“‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand,” Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls wailed plaintively in “Iris,” which dominated charts from April through July of 1998. He was singing about Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan’s angel/human romance in “City of Angels,” but nearly 30 years later, he was singing to millions more, many of them Gen Z.
Google Trends’ September 3 newsletter reported that search interest for “iris goo goo dolls” was at a 15-plus year high, and as of the past week it was “the top searched song of the summer.” On Spotify, it was a top 25 global hit for several months running, The Wall Street Journal reported in late August, even reaching as high as No. 15. This phenomenon isn’t just a quirk of algorithms or chance—it’s the product of a larger cultural moment driven by nostalgia and the shifting ways we connect with music. Gen Z, a generation already defined by a keen sense of nostalgia, has popularized the concept of a “90s kid summer,” harkening back to a time before social media and smartphones—the exact time of the Goo Goo Dolls’ biggest-ever hit.
The viral surge of “Iris”
Much of the song’s renewed momentum can be traced to viral moments, such as the Goo Goo Dolls’ live performances at major festivals like Stagecoach and on the American Idol season finale. TikTok trends featuring both original footage and covers have also propelled “Iris” to new global streaming peaks, with over 5 billion streams worldwide, far and away the top result for the band on Spotify. Rzeznik told Australian outlet Noise11 that his band has to play live and “that’s how we earn a living.” With “Iris” at the 2-billion stream mark at that point, he added, “You make crap for streaming. People stream your songs and you make no money.”
John says, “Nobody makes any money out of selling records anymore because nobody buys records anymore. You make crap for streaming. People stream your songs and you make no money. You’ve got to go out and play live. That takes a lot of time. I just think the business has changed so much. Its not as much fun as it used to be. We get to play live and that’s how we earn a living”.
The strange power of a three-decade-old song dominating summer playlists is no accident. As revered music critic Simon Reynolds explored in his influential 2010 work Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, we live in a time where cultural production is increasingly fixated on recycling the old rather than inventing the new. Reynolds argued that contemporary pop is less about innovation and more about revisiting previous decades, blurring distinct eras, and nibbling away at the present’s identity. He’s far from the only cultural theorist to spot the lure of the recycled hit.
A few years later, in 2014, the cultural theorist Mark Fisher (who later committed suicide after a long battle with depression) released a book of essays, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Among several memorable phrases, he introduced the concept of the “slow cancellation of the future”: the persistent feeling that time is repeating itself and new ideas are stalling in favor of familiar comfort. According to Fisher, our cultural imagination is increasingly drawn to recycling past successes, not just in music but in film, fashion and art. The result is a present haunted by the ghosts of earlier decades—where the future has faded into a “recycled present” and our ongoing search for novelty is often satisfied by what we already know.
Gen Z’s 1990s nostalgia
These ideas play out most vividly in recent consumer trends, especially among Gen Z. For many, the 1990s symbolize an era before smartphones and constant connectivity—a time when summers consisted of bike rides, ice cream trucks, and garden hoses, rather than endless notifications and screen time. The “90’s kid summer” trend reflects a longing for unstructured play and analog fun, with parents and young adults alike trying to recreate the freedom and creativity they associate with the pre-digital age.
Google Trends reported that “90s summer” reached an all-time high in June and “90s kid summer” was a breakout search in July. It has close similarities to a similar breakout search: “feral child summer,” which encourages parents to stop tracking their kids’ every movement (with technology that was not available in the ’90s). They communicate a yearning for another time with less technology, when “Iris” was playing on a loop over and over on VH1. For Gen Z, who never truly experienced the ‘90s but grew up with its influence, revisiting this past through music like “Iris” is both escapism and rebellion against the anxieties of the digital present.
When the Goo Goo Dolls, with opener Dashboard Confessional, played Berkeley’s Greek Theatre in September, the emo band’s frontman Chris Carrabba remarked on all the teenagers who were rocking vintage band tees in the crowd. ““Do they even have MTV anymore?” he asked in onstage comments reported by SF Gate. Then he offered an explanation to his audience: “Families used to watch TV communally. It was like large format TikTok.” SF Gate noted that the crowd grew overhelmingly loud for the closing number of the show: of course, “Iris.”
Nora Princiotti of The Ringer argued on September 3 that the summer of 2025 lacked a defining “song of the summer,” with recent examples including “Old Town Road” and “Despacito” and older classic including “Hot in Herre” Nelly and “Summer Nights” from Grease. She argued that it was a summer “without monoculture,” depriving many contenders from the chance to dominate the airwaves that were available to the Goo Goo Dolls the first time around, in 1998.
But somehow, “Iris” managed to dominate a different kind of airwave in 2025, emerging as a juggernaut in a manner oddly fitting for a world where Reynolds’ prophecy of retromania is truer than ever. If Mark Fisher was also correct that the future has been canceled, then another Goo Goo Dolls’ lyric, from their 1995 smash “Name,” also comes to mind: “reruns all become our history.”
Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.
Good morning. Goldman Sachs is betting big on using AI to fundamentally rethink how the company operates.
At the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference on Tuesday, CFO Denis Coleman discussed the company’s recently announced OneGS 3.0 initiative—a multiyear overhaul of its OneGS program aimed at integrating AI throughout the bank’s operating model to reduce complexity and boost productivity. The effort is a top priority and will involve every division and function across the company, from business lines to control functions to engineering, Coleman said. “At its core, it’s an effort to drive more scale and more growth,” he said.
Goldman Sachs (No. 32 on the Fortune 500) is emphasizing the quality, availability, accuracy, and timeliness of data that underpins all of its AI initiatives, Coleman noted. That focus includes ensuring the company invests properly in shared platforms that span the organization.
“We’re asking all of our people to rethink the human processes they go through,” Coleman said. “And then we’re making investments in AI and agentic AI to accelerate change across these processes and platforms.”
They have identified six discrete workstreams, created dedicated teams, and tasked them with reviewing key activities, analyzing pain points, and identifying opportunities for efficiency, he said. Each group will then present formal investment cases for leadership review.
“We’ll fund some of those investments and hold teams accountable for the productivity outcomes that follow,” Coleman said. “This is a fundamental rethinking of how we expect our people to operate at Goldman Sachs.”
He added, “We don’t want to simply add more manual processes to drive growth. We need to convert some of that effort into digitized and automated systems—and rethink how those engines work.” Coleman expressed optimism that the OneGS 3.0 strategy will help fuel the firm’s continued growth.
‘The bar for talent remains high’
During the discussion, Coleman also addressed the talent environment, a key concern for many CFOs. “We continue to see incredible demands for people who want to come and work at Goldman Sachs, more than a million people asking to move in laterally to the firm,” Coleman said. “We can accommodate far less than 1%, so we’re still in a position to be extremely selective on the people that we hire.”
Goldman Sachs reduced headcount earlier in 2025 as part of its annual performance review process, which typically targets the lowest 3% to 5% of performers. The company moved that process up to the second quarter from its usual September timing. Despite those cuts, Goldman still expects a net increase in headcount by the end of 2025, supported by hiring in key growth areas.
“The bar for talent remains very high,” Coleman said. “We continue to operate as a pay-for-performance organization. Our goal is to pay competitively—especially for our very best people in each domain—and we are laser-focused on that.”
He added, “As long as markets stay buoyant and the outlook remains optimistic, maintaining that focus will be critical.”
Regarding the U.S. economic outlook, Coleman described it as “resilient and conducive to business.” He added, “We obviously have a Fed decision coming up. Our economists expect a 25-basis-point cut, likely followed by a pause at the beginning of 2026, and then possibly two more cuts.” Coleman also noted that 2025 is shaping up to be the second-biggest year in history for announced mergers and acquisitions industrywide.
Kathryn A. Mikells, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Exxon Mobil (No. 8), will retire effective Feb. 1, 2026. Mikells, who has undergone several procedures to address a debilitating but non-life-threatening health issue, is stepping down to focus on her recovery, according to an SEC filing.
Mikells is among the CFOs represented on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list for 2025. She joined Exxon Mobil in 2021. Mikells is the company’s first official CFO; before her appointment, the finance duties were shared across a range of executive roles. Mikells is the first woman to join the management committee of Exxon.
On Dec. 8, ExxonMobil named Neil A. Hansen, 51, as her successor. Hansen has served as president of Exxon Mobil Global Business Solutions since May 2025 and previously held senior roles in Energy Products, Europe, Africa and Middle East Fuels, and in the company’s controllers, audit, treasury, and investor relations departments, including vice president of investor relations and corporate secretary.
Like other executive officers of the corporation, Hansen will not have an employment contract. His annual salary will be $1.02 million, and he remains eligible for performance-based bonuses and long-term equity incentives.
Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves
Jeff Chesnut was appointed CFO of Conestoga Energy, a provider of low-carbon intensity, effective immediately. With over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, capital markets, and finance, Chesnut will play a pivotal role in executing Conestoga’s growth strategy. Prior to joining Conestoga, Chesnut served as SVP of treasury, investor relations and corporate development at Upbound Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPBD). Before that, he served as EVP and CFO at publicly listed Loyalty Ventures Inc., which was a spinoff from publicly listed Alliance Data Systems, Inc. (now Bread Financial), where he spent over a decade.
James Robert “Rob” Foster was promoted to SVP of finance and CFO of ATI Inc. (NYSE: ATI), effective Jan. 1. Foster succeeds Don Newman, who will serve as strategic advisor to the CEO beginning Jan. 1. As previously announced, Newman will retire on March 1, 2026, and serve in an advisory capacity. Foster, a longtime ATI leader, most recently served as president of ATI’s specialty alloys and components business. He previously served as ATI’s VP of finance, supply chain and capital projects, overseeing the company’s global finance organization, capital deployment processes, and enterprise supply chain performance. Earlier, he led finance for both ATI’s operating segments and the forged products business.
Big Deal
The 11th annual Women in the Workplace report, released by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, examines the state of women in corporate America and Canada. This year, only half of companies are prioritizing women’s career advancement—a continuation of a multiyear decline in commitment to gender diversity. For the first time, women are less interested than men in being promoted.
One of the key findings is that sponsorship matters. “Women overall are less likely than men to have a sponsor—and entry-level women stand out for receiving far less sponsorship than any other group of women or men,” according to the report. “Even when entry-level women do have a sponsor, they’re promoted at a lower rate than men. Sponsors have a substantial impact on career outcomes: in the past two years, employees with sponsors have been promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without.”
Courtesy of LeanIn.Org and McKinsey. From the report, Women in the Workplace.
Going deeper
“When Employees Feel Slighted, They Work Less” is a new report in Wharton’s business journal. New research from Wharton’s Peter Cappelli reveals how even the slightest mistreatment at work can result in lost productivity. Emphasizing respect can help companies mitigate productivity loss, according to the research.
Overheard
“I think in the next five years, you’re going to see large sections of factory work replaced by robots—and part of the reason for that is that these physical AI robots can be reprogrammed into different tasks.”
Enjoy your Fed interest rate cut today—it may be the last one for a while. There is a 90% certainty that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will announce a 0.25% cut to the base rate this afternoon, bringing it down to the 3.5% level, according to speculators on the CME FedWatch Fed funds futures index. But after that, the FedWatch index is indicating no certainty for any further cuts in 2026.
Today’s cut is priced in at level of certainty approaching 90%. But here are what the levels of certainty for keeping the rate at 3.5% look like for 2026, per FedWatch:
January: 72.2%
March: 55.8%
April: 47.6%
Only in June does a plurality—41.9%—emerge for a further cut to 3.25%.
Analysts are all over the place in their guesses about how many further rounds of cheaper money the Fed will deliver next year, and with good reason: President Trump is set to replace Powell with a new Fed chair in May.
“We see the Fed cutting rates twice in 2026, with moves in March and in June,” ING’s James Knightley et alargued earlier this month. Plus, “the potential for a more dovish FOMC tilts the risks toward additional rate cuts later in the year.”
“But does this matter, given that we know the Federal Reserve’s structure is changing?” Knightley wrote.
At Deutsche Bank, the forecast is “one further 25bp cut in each of 2026 and 2027.”
Pantheon Macroeconomics’ guess is for three cuts, “We expect 75bp of easing in 2026, but fiscal policy and FOMC personnel changes cloud the outlook.”
The presumed favorite candidate for the new Fed chair is Kevin Hassett, widely regarded as a “dove” who will follow Trump’s preference for lower rates regardless of rising inflation. But there are three others in the running: Fed governors Kevin Warsh, Christopher Waller and Michelle, Bowman, and BlackRock Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income Rick Rieder.
It’s not certain if the new appointee will tip the Federal Open Markets Comittee into a more dovish position (favoring more cuts) or whether the Fed’s institutional commitment to apolitical economics will prevail, which would imply a slower schedule of cuts or perhaps—if inflation continues to rise—none at all.
ING’s Knightley noted that by the end of 2026 it is possible that “five of the seven members of the Board of Governors are Trump appointees.” The Fed is about to become much more unpredictable, in other words.
Stock markets are largely in a holding pattern today as investors wait for the rate decision. It will be Powell’s commentary— and whether he says or doesn’t say certain words—that move markets this afternoon. S&P 500 futures were flat this morning prior to the open after the index closed flat yesterday.
Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:
S&P 500 futures were flat this morning. The last session closed down marginally 0.09%.
STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.12% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.29% in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.1%.
China’s CSI 300 was down 0.14%.
The South Korea KOSPI was down 0.21%.
India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.32%.
Bitcoin was at $92K.
Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.
From Washington state to northern New England, American businesses that have long depended on Canadian visitors are seeing traffic dry up — and with it, a crucial source of revenue.
A new report shared exclusively with Fortune by the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) – Minority, a congressional standing committee dating back to 1946 responsible for documenting the economic conditions of the U.S., details how a sharp drop in Canadian tourism is hitting every U.S. state along the northern border. The findings come as President Trump has proposed annexing Canada, imposed several rounds of tariffs on Canadian goods, and repeatedly broken off trade talks with Ottawa, contributing to a chill in cross-border travel and spending.
From January to October 2025, the number of passenger vehicles crossing the U.S.-Canada border fell by nearly 20% compared with the same period in 2024, according to the JEC analysis, which draws on U.S. Customs and Border Protection travel statistics. In some border states, the decline reached 27%, a shift that local tourism agencies say is showing up in fewer tourists, more hotel vacancies, and weaker sales.
“Going back for generations, Canadians have visited New Hampshire and many other states along the U.S.-Canada border to see family or friends, stay in our hotels, share a meal at our restaurants, and shop at our stores,” said U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee. “However, in the wake of President Trump’s reckless tariffs and needless provocations, fewer and fewer Canadians are making trips to the United States, putting many American businesses in jeopardy and straining the close ties that bind our two nations.”
Canadians have historically been among the most important international visitors to the U.S., both in sheer numbers and in spending. Analysts and tourism officials note that rising prices, a weaker Canadian dollar, and heightened political tensions have nudged many travelers to choose domestic trips within Canada or alternative international destinations instead. For U.S. border communities, that shift is being felt in real time.
“These are more than numbers; they represent missed revenue for local businesses, reduced hotel demand, and fewer dollars supporting jobs and investment in our community,” said Shirley Hughes, president and CEO of Visit Fargo-Moorhead in Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota.
In northern New Hampshire, the absence of Canadian license plates is especially stark. “Being only eight miles from the border, normally Canadians make up anywhere from 15-25% of visitors. Now, I can probably count the number of Canadian visitors on one hand. I’m just trying to plug along and keep my nose above the waterline,” said Elizabeth Guerin, owner of the Fiddleheads gift shop in Colebrook, New Hampshire.
The impact stretches beyond retail and lodging into wineries and attractions that rely on cross-border regulars.
“The drop in visits from Canadian tourists has had a noticeable impact on our bottom line. With Canadians making up about 10% of our business, fewer cross-border travelers mean fewer tastings, tours, and wine sales — a ripple effect that touches our entire operation, underscoring how important cross-border tourism is to our business model,” said Scott Osborn, president and co-owner of Fox Run Vineyards in Penn Yan, New York.
Some operators worry the damage will outlast any eventual thaw in U.S.–Canada trade relations, as Canadian travelers form new habits elsewhere.
“This is long-lasting damage to a relationship and emotional damage takes time to heal. While people aren’t visiting Vermont, they’ll be finding new places to visit, making new memories, building new family traditions, and we will not recapture all of that,” said Christa Bowdish, owner of the Old Stagecoach Inn in Waterbury, Vermont.
On the West Coast, festival organizers are also feeling the pinch.
“Since March of this year, we have not only seen Canadian traffic drop drastically, but we have also seen a drop in our number of attendees at our festival this year in late September. We knew that after March, we could not rely on our Canadian business because of fear at the border and lack of understanding of what is happening with tariffs and Canada drawing a strong line of promoting Canada first,” said Kevin Coleman, executive director of SeaFeast in Bellingham, Washington.
For businesses up and down the northern border, the question now is not just when Canadians will return in force, but how much of that lost business can ever be won back.
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Politics8 years ago