Foo Fighters

Latest Release

Essential Albums

  • There Is Nothing Left to Lose
    There Is Nothing Left to Lose
    There Is Nothing Left to Lose

    After the emotionally charged anthems and notable underground pedigree of 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters’ third album proved more grounded in classic American rock than in the subcultures of punk, grunge or emo. With the departure of guitarist Pat Smear (for now) and the promotion of touring drummer Taylor Hawkins to full-time member since the last record, Dave Grohl took up guitar duties against the road-hardened rhythm section of Hawkins and bassist Nate Mendel. Just as vital as that rejiggered lineup was the no-frills setting. After relocating from an unhappy stint in Hollywood, Grohl purchased a house not far from his former high school in Alexandria, Virginia, and christened the newfound basement studio 606—later to beget an LA version called 606 West and also inspire the 2022 horror flick Studio 666. Working with co-producer Adam Kasper, the core trio set about shaping the album under much mellower circumstances than the last time around. The results followed suit, smoothing out many of the previous album’s diamond-sharp edges. That’s most apparent in the platinum-selling hit “Learn to Fly”, an arena-sized power ballad that hints at what Grohl might have picked up from Tom Petty in his brief fill-in spot drumming for The Heartbreakers. Complete with ringing hooks and an accessible message, the song became a resounding calling card for the band’s radio-friendly potential. Other tracks follow suit, with “Live-In Skin” bringing heartfelt heft to its straight-down-the-middle rock, and “Next Year” channelling AM-radio gold with its optimistic refrain “I’ll be comin’ home next year”. Even the more experimental choices aren’t exactly abrasive, from the phaser motif in “Breakout” and talk-box hook in “Generator” to the bleary effects rippling through “Aurora” and “Headwires”. By stark contrast, the red-herring opener “Stacked Actors” pairs jazzy verses with stoner-rock bluster while Grohl lashes out at Hollywood’s well-documented emptiness. Other songs pick up that thread later, with “Ain’t It the Life” again puncturing actors’ vacant facades before “M.I.A.” goes as far as to call them “mannequins drunk in their hollow town”. The latter ends the record on a triumphant note, with Grohl emboldened by his choice to ditch that lifestyle. Released at the very close of the decade that first made Grohl famous, There Is Nothing Left to Lose very much broadened Foo Fighters’ appeal, even earning them a Grammy for Best Rock Album. But more than anything, it established Grohl’s staying power far beyond the lingering shadow of Nirvana.

  • The Colour And The Shape
    The Colour And The Shape
    The Colour And The Shape

    Once Dave Grohl had cleared the hurdle of launching his post-Nirvana project with Foo Fighters’ 1995 self-titled debut—on which he juggled all the instruments—it was time to put an actual band together. Tapping bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith from emo outfit Sunny Day Real Estate, along with Germs/Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear, Grohl then brought in Pixies producer Gil Norton to nail down the bracing contrasts and more personal songwriting of 1997’s The Colour and the Shape. Things didn’t go well at first: Initial sessions got scrapped, and Grohl wound up replacing most of Goldsmith’s contributions with his own, before hiring drummer Taylor Hawkins for future albums. Norton pushed the band especially hard, requesting take after take to get everything just right. Yet that disciplined approach paid off, yielding three Top 10 hits and what remains Foo Fighters’ best-selling album in the US. It also represents the band’s anointment as a mainstream rock powerhouse, both in the studio and onstage. Written in the fallout from Grohl’s divorce from photographer Jennifer Youngblood, these songs definitely cut more deeply than the first album’s lower-stakes power-pop. The most enduring anthem here—appropriately titled “Everlong”—is quite pointedly about connecting with someone on every possible level. All forward momentum, the song captures both the challenge and reward of true intimacy, kicking up the drama yet another notch with its whispered bridge and then adrenalised return. Lead single “Monkey Wrench” similarly balances the ecstatic and cathartic (“I’d rather leave than suffer this”), while “My Hero” comes closest to Sunny Day’s intricate emotional exorcisms. But there’s plenty more territory covered beyond those three hard-driving singles. Soft-sung opener “Doll” plays like an intentional link to the previous album’s demo-like intimacy, and the confiding acoustic ballad “Walking After You” feels all the more vulnerable following directly from “Everlong”. Likewise, the jaunty lightness of “See You” provides an immediate counterpoint to “My Hero”. Often singing with fresh pain in his voice here, Grohl proves himself to be not just a gifted songwriter but an undeniably impactful frontperson. And if you’re looking for foreshadowing of the tireless arena staple that the Foos would soon become, “Wind Up” ratchets up the band’s distorted riffing and even lets Grohl sneak in a proper scream.

  • Foo Fighters
    Foo Fighters
    Foo Fighters

    “It was really just an experiment,” Dave Grohl tells Apple Music of the first Foo Fighters LP, 25 years after its release. “It wasn’t intended to be an album—I’d always recorded songs by myself. To this day, it still sounds like a demo to me. It was done in the moment, without the intention of everything that followed.” But therein lies much of its power: In the months following Kurt Cobain’s death in April 1994, Grohl wrote and recorded every note of Foo Fighters (save for Greg Dulli’s guitar solo on “X-Static”) on a lark, without an audience in mind. It was music for himself more than anyone else. And while no one expected the success that followed, you can certainly hear the possibilities. Grohl had come from punk, but he’s just as devoted to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. That spectrum of influence is on full display for the first time here, whether it’s in the drumming—few have written so many fills that can also double as hooks—or his natural ear for melody. It’s both a reintroduction and a glimpse of what’s to come, from the opening rush of “This Is a Call” to the understated jangle of “Big Me” to the bar-rock sleaze of “For All the Cows” (which he says reminded his mother of Richard Marx) to the muddy catharsis of “Exhausted”, a near-six-minute guitar workout that Grohl played through a battery-powered amp fashioned from a red gasoline can. On “I’ll Stick Around”, he tweaks the sort of pit-friendly pop song (or pop-friendly pit song) that Cobain had blueprinted just four years earlier and points it at his widow, Courtney Love. “It's strange because when you're in a period of loss or grief or mourning, it's like you pick up an instrument and that just spills out,” Grohl says of the songs. “Like an exorcism.” After producing and handing out 100 cassettes to friends from the back of his truck, he was so inspired by the response that he formed a band, started a label, and—still Nirvana’s drummer in most people’s minds at that point—became a frontman. Call it one of rock’s great transformations. “It’s the sound of someone that was just ready to explode, because I was ready for life to just move on,” he says. “I felt like I had to get these songs out of the way, and then I could take a deep breath and live life again. I really look back on it fondly. It was a good time—I was still a kid, man.”

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About Foo Fighters

How do you follow up a stint drumming for Nirvana, the most influential rock band of your generation? If you’re Dave Grohl, you start one of the most consistent and enduring rock bands of all time. Whether covering Queen and Pink Floyd or collaborating with legends like Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters are the sturdy connective tissue between the classic-rock era and the modern age. After Kurt Cobain died in 1994, Grohl dropped his sticks and became singer-guitarist for a new project he named after a World War II-era military term for UFOs. His scrappy 1995 debut under the Foo Fighters alias—performed and recorded almost entirely on his own—revealed a Cobain-like gift for folding insidious hooks into raw, grungy riffs. But on the more polished 1997 follow-up, The Colour And The Shape, Grohl displayed bigger commercial ambitions, as evidenced by the Pixies-esque “My Hero” and the simmering “Everlong”. The Foos thereupon became a proper band, with Grohl flanked by former Germs and Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, Sunny Day Real Estate bassist Nate Mendel and the hard-hitting, ever-affable drummer Taylor Hawkins. From the late ’90s onward, the Foos have reigned as alt-rock’s most reliable hit machine and—thanks to their comedic, heavily costumed videos—most eager court jesters, cranking out mosh-pit ragers (“All My Life”), scorching hardcore punk (“White Limo”), jugular-seizing power ballads (“Best of You”) and steady-as-Petty sing-alongs (“Learn to Fly”) with equal aplomb. Hawkins’ sudden death in 2022 cast a pall over the usually happy-go-lucky group. But Grohl channelled his grief into 2023’s emotionally raw But Here We Are—and when the band returned to the road after taking time off to regroup, their music and presence exuded even greater purpose. As one of the few ’90s-era rock bands to maintain festival-headliner status well into the 21st century, the Foos remain alt-rock’s most committed keepers of the flame.

ORIGIN
Seattle, WA, United States
FORMED
1994
GENRE
Rock

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