Synopsis
The video presents a satirical factory where ordinary workers clock in and pass through an elaborate transformation process. Makeup, styling, and music-industry machinery turn them into polished rock stars before sending them back into the workplace. The Goo Goo Dolls perform amid this artificial production line, while the increasingly exaggerated makeover reveals the manufactured nature of celebrity image. The final joke suggests that glamorous rock stardom may be less about youth or talent than presentation, lighting, and cosmetics.
Factoids & Trivia
- The treatment was written by comedian and filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait. Its central idea was described as a parody of the rock-star mystique, portraying celebrity as something assembled on an industrial production line.
- The video made its television debut on MTV's "Total Request Live" on March 27, 2000, one day before "Broadway" was scheduled to be released to radio.
- "Broadway" was the fourth and final single from the Goo Goo Dolls' 1998 album "Dizzy Up the Girl."
- John Rzeznik said he had written the song years earlier, put it away, and later revisited and reworked it before deciding that the time was right to release it.
- The song refers to Buffalo's Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood, where Rzeznik grew up. That personal connection gives the video's critique of manufactured fame an added contrast: a song rooted in a working-class background was being promoted through a deliberately artificial image of stardom.
- The single reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, extending the commercial run of "Dizzy Up the Girl" into 2000.