Black Balloon - Live

On the Goo Goo Dolls' VH1 Storytellers special, frontman Johnny Rzeznik said this ballad was inspired by his friend's heroin addiction and the havoc it wreaked on everyone else.

This was the fourth single from Dizzy Up The Girl, the band's sixth album. Along with "Name" (from A Boy Named Goo), "Iris," and "Slide," the tune helped solidify the former punk band's reputation as hit power balladeers.

For the unique intro, Rzenzik detuned a baritone guitar and started playing harmonics. "Then we ran it through a bunch of pedals and outboard gear and just kept playing with it and messing with it and layering it up," he explained in a behind-the-track interview. The band wanted to come up with something more complex to contrast the simplistic body of the song, which is mainly two chords.