Goo Goo Dolls - Broadway

2000

Goo Goo Dolls - Broadway (2000) Director: Nancy Bardawil Era: Post-Grunge Pop-Rock Crossover (1999–2000) - Late cycle of Dizzy Up the Girl's commercial run; MTV-era alternative rock crossing into mainstream adult-contemporary and TRL territory at the turn of the millennium High curatorial value as the closing visual document of one of alternative rock's most commercially and critically successful album campaigns of the 1990s. The video's satirical pop-factory concept, warm industrial aesthetic, and fast rhythmic editing make it a textbook artifact of the late-MTV-era alternative mainstream. It also represents a confirmed entry in Nancy Bardawil's significant but under-documented body of work directing for major rock acts, and preserves a self-aware commentary on celebrity manufacturing at the precise historical moment the music industry was transitioning into the digital age. Context: Released in March 2000 as the fifth and final single from Dizzy Up the Girl, 'Broadway' arrived at the tail end of one of alternative rock's most commercially successful album campaigns of the era. The song is an autobiographical portrait of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, a working-class, predominantly Polish-American community, and Rzeznik's difficult upbringing there. The music video's pop-star-factory concept creates a deliberate ironic tension: a band that emerged from genuine blue-collar roots now commenting on the machinery of mainstream celebrity from inside it. Released at the dawn of the TRL era, the video engages self-referentially with the MTV apparatus that had made the Goo Goo Dolls stars, while the song itself remains one of the more lyrically stark and regionally specific rock singles of its commercial moment. Director notes: Bardawil served as the frequent go-to director for the Goo Goo Dolls across their Dizzy Up the Girl era, making Broadway one of at least three videos she helmed for the band from that album cycle. The video is documented as featuring a factory that churns out pop stars, a satirical concept that contrasts with the song's autobiographical, working-class Buffalo subject matter. The video first aired March 27, 2000, coinciding with the single's release as the fifth and final single from Dizzy Up the Girl.