Iris

Lead Goo Johnny Rzeznik wrote this song for the 1998 movie City Of Angels, where it's sung from the perspective of Nicolas Cage's character. In the film, Cage plays an angel sent to help humans make their transition to the afterlife. When he falls in love with a human (played by Meg Ryan), he must choose between love and eternal life. In a 2013 Songfacts interview with Rzeznik, he explained how the film influenced the song. "I was thinking about the situation of the Nicolas Cage character in the movie," he said. "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."

This is one of those songs we've all heard but can't always identify because the title doesn't show up in the lyric. Johnny Rzeznik writes a lot of songs that don't have obvious titles, which is the case here; the most-repeated line is "I just want you to know who I am," which certainly doesn't have the mystique of "Iris."

The name "Iris" was inspired by a country singer named Iris DeMent, whose name Rzeznik came across while reading a magazine. This was confirmed in a 1999 interview with Goo's bass player Robby Takac in Addicted To Noise.