Review: Foo Fighters – Greatest Hits (2009)
There are a number of reasons why I shouldn’t be writing this review. The first, and most obvious, is that this website deals primarily with independent artists, and the Foo Fighters aren’t exactly poster children for the indie movement. A quick perusal of their early music videos, however, will tell you that the Foo Fighters are clearly at their best when they refuse to take themselves too seriously. As a preface: a dose of that mentality will serve the listener well.
The second, more deep-seated reason is because I unashamedly idolized the Foo Fighters as a teenager. I was their number one fan, never wavering for a moment in my devotion to what I then believed was, by far, the most incredibly satisfying brand of rock and roll. I wrote a paper on why the Foo Fighters should be your favorite band. I gave an oral presentation on that paper. My teacher gave me an A on both, probably with a shake of the head and a pang of pity. Years later, my long-past high school obsession has haunted me and paid me back tenfold and counting. To people who haven’t seen me for some time, I’m still The Guy Who Really Likes The Foo Fighters, in the back of their heads. I have good friends — people who know me very well — who still ask how the concert was after the Foo Fighters have come through town. I chuckle as disarmingly as I can, trying to distance myself from the white-hot fury of my bygone passion. And yet, to my chagrin, it endures in so many minds, and frankly, I deserve it.
I’d like to think that my musical tastes have matured a great deal since that time, but one could see how this album cover alone, to me, is like staring down the track mark on my forearm – then looking up, and seeing a bag of whatzit on my coffee table. My history with the band was very much like a drug addiction; they were the first real band I got hooked on, and like any addict, I only gatewayed to other fixes that could give me a similar high. The first few years were amazing; all throughout Foo Fighters and The Colour and The Shape I felt like a rock star and even learned a lot of great guitar riffs courtesy of internet tablature tutelage. There Is Nothing Left To Lose came out, and the highs were harder to reproduce, but still very much a thrill, but when One By One hit the streets, I was well into the period where the drug was doing me, and not the other way around. It’s telling that Greatest Hits only features two songs from One By One (“All My Life,” “Times Like These”), and it’s probably best that way; even the band looks back on the record with a distinct sense of discomfort. It is with that same discomfort that I write this now, as I stand on the verge of cred-shattering relapse.
After broadening my horizons and digging more deeply into the immense caches of music I simply wrote off as a teenager, I’ve recidivated to the Foos, and not unlike returning to a childhood home and finding it a lot smaller than one remembered, it’s with some guarded surprise (“Is this…it?”). Nostalgia be damned, however, what I’ve come to realize is that I wasn’t really all that foolish for liking the band. I was sure enough a fool for them, but bias notwithstanding, the songs here are a tremendous amount of fun. Though they nested on the radio alongside some of the most vapid rock a generation ever spawned, the band exists in spite of and above it. There’s simplicity of craft here, but nothing as bone-headedly aggravating as Staind or the ever-groan-worthy Nickelback, who for the purposes of this review, can be referred to as Evergroan. The Foo Fighters may not be an exceptionally creative or edgy band, but what they do, they do well – and what’s more, they do it consistently.
Foo Fighters’ “My Hero,” from Greatest Hits and The Colour And The Shape.
The recording industry’s requisite inclusion of fresh music to incentivize the purchase of a greatest hits collection (in this case, “Word Forward” and “Wheels”) is not all that deplorable; to set any record apart from a re-codification of other past releases is no more a crime than playing a cover on a live recording. After all, the Foos are often compared with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who spawned one of their most enduring tunes as a bonus track on their greatest hits collection: “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” “Word Forward” is nowhere near that caliber, but “Wheels” is an enjoyable, if predictable, jolt of country-rock riffage. As far as the meat of the album: “Big Me” remains as incessantly catchy as before, “Everlong” is as elegaic and troubled, “My Hero” is ever the triumphant anthem, and “Learn To Fly” the heartening melody. The band’s late-career transitions, however, perhaps in an effort to avoid retreading similar ground, do often sound like a stab at an American heartland aesthetic that never quite fits (“Long Road To Ruin”). It is heartening, however, to see Taylor Hawkins’ drumming gain confidence over the course of his career, since he remains, even now, blotted black in the shadow of him whom Stephen Thomas Erlewine dubbed The Most Powerful Drummer In The Universe. And speaking of Dave: Good Lord, he looks like Bob Seger.
While most people side with Grohl, in that the band has better songs than are captured on Greatest Hits, it’s important to point out that there’s an innate difference between a ‘best of’ collection and a ‘greatest hits’ collection. The record label is obviously going to pick even sub-par charting hits like “Best of You” and “The Pretender” over heavy album favorites like “Hey, Johnny Park!” and “Stacked Actors.” It’s a testament to the band’s career that the CD is full to bursting and there’s plenty of good material that could still be added, but the inclusion of only one track from In Your Honor is quizzical indeed. “No Way Back” would have been a far better choice than “Word Forward,” and either the X-Files re-record of “Walking After You” or Nirvana-era fan favorite “Friend of a Friend” should have taken precedent over the utterly skip-able “Skin And Bones.” Woulda coulda shoulda. If you want to burn a CD of what their “real” best material is, that’s your prerogative. Not that you haven’t made one already; it’s probably got Footastic written in Sharpie on it, doesn’t it?
Wow dude, no idea you liked Foo Fighters. I actually thought you only listened to 80′s glam rock in your high school years, hahaha. I’m going to have to go listen to their older stuff, I’ve only heard some of their radio hits.