Iris (song)

Iris is a song by the Goo Goo Dolls, an American band, written for the 1998 movie City of Angels. It was an instant hit, and has remained very popular since.

There are two versions of the song, one just short of five minutes long, and another that is three and a half minutes long. Both versions are highly favored by many makers of fanvids and fanmixes, perhaps because of the song's intensely emotional, yet somewhat unspecific lyrics-- 'I would give up forever to touch you' is sung with sincere emo pain.

It has quite possibly been used to make shipper vids for every. pairing. in every. fandom. ever. It is doubly popular in fandoms that deal with immortality (vampire fandoms like Buffy or Twilight, the Immortals of Highlander, etc.) due to the possibility for some characters to literally mean the 'forever' part of the lyrics.

Examples

As of November 17, 2008 a search for "iris songvid" on Youtube resulted in 604 hits, whereas a search for "iris AMV" produced over 1,400 results. There were Iris songvids for fandoms such as Bleach, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Chrno Crusade, Ah! My Goddess, Fruits Basket, Queer as Folk, Highlander, Smallville, House, M.D., Supernatural, and Grey's Anatomy, as well as movies like Star Wars, Titanic, You've Got Mail, The Last Samurai and Meet Joe Black.

As of November 17, there were also at least six different Iris videos for the Twilight pairing of Bella/Edward-- notable because the Twilight movie had not even been released to theaters yet.

Fanfiction

The song has also inspired a small number of fanfics. As of 2022, 19 AO3 fanworks have been tagged with Song: Iris (Goo Goo Dolls). At least half are songfics, and one is labeled a filk.

Archives & Resources

• Wikipedia:Iris (song)