Better Days

This song is about changing the world and making it a better place. The song was released as a single in September 2005, as America was recovering from Hurricane Katrina and dealing with an unpopular war in Iraq. This hopeful song provided reassurance in a troubling time.

This was originally commissioned for a Target holiday CD. Instead of the usual rock-style Christmas cover, Goo Goo Dolls frontman Johnny Rzeznik wrote a new tune inspired by the state of American politics. "Right now, I feel as though there's a huge amount of unfairness going on in this country and it's really starting to annoy me," he told MTV News in 2005. "I know I'm not an authority on it, but I just wanted to speak my piece - I don't know if I'm speaking for anyone else, although that would be nice." A few days after it was recorded, someone at CNN heard the track and picked it up as the theme song for the network's coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Let Love In is the band's eighth studio album. Their previous release, Gutterflower, was largely inspired by Rzeznik's divorce and his move to Los Angeles, where he struggled with culture clash. This time around, he wanted to tap into positive energy. "You know, it was a really strange time in my life when we made that record," he said of Gutterflower. "I was really unhappy at the time, but it's like, who cares? I did feel like I was losing sight of what we were supposed to be doing, and now I feel as though I've regained my traction."