“Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls: what is it about this song that makes it so good?
“Iris” has been one of my favorite songs of all time since I discovered the Goo Goo Dolls after looking into the music from Disney’s Treasure Planet because they did the music for that movie too.
I’ve loved seeing “Iris” float around social media a lot lately, but what a lot of people don’t know is that it was originally written for a 1998 Nicholas Cage romantic fantasy movie called City of Angels. It’s the classic angel meets girl, angel falls in love, and angel wants to become human to be with her. The words of “Iris” fit that so well:
And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to Heaven that I’ll ever be,
And I don’t want to go home right now
There’s a lot of cool stuff going on in this song, but what stands out the most for me personally is the rhythm and meter. If you’ve been following me for a bit, then you’ve probably seen my videos on metric dissonance, which is what we’ll get into here.
The majority of “Iris” is in 3/4, but it switches into 6/8 at the beginning of every verse. It’s pretty common historically for 3/4 and 6/8 meters to switch back and forth because they have the same number of 8th notes in them, just a different number of beats.
“Iris” Introduction
The instrumental part at the beginning is probably the most contested and complicated part of the song meter-wise. What meter(s) you hear at this point will depend greatly on your primary instrument and your musical background. I primarily hear it is 6/8 at the beginning with a little hiccup in 2/4 before going back to 6/8.
Which I would count like this:
1 2 3 2 2 3
1 2 3 2 2 3
1 2 1 2
1 2 3 2 2 3
This forms two bars of 6/8 and then a bar of 2/4, which is why I wrote it in 4/4 because it switches so rapidly between 6/8 and 2/4 that it just makes sense to put it in a meter that it fits nicely in phrasing wise.
That’s pretty common when it comes to composing or editing or type setting. Oftentimes composers will set things in a way that doesn’t reflect the actual expressed meter, but it’s easier to read.
BUT, it’s important to note that others will and do hear this section as different meters than what I’ve identified hear. I’m primarily a pianist and vocalist (soprano), so I tend to hear meter based on the groupings formed by the upper-register instruments. I focus on the descending upper line (B A B G) instead of the guitar strumming. Guitarists will likely group this differently and hear important accents in different places than me.
If you search for sheet music for this song, you will find many different interpretations, which is part of why this song is so cool! It allows for many metric interpretations on top of the metric dissonance.
“Iris” Verses and Chorus
Once the vocals come in, it’s pretty clearly in three four.
You can hear the guitar playing 1 2 & 3 &, 1 2 & 3 &, and sometimes it sounds like he’s not even playing the 2. It kind of sounds like 1 [ ] & 3 & 1 [ ] & 3 &, which makes it kind of sound like 6/8 as well.
It kind of already is wobbling between, “Is it 3/4, or is it 6/8? Is it a compound meter, or is it a simple meter?”
For now, it seems the verses and the chorus is pretty much in 3. Just ignore the left hand in my piano arrangement of it. (I did it deliberately so that you would have a sense of 6/8 in the bass, so just ignore that for now)
“Iris” Bridge
The bridge is purely instrumental, and it’s really cool because it also switches between 3/4 and 6/8. Listen for just a moment before reading on.
Because it switches between both of these meters so rapidly, I transcribed it in 4/4. Counting it out would sound like 1 & 2 & 3 & rest. 1 & 2 & 3 another rest. 1 & 2 & with that little hiccup again before we get what looks like 6/8 in the bass.
There we get 1 2 3 2 2 3, 1 2 3 2 2 3 and the little hiccup that sounds like bum bum then 1 & 2 & 3 1 & 2 & 3 & bum bum 1 2 3 2 2 3 bum 1
It goes back and forth between those ways of counting, which creates instability there as well. Switching between two meters so rapidly, especially one that’s simple and one that’s compound creates a lot of tension.
Us listeners might think, “Wait where is the solid ground that we’re listening to? We want like some kind of solid beat.”
Technically, this isn’t metric dissonance just yet. We’d have to have the 3/4 on top of the 6/8 for it to be considered metric dissonance, but I did mention that there is metric dissonance in this. At the end of this instrumental bridge, we get another are two choruses in the actual thing. I shortened it for this piano arrangement of it, but the final chorus comes out of the bridge very powerfully with some strings layered on top.
“Iris” Final Chorus
In the final chorus for “Iris,” all the other instruments are pretty much the same content-wise, but the violin is different here at the end. In the first chorus, the violin holds out long notes and mostly just moves on downbeats, but in the very last course, the violin has a lot more movement. It moves on the downbeat and then on the & of 2. If we’re in 3/4, it would be counted as [1 & 2][& 3 &][1 & 2][& 3 &] with the violin movement bolded, which just happens to be the same as a 6/8 meter.
This violin 6/8 meter is happening on top of the rest of the instruments moving in a 3/4 meter. It builds up tension as well by doing this on an ascending scale. It’s leading up to something.
The chart below shows how the beats (or the stronger impulses) of the violin and the other instruments don’t line up. The downbeats line up, but beat 2 for the instruments comes before beat 2 of the violin, and the violin doesn’t have a proper beat 3.
| Violin | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Instruments | 1 | & | 2 | & | 3 | & |
This misalignment creates tension and is an example of what is called metric dissonance.
Metric Dissonance and Expression in “Iris”
Metric dissonance can be used for so many different effects in music. In this case, the Goo Goo Dolls were already doing some really interesting meter things throughout the piece, but at the very end, they used metric dissonance—specifically grouping dissonances—to create extra intensity and yearning in the last chorus especially.
They saved it for the end of the piece, and that reflects the sense of yearning that’s going on in the storytelling part of the song with the lyrics and the City of Angels movie.
Conclusion
In this post, you learned what metric dissonance is: the stacking of two different meters on top of each other. I didn’t just make it up, so if you’d like to learn more about it and its two subtypes (grouping and displacement dissonance), check out Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann by Harald Krebs. He explains using coffee beans!
One of the things I love the most about “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls is their use of metric dissonance, not just that they use it but how they use it as an expressive device.
This take-away point is applies to music theory more generally too. It’s easy to get caught up in the nuts and bolts of terminology and labelling things correctly. But at the end of the day, our goal as theorists isn’t to just identify what’s happening in the music but also why and how.
What song do you want me to analyze next?
Hey there!
Great blog and great analysis, however, I think the interpretation is not quite right.
The intros and bridge are in 4/4, which are actually counted as (123 456 78) so two groups of three and one of two.
All the rest is in 12/8, apart from one transition in 3/4.
Hope that helps!
Agree to disagree! I will say that it’s very common for people to hear different meters (especially ones that can easily replace each other), so for thinking of the majority as 3/4 or 6/8 or 12/8 is going to depend on how hard you hear each of those beats. I can totally also hear the majority of it in 6/8, but 12/8 is harder for me to hear; I think every other hypermetric beat (in the 3/4 I’ve got it in) is too strong to hear it as a longer 12/8 measure. As for 3/4 instead of 6/8, that again comes down to how much you perceive each downbeat of 3/4 or beat of 6/8 to be. I personally hear it as a quick 3/4, especially with those metric dissonances that I pointed out. This song is an especially fun example of how meter is sooooo affected by the instrument people play, what range of hearing is best for them, their experience with previous meters, etc. The most fun is getting a ton of music theorists in a room and seeing how many different metric interpretations we come up with! This has happened at Society for Music Theory meetings hehe. So instead of correcting people’s metric interpretations, start with curiosity – what makes it possible for us to hear it in such different ways?
I also went back and tried to hear your interpretation for the intro – I agree on the 4/4 part (at least notated meter), but I still very strongly hear my interpretation. Maybe this has to do with the instruments we play? I feel like your interpretation maybe a more guitar-centric hearing? I wonder if a different instrument would have another interpretation on top of ours!
For me, this is where to more interesting and important questions lie. Why do we hear it differently?!
Thanks for reading and adding your interpretation, makes the song even more interesting!
This is stressing me big time, I’m trying to start practicing with metronome, and I choose the worst song. It was feeling so difficult, now I know why. Apparently it’s impossible, a metronome here is useless isn’t?
Definitely not impossible, but this probably isn’t the best choice for your first time using a metronome! Basically you want to pick a click that fits the lowest common denominator of all the meters in the song.
So if you’re practicing a song that flips back and forth between 6/8 and 3/4, you could set the 8th note as the click and make sure you emphasize where the beat is as you play.
For this song, “Iris,” making the click equal to the 8th note would definitely work, especially if you’re a beginner! You should work towards being able to hear the beat at the higher level: the quarter or dotted quarter, but as you’re just learning notes, this should be just fine.
Thank you so much for taking the time Amy! I’ll try that :D
I just heard this song on the radio and had to know what time signature it was in. Fascinating! Does complexity like this happen because the songwriters are so highly trained and they know how to use this as a device, or is it that they have less technical training and they just do stuff that sounds really cool?
I’m so glad you asked this because there are so many artists who like to claim that they make stuff “without knowing music theory.” Most people know a ton of music theory even if they can’t necessarily articulate it. We learn patterns by hearing them over and over in the music we listen to, and then artists will use those patterns without necessarily being fully aware of them. And then the job of the music theorist is to articulate what those patterns actually are and why they may have the effects they do! Leonard Meyer talks a lot about this in his book Style and Music Theory, History, and Ideology (1996) if you’re interested! Theory just kind of puts names to things we are all vaguely aware of!