“‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand,” Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls wailed plaintively in “Iris,” which dominated charts from April through July of 1998. He was singing about Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan’s angel/human romance in “City of Angels,” but nearly 30 years later, he was singing to millions more, many of them Gen Z.
Google Trends’ September 3 newsletter reported that search interest for “iris goo goo dolls” was at a 15-plus year high, and as of the past week it was “the top searched song of the summer.” On Spotify, it was a top 25 global hit for several months running, The Wall Street Journal reported in late August, even reaching as high as No. 15. This phenomenon isn’t just a quirk of algorithms or chance—it’s the product of a larger cultural moment driven by nostalgia and the shifting ways we connect with music. Gen Z, a generation already defined by a keen sense of nostalgia, has popularized the concept of a “90s kid summer,” harkening back to a time before social media and smartphones—the exact time of the Goo Goo Dolls’ biggest-ever hit.
