Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters (Japan)

Essentially a collection of solo home recordings by Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters' eponymous debut is a modest triumph. Driven by big pop melodies and distorted guitars, Foo Fighters do strongly recall Nirvana, only with a decidedly lighter approach. If Kurt Cobain's writing occasionally recalled John Lennon, Dave Grohl's songs are reminiscent of Paul McCartney -- they're driven by large, instantly memorable melodies, whether it's the joyous outburst of "This Is a Call" or the gentle pop of "Big Me." That doesn't mean Grohl shies away from noise; toward the end of the record, he piles on several thrashers that make more sense as pure aggressive sound than as songs. Since he recorded the album by himself, they aren't as powerful as most bands’ primal sonic workouts, but the results are damn impressive for a solo musician. Nevertheless, they aren't as strong as his fully formed pop songs, and that's where the true heart of the album lies. Foo Fighters has a handful of punk-pop gems that show, given the right musicians and songwriters, the genre had not entirely become a cliché by the middle of the '90s.

Dee Gees - Hail Satin

In late February 2021, less than two weeks after Foo Fighters released their 10th album in more than a quarter century as a band, the arena-rock placebo Medicine at Midnight (rumor has it Bill Gates put a chip in it!), they unceremoniously unveiled a disco alter ego. Billed, semi-funnily, as the Dee Gees, the Dave Grohl-led six-piece premiered their cover of “You Should Be Dancing” on BBC Radio 2. Grohl—ever the candid every-dude—said that the falsetto experiment was inspired by last December’s fascinating HBO documentary about the Bee Gees—never mind that he hadn’t actually seen it. The stakes could hardly have been lower. The results were hard to fault. Recorded with one-man multi-platinum mint Greg Kurstin, the veteran band’s stab at the Bee Gees’ nuke-proof 1976 hit—the first in a run of disco-pop smashes that would appear on the next year’s gazillion-selling Saturday Night Fever soundtrack—is muscular but essentially faithful. When Grohl channels Barry Gibb’s horndog dancefloor exhortations (“My woman gives me pow-wah!”), it feels as self-consciously silly as disco’s monoculture phase gave audiences a license to be, from Studio 54 to suburban strip malls. Thoroughly harmless, it’s kind of a hoot. It would’ve made a fine novelty single.

Foo Fighters - My Hero (Japan Special Edition)

There isn’t a song in Foo Fighters’ repertoire which accurately epitomises the band more than ‘My Hero’. It’s an anthem that embodies the group’s spirit and has sound tracked a portion of the most important moments in their history. Initially, when the track was launched by the Foos, fans assumed ‘My Hero’ was written about Kurt Cobain. However, Dave Grohl never wholly confirmed this rumour, despite having ample opportunities to do so. However, one Foo Fighters song which is definitely written about Cobain is ‘Friend of a Friend’, and includes the lyrics: “He plays an old guitar, With a coin found by the phone, It was his friend’s guitar, That he played”.

‘My Hero’ was the third single selected from The Colour and The Shape, and fans of the band immediately gravitated to the song. The ambiguity of the lyrics gives the track a universality that allows people to attribute their own meaning to words, which is the greatest strength of Grohl’s approach. However, the Cobain rumours have always persisted. After performing ‘My Hero’ on the Howard Stern show in 1999, the interviewer asked if the track was “loosely based on Kurt Cobain”. Pausing for a moment, Grohl uncomfortably replied: “Errr, it’s kinda more about heroes that are ordinary,” adding that he has always looked up to “regular people, more than up to… [celebrities]”. Furthermore, in 2008, following Republican nominee John McCain using the track in his presidential campaign without permission, the band once again revealed the true meaning behind ‘My Hero’. In a statement, they said: “The saddest thing about this is that ‘My Hero’ was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential. To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song.”

According to Radio X, Grohl once said that “there’s definitely an element of Kurt in that song”, but meanings are fluid and change over time. While Cobain may have been one of the people running through Grohl’s mind when he wrote ‘My Hero’, 25 years later, it’s also about another fallen former bandmate. Although he didn’t play on the record, Taylor Hawkins joined Foo Fighters in 1997 and was the beating heart of ‘My Hero’ every time they performed the track live. Following Hawkins’ death, Foo Fighters invited his son, Shane, onto the stage to perform ‘My Hero’ during the tribute concert for his late father at Wembley Stadium, which redefined the meaning of the song. Following the show at Wembley, it’s hard to listen to ‘My Hero’ without the mind wandering to that tear-jerking moment when Shane paid tribute to his father. Like Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, which took on a new life in the face of tragedy following the Manchester Arena bombing, ‘My Hero’ is now a reminder of Taylor Hawkins and the positive energy he constantly radiated.