Songoftheday 5/3/23 - You and I got somethin', but it's all and then it's nuthin' to me...

 

 

"Here Is Gone" - Goo Goo Dolls

from the album Gutterflower (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from the band Goo Goo Dolls, whose transformation from punksters to pop stars was complete on their Dizzy Up The Girl album, which spun off four top-40 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart with "Broadway", "Black Balloon", "Slide", and "Iris" from the movie City Of Angels, the latter which topped the airplay charts for 18 weeks before the trade bible changed their chart rules to allow radio hits that weren't released as commericial singles to make the chart. In the spring of 2002, lead singer/guitarist/songwriter John Rzeznik, bass player Robby Takac, and drummer Malinin returned with their second album on Warner Brothers Records and seventh studio release overall, Gutterflower. The lead single from the record was "Here Is Gone", written by Rzeznik, and produced by the band with Rob Cavallo. The song furthered their path towards more adult-pop that the likes of Creed and Matchbox Twenty were peddling as well. The lyrics again vaguely have that "being a savior for a troubled girl" aspect to them, though the words themselves seem to vacillate between himself being the problem or her not showing her intentions. But it sounded nice, and radio and fans approved, though maybe not to the numbers that "Iris" pulled. The music video is even more riddling, with images put in more for mood than a story. But in the end John's light-sandpaper voice is distinctive in the genre, and pulls the record higher than its parts...

"Here Is Gone" brought the Goo Goo Dolls back into the top-20 on the Hot 100 in May of 2002. On the radio, the song peaked at #15 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, and made both the Mainstream (#21) and Alternative (#29) Rock airplay lists. But its biggest success, showing the shift in their audience, was in the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, where the song spent four weeks at #3, with a half year (26 weeks) on the list. The Gutterflower album, released in April of that year, came in at #4 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a half million copies. 

The second single from the record, opening track "Big Machine", brought some big guitar crunch, but surprisingly didn't even make either of the rock radio charts, though it placed at #10 on the Adult Top-40 format. That was followed by fan favorite "Sympathy", which was promoted on the TV show Charmed, which also went to #10 on the Adult Top-40 chart, taking 26 weeks on the list. The jangle-pop gem is currently the top streaming song from the record on Spotify by a wide margin. 

The Goo Goo Dolls will be back to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's the band on their Live In Alaska video album from 2003...

And from a more proper concert in their Live In Buffalo set the following year.

Lastly, from their Live and Intimate studio concert in 2007...

Up tomorrow: R&B singer is up for it all.