Synopsis

The video alternates between performance footage of the Goo Goo Dolls and stark images of life on the streets of Los Angeles. John Rzeznik sings amid an urban landscape while the camera observes homeless and economically disadvantaged people, giving the song's words about conformity, mortality, and alienation a grounded social context. Rather than presenting a conventional narrative, the clip uses documentary-style street imagery and the band's tense, emotionally charged performance to connect private despair with the broader realities of city life.

Factoids & Trivia

• Released in 1993, the video was made for the only single from the Goo Goo Dolls' fourth album, Superstar Car Wash.

• The clip received exposure on MTV's 120 Minutes, a key outlet for alternative and independent music during the early 1990s.

• The song reached No. 5 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart, giving the band one of its earliest significant alternative-radio successes.

• "We Are the Normal" was a major connection to one of the band's central influences, The Replacements. John Rzeznik wrote the music and sent it to Paul Westerberg on cassette; Westerberg then supplied the lyrics through an exchange conducted by mail.

• The song's recording includes viola by Mary Ramsey, whose mournful string part adds an unusual texture to the Goo Goo Dolls' guitar-driven sound.

• Like several of the band's early releases, the track was issued as a promotional one-track single rather than a conventional commercial single.

• The video belongs to the period when the Goo Goo Dolls were moving from their rougher punk background toward the more melodic alternative rock that would eventually lead to their mainstream breakthrough.