Name (song)

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"Name"

Single by Goo Goo Dolls
from the album A Boy Named Goo
Released	1995
Format
Recorded
Genre	Alternative Rock
Length	4 min 30 s
Label	Metal Blade Records/Warner Bros. Records
Producer(s)
Chart positions
#5 (US Hot 100) #1 (US Modern Rock) #1 (US Mainstream Rock)
Goo Goo Dolls singles chronology
"Long Way Down" (1995)	"Name" (1996)	"Only One" (1996)

"Name" is a single from the Goo Goo Dolls' album, A Boy Named Goo. The song, the band's first hit, topped both the US Modern Rock and the US Mainstream Rock charts, and reached as high as number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Until the release of Dizzy Up the Girl three years later, "Name" was by far the band's most popular and well known song.

[edit] Song composition

According to lead singer Johnny Rzeznik it happened "quite accidentally". He says that he came up with the songs' unusual tuning, D A D A A E, while he was sitting on his couch randomly twisting the tuning pegs of his acoustic guitar. He said "I didn't know what notes they were so I grabbed a guitar tuner to find out then just jotted them down on a yellow post-it note and when I started playing the fretboard, the progression of what would become "Name" just came out." He says that he wrote it as a love ballad, reflecting his childhood as an orphan. This was also used in one episode of "Cold Case."