental alternate tuning, hit number five on the Hot 100 and dragged the album A Boy Named Goo to double platinum after a decade of van tours and day jobs.

Then came "Iris." Written for the 1998 film City of Angels, it spent a staggering 18 weeks at number one on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart — a record that stood for nearly 22 years — yet officially peaked at only number nine on the Hot 100 itself, because it was never released as a commercial single and airplay-only songs couldn't fully chart until Billboard changed the rules that December. It earned three Grammy nominations, was eventually certified diamond, and carried Dizzy Up the Girl (1998) to five-times platinum alongside "Slide" and "Black Balloon." For a couple of years, turning on any radio in America meant hearing Rzeznik's rasp within the hour.

The band never stopped: 2002's Gutterflower ("Here Is Gone") closed out the peak run, and a long adult-radio afterlife followed — around 15 million records sold and a record 14 top-ten hits on the adult-pop format. But their monument is that late-90s stretch when the loudest thing in pop was a Buffalo punk who'd learned to write the softest songs on the dial. The name, by the way, reportedly came from a toy ad in a True Detective magazine — even Rzeznik isn't sure anymore.