Dannyka Manangan

John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls shares story behind creation of hit song 'Iris'

Article (news)

E. Kristhoff Cagape

Push Team

<p>John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls opened up about the story behind the creation of the band&#x27;s hit song &quot;Iris&quot; which was part of the <em>City of Angels</em> soundtrack.</p><p>In an episode of <em>Genius Verified</em>, the singer relayed that he was invited by the music supervisor of the movie to make the song. </p><p>&quot;My manager Pat calls me, &#x27;Hey, Danny Bramson&#x27;s doing the music supervision for this film called<em> City of Angels</em> and he&#x27;d like you to come and see it and maybe write a song for the film. So I was watching it and then there&#x27;s one particular scene where they&#x27;re like, &#x27;We want you to write something for this scene.&#x27; And this guy is an angel, he is immortal and he is willing to give up that immortality because he never felt and he wants to see what it feels like to be a human and he falls in love with this woman but he has to make this leap. I just thought that was a beautiful thing,&quot; he recounted.</p><p><em>City of Angels</em> is a 1998 movie that follows the story of &quot;an angel [who] considers becoming human after falling in love with a Los Angeles surgeon,&quot; as per its IMDb. The movie was headlined by Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. </p><div><iframe width="596" height="447" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NdYWuo9OFAw" title="Goo Goo Dolls – Iris [Official Music Video] [4K Remaster]" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><p>Explaining the lyrics, &quot;You&#x27;re the closest to Heaven that I&#x27;ll ever be, and I don&#x27;t wanna go home right now,&quot; John said: &quot;He&#x27;s an angel. He&#x27;s been in heaven for eternity. But he saves her and she&#x27;s the closest thing to heaven and he doesn&#x27;t want to go back to heaven. He wants to be human. He wants to be with her. Pretty strong emotions.&quot;</p><p>Discussing the chorus which includes the lines &quot;And I don&#x27;t want the world to see me, &#x27;cause I don&#x27;t think that they&#x27;d understand,&quot; John attributed it to luck that he was able to make a hook for the song that is relatable.</p><p>&quot;I think the hook of the song is yeah, it is just easily relatable. You know, I got lucky. I can&#x27;t underestimate a little bit of luck. I think we all want that, you know? I think we all want that. That&#x27;s the whole point, if you&#x27;re gonna write about something, write about something that everybody can relate to,&quot; he pointed out. </p><div><br/></div><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/10/13/16/goo-goo-dolls-to-stage-concert-in-manila"><strong>READ: Goo Goo Dolls to stage concert in Manila</strong></a></div><div><br/></div><p>The singer also opened up about what made him very excited to make a song for the film at the beginning.</p><p>&quot;One of the main reasons that I wanted to make the song for the film and I was really, really excited to get it on the soundtrack was because U2, and Peter Gabriel, and Alanis Morissette, you know, and amongst others were on this album. I just wanted to be slotted in there so I can be in the same album as these icons and it&#x27;s weird because we turned out to be the dark house and won that race,&quot; he said.</p><p>&quot;Iris&quot; topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and Italy, climbed to number three in the United Kingdom, and reached number nine on the US Billboard Hot 100. In Ireland, it ranks as the 19th most successful single ever released.</p>

<p>'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls was part of the soundtrack for the 'City of Angels' movie. </p>

'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls was part of the soundtrack for the 'City of Angels' movie.