Do The Grammys Love The Foo Fighters, Or Just Really Hate Foo?
Since many people find it hard to tell the great from the godawful when it comes to 21st-century mainstream rock, welcome to “Corporate Rock Still Sells,” where Al Shipley (a.k.a. Idolator commenter GovernmentNames) examines what’s good, bad, and ugly in the world of Billboard‘s rock charts. This time around he takes a look at the year’s most (supposedly) surprising Grammy nominees, alt-rock survivors the Foo Fighters:
Every year, the announcement of the Grammy nominations, more than just about any other major awards show, invites the same level of confusion and intense speculation as the discovery of a serial killer’s latest victim, or the release of a new Cloverfield trailer. What does it all mean? Are they trying to tell us something? Did you know that Herbie Hancock put out an album of Joni Mitchell covers this year? One of the big questions raised by last week’s nominations was just how the hell the Foo Fighters got the Album Of The Year nomination, particularly when the token rock-veteran spot could have been so capably filled by Bruce Springsteen.
The Foo Fighters are no strangers to the Grammys–in previous years they’ve won four and been nominated for eight more, usually for Best Rock Album, and a few irrelevant niche categories like Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Short-Form Music Video. But this is their first year with a nod in any of the Big Four, let alone two of them (they were also nominated for Record Of The Year). Of course, bestowing the AOTY nod to a ’90s alt-rock mainstay has kind of become an established pattern for the Grammys in recent years. But the two other instances–Red Hot Chili Peppers last year, and Green Day two years before that–were a little less surprising. After all, both albums were multi-platinum blockbusters with Grammy-friendly hooks: a diverse double album, and an uncharacteristically ambitious rock opera, respectively.
The Foos’ latest, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, is for all intents and purposes a business-as-usual album, with no particular concept or editorial angle, and the Foo Fighters have never been a mega-selling act on the level of RHCP or Green Day. The old Paul McCartney theory–that Dave Grohl is just collecting the plaudits for his previous band–has been floated here and there, but the Foo Fighters’ goofy cross-dressing videos and workmanlike power-pop don’t exactly carry the same Most Important Band Ever cultural cache as Nirvana. Still, they’re at least a more credible token rock pick for Grammy voters than, say, Nickelback. And Grohl does possess a little indie cred, occasionally playing with smaller bands like Cat Power and co-owning the great Washington, D.C. rock club The Black Cat.
The funny thing is, if the Foo Fighters were ever gonna get Grammy love, you’d think it would’ve happened two years ago. 2005’s In Your Honor was one of them there ambitious double albums, and featured the highest-charting single of the band’s career, “Best Of You.” Even 2002’s One By One came at a more symbolically significant phase of the band’s career, when Dave Grohl was beginning to settle into his elder statesman role, and dominated rock radio with simultaneous hits by the Foos, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Nirvana (the posthumous “You Know You’re Right”). But in all likelihood, this time around they just ended up the benificiaries of a slow year for event albums, in which the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences seemed to just shrug “Kanye, Winehouse, and… whatever.”
One statistic I dropped in my first column was that the Foo Fighters, like several other alt-rock survivors, had nearly all of their Modern Rock No. 1s (four out of five) in this decade, despite releasing half of their albums in the ’90s. The band’s benefited from the slowly shrinking rock radio audience without actually growing in popularity in any discernible way. In fact, the Foo Fighters’ sales history might be one of the most consistently static I’ve seen for a career lasting over a decade: Every one of their first five albums has sold a million copies, but none of them has jumped up to the two-million-sold plateau. Echoes, just released in September, hasn’t moved a mil yet, but it presumably will by the time it runs its course. Still, I can’t see it reaching multiplatinum status, even with the sales bump that would come from a big Grammy win come February.
The thing is, I’ll defend the Foo Fighters more earnestly than just about anyone, or at least any critic I know. I like Dave Grohl’s voice, and the fact that his songwriting plays off his experience as a drummer has made for some really rhythmically dynamic arrangements, even if it’s all packaged in a a very MOR, hyper-compressed modern rock sound. And while I’ll admit, like most fans, that the Foo Fighters peaked with their first two albums, they’ve aged better than most of their peers; In Your Honor might’ve actually made my Top 10 a few years ago if it was just the “rock” half and hadn’t included the dismal acoustic second disc.
Echoes suffers from further ventures into ballad territory, as well as too many slow burners where at least half the song is devoid of Taylor Hawkins’ drumming. But I also think that “Pretender” might be the band’s best single since “Everlong.” Considering how much I’ve cooled on Kanye’s Graduation since its release, by the time the Grammys roll around I might actually be rooting for the Foo Fighters to take the big prize home. I just hope Dave Grohl doesn’t feel the need to pander to voters by releasing one of the album’s overly serious dirges as the next single, and that he opts for the uptempo, hilariously titled “Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running).” Even better, they could play it at the televised ceremony, and dedicate the performance to Pete Wentz.
