“Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls has had a major resurgence over the past two years, but it’s now reaching new heights this month thanks to a viral social media trend. The song has become the soundtrack for thousands of TikTok videos following the “What were you like in the ’90s” trend, featuring users going down memory lane with a clip of themselves now and photos of what they looked like in the 1990s.
“Iris” is the perfect song to encapsulate the decade’s nostalgia, and the data proves it. The song was streamed 337.9 million times in 2025, according to tracking firm Luminate, which named it the most-streamed song from the ’90s for the year. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik said, “This is the biggest our band has ever been.”
The viral trend also gives a sense of comfort. Jennifer Billinson, an assistant professor in the Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment Industries at Syracuse University, told the New York Times that the wave of nostalgia is only fitting for our current times.
”Life is difficult right now for so many and for so many reasons,” she said. “It makes sense that we have rose-colored glasses for a time we perceive as simpler and less complicated.”
However, Rzeznik wrote the song during a turbulent time in his own life. He was approached by Warner Music supervisor Danny Bramson to write a song for the film “City of Angels” in which a character gives up his immortality as an angel to be with his love interest.
“I was going through a divorce at the time, and I was living in a hotel in Los Angeles. It was just a really intense and emotional time,” Rzeznik told Songwriting Magazine in 2022. “I asked myself about what I would have said to this girl, had I been this guy. How would I have explained what I was feeling?”
Inspiration struck from an altered guitar tuning that gives the song a unique timbre. He originally wrote it on a four-string guitar, but eventually moved to a five-string setup by removing the highest string from a standard six-string. The lowest string is tuned to B, while the remaining four strings are all pitched to D in different octaves.
This tuning creates a heavy, shimmering tension on the neck with distinctive open, droning strings that create a spacious, suspended harmonic feel. It also opens up unique fingerings to achieve the chord changes.
Watch Rzeznik play the song solo in a performance for Live at Apple Music Studios to hear the effect in action.
The original studio recording builds the song’s emotional impact with a unique orchestration for a rock band with mandolin and an eight-piece orchestra that widens the sonic atmosphere.
As “Iris” soundtracks yet another wave of nostalgia, its blend of raw vulnerability and unique musicality makes it feel less like a relic and more like a living standard. Nearly three decades after its release, listeners are still reaching for its chorus in an effort to be felt and understood. For musicians, “Iris” is an enduring song worth revisiting, relearning, and performing.
Get the sheet music for “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.
