This is the first serious Goo Goo Dolls album, and you can take your pick between this and the three albums that followed, for which is their best.

‘Laughing’ for me, is Robby Takac’s best song in the GGD’s 30-plus year history. It’s ferocious and sets a really high bar for the rest of the record.

Other highlights include ‘There You Are’, ‘You Know What I Mean’ and ‘On Your Side’, but the track I keep revisiting all these years is ‘Hey’. It’s an absolute gem and so catchy.

Any Goo Goo Dolls fan MUST own this record.

I was an old school punk rocker. Viva La Vinyl and all that. And in 1989 MTV was pretty rare in the homes of the UK. Good music was hard to come by. Good Music on televison was something you had to stay up late for. So in the wee small hours one night Phil Alexander introduced a video on The Power Hour (A 30 minutes weekly rock show) by Goo Goo Dolls called There You Are. I was smitten. What a killer band. They sounded like REM' & The Replacements little brothers playing Cheap Trick songs on stolen equipment.

The album was impossible to find. It took months. I finally got it on CD and had to by my first CD Player on the way home just so I could hear it. But it was worth it.

In '89 you were either a shoegazer, a metalhead or a townie. After hearing messy blasts like Out Of The Red mixed in with a wacky Prince cover (Never Take The Place Of Your Man) live acoustic tracks recorded in the street (Three Days In February) and polished pop hits like Million Miles Away or Just The Way You Are I knew punk hadn't died on me. I just had to get with the times.

You couldn't find a better example of US Alternative rock pre Nirvana than Hold Me Up. Buy It Now!