Superstar Car Wash by Goo Goo Dolls

Superstar Car Wash, the fourth Goo Goo Dolls album, came out on Warner Bros. on February 23, 1993, and it catches the Buffalo trio mid-transformation, still wearing the scuffed punk boots but reaching for the big, open-hearted chorus. John Rzeznik sang and played guitar, Robby Takac played bass and George Tutuska was on drums, and the title is a hometown in-joke: Superstar Car Wash was a real business on William Street, just outside downtown Buffalo.

The heart of it is "We Are the Normal", which Rzeznik wrote with his hero Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, entirely by mail, the two never sitting down in a studio together. You can hear the Westerberg DNA in its ragged, wistful ache. "Fallin' Down" turned up in the Pauly Shore movie Son in Law, and "So Far Away" started life as a different song with the same bones, "Dancing In Your Blood". The mainstream breakthrough was still a couple of years off, but the blueprint is right here.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.