You Can't Take Back All Those Years

A Boy Named Goo
Goo Goo Dolls (1995)
The album that propelled Goo Goo Dolls into the mainstream was released thirty years ago today.  A Boy Named Goo is the band's fifth studio album, but it's the first of their records that a lot of their fans heard, and I am no exception.  I was 14 years old when I first heard this record and it immediately tapped in what I was feeling at the time.  Hearing those songs today has a way of taking me back to that place and wanting to hop in a time machine to go find my younger self to let him know that this shit will all work out... you just have to hang in there.

I've already written about Name before, so this time, I'm going to focus on the fourth single that came out of the album, Naked.  The lyrics are a pretty straight forward self-examination of anxiety and loneliness.  Hearing it today reminds me of the song Ask by The Smiths, almost as if the person singing Naked is the one that Morrissey was singing to in Ask. 

Naked

Goo Goo Dolls (1995)

Yeah I'm fading

And I call out

No one hears me

Never been, never felt, never thought I'd say a word

Weighed down

Safe now

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone

Yeah I'm hiding

In the fallout

Now I'm wasted

They don't need me, don't want me, don't hear a word I say

Weighed down

Safe now

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone

Inside your head

No one's there

And I don't think I'll ever be

And I don't care

You're naked inside your fear

You can't take back all those years

And shots in the dark from empty guns

Are never heard by anyone