Iris (song)

After completing the first-edit on the film City of Angels, co-producer Bob Cavallo and his music producer son Rob Cavallo decided to take along musical artists to a viewing to create the sound track. Bob took Alanis Morissette whilst Rob took the Goo Goo Dolls. The following morning Morissette called Rob, and asked him to produce the song "Uninvited" which she had written afterwards as a demo. Shortly afterwards that same day, John Rzeznik called Rob with a song he had written called "Iris", a power ballad.[6] In a 2013 interview with Songfacts, lead singer Rzeznik explained how he wrote the song:

"I was thinking about the situation of the Nicolas Cage character in the movie. This guy is completely willing to give up his own immortality, just to be able to feel something very human. And I think, 'Wow! What an amazing thing it must be like to love someone so much that you give up everything to be with them.' That's a pretty heavy thought."[7]

Rzeznik named the song after country folk singer-songwriter Iris DeMent, after he noticed her name in a concert listing in the LA Weekly newspaper.[8]

The original demo recorded by Rzeznik had a different to standard guitar tuning on the acoustic guitar to make the basic sound, and a declining catch line. In rehearsal, Rob Cavallo and the band refined the tuning so that all of the strings are tuned to D (they used heavier gauge strings on all four lower strings), with the exception of the lowest string which is a B, lending the guitar a chorus-like effect. They also created the intro in rehearsal, and knew that they wanted an orchestral input within the recording

Cavallo, who had studied techniques used both by Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, used a three way input from the acoustic guitar (direct, via VOX and Amp), and got Rzeznik to play with a Fender light pick closer to the bridge, a classical music technique known as sul ponticello. In mixing with the recording engineer, Cavallo then created a curve-mix on the guitars spectrum, turning down all the mid range whilst adding both brighter high and more bass. The majority of the electric guitar parts were played on Cavallo's "glass-guitar" (a technique he would use on many of his later recordings), a hard-tail Fender Stratocaster with a bridge mini-humbucker pickup fed directly to a 100W head unit.

Cavallo and the band started recording the song in Record One Studio B in Sherman Oaks, CA, whilst Dr Dre used Studio A to produce his stable of hip-hop artists. During the evening of the first day of recording, Allen Sides comments that Dean Parks was working with Dr Dre in Studio A, using a mandolin. Cavallo approached Parks to add some mandolin material to the recording, but Parks was booked up for the following months, and refused. The second engineer then suggested using fellow session guitarist Tim Pierce, who turned up the next day. Within an hour, the team had recorded both the introduction mandolin section, and got Pierce to noodle around the basic track playing counter-melodies. Cavallo then asked Pierce to attempt the guitar solo section, which he did using a slide on the guitar.

Cavallo then took the recording to composer David Campbell, who mimicked Pierce's guitar play with sharp injected orchestration.

Upon its release, "Iris" became second of a string of hits from the film's soundtrack, City of Angels: Music from the Motion Picture. (The first was Alanis Morissette's "Uninvited" and the third was Sarah McLachlan's "Angel"). The song debuted at number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart on April 18, 1998, and eventually spent a record of 18 weeks at number one in Hot 100 Airplay. However it was not allowed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 because no commercial single had been released. In December 1998, just after the song's airplay had peaked, the rules changed to allow airplay-only songs onto the chart. As a result, the song debuted and peaked at number nine and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks. On the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, "Iris" peaked at number eight. The song was the band's second number one hit on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, following their 1995 hit "Name." "Iris" stayed at number one for five weeks on the Alternative Songs chart and also hit number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for four weeks. The song spent a then-record 17 weeks at number one on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart (beating No Doubt's 15-week run at number one with "Don't Speak" in 1996–97). The Goo Goo Dolls performed "Iris" on October 20, 2001, at Madison Square Garden as part of The Concert for New York City to raise money for victims of the September 11 attacks.[9]

"Iris" was also a major international hit. It peaked at number five on the Irish Singles Chart and has since become the 19th biggest-selling single of all time in Ireland.[10] The song initially peaked at number 50 in the United Kingdom in August 1998 before rising to number 26 the following year. On October 2, 2011, after performances by auditionees on The X Factor, the song re-entered the UK Singles Chart at number three. In May 2013, the song charted at number 12 after it was covered by Britain's Got Talent contestant Robbie Kennedy.[11] Elsewhere, the song became a number-one hit in Italy (for two weeks), Australia (for five weeks), and Canada (for eight weeks), and it reached the top 10 in Flanders and the Netherlands.

Besides the song's success on the charts, "Iris" enjoyed critical acclaim. At the 41st Grammy Awards, "Iris" received nominations for "Record of the Year" and "Pop Performance by a Duo or Group." The song also garnered Johnny Rzeznik a "Song of the Year" nomination.[12] The single was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America on February 28, 2018. The song was ranked at number 39 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest pop songs.[13]

In October 2012, "Iris" was ranked number one on Billboard's "Top 100 Pop Songs 1992–2012" chart, which ranked the top songs of the first 20 years of the Mainstream Top 40/Pop Songs chart. The list also featured the Goo Goo Dolls' hits "Slide", ranking at number nine, and "Name" at number 24. The Goo Goo Dolls are the only musicians to have three songs on the list, two breaking the top 10 and all three falling within the top 25. They are also the only musicians that have back to back singles (Iris, 1998 and Slide, 1999) featured on the list.[14]

While awaiting the results of the 2020 United States presidential election on November 3, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers tweeted that she would cover "Iris" if Donald Trump lost. The cover, which was recorded as a duet with Maggie Rogers under the name Phoebe & Maggie, was released exclusively via Bridgers' Bandcamp page for one day only on November 13, with proceeds going towards Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight organization to promote fair elections in the state of Georgia as well as nationally.[15] Despite only being available for purchase for one day, the song debuted at number one on the Digital Song Sales chart and number 57 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it both artists' first entry on the latter chart.

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics