The album Dave Grohl thought contained his best lyrics: “More than anything else I’ve done”
Not every band is meant to make their fanbase think that hard regarding their lyrics. As much as people like to be challenged whenever they hear someone like Lou Reed come up with a brilliant line, no one will dissect the inner workings of a Red Hot Chili Peppers line if they don’t have to. Although Dave Grohl never claimed to be Bob Dylan with his pen, he knew that he hit on something powerful when he started working on the album One By One.
Which is strange, considering this is the Foo Fighters album that absolutely no one wants to talk about. There are still great moments on the record that make for an engaging listen, but every member seemed to have had enough of each other’s shit and wanted out, leaving new kid Chris Shiflett to just look on and wonder what the hell he got himself into.
Although there were some shakeups during the recording process, things smoothed over after playing one massive festival gig. They finally had their spirits re-energized, and once they came back to the studio ready to finish the record, they realised they were going to need to start from scratch and throw a million dollars worth of work away.
Then again, if starting over meant getting ‘All My Life’ exactly right, it was a much better trade-off than most would think. And considering what was on Grohl’s mind watching his band almost fall apart, there are a lot more moodier tracks on the record than you’d expect from a stadium-rock outfit like them.
The choruses may still be enormous, but ‘Tired of You’ and ‘Disenchanted Lullaby’ are among the most bitter lines Grohl ever penned. Compared to how much people listened to the record expecting anthems, these tracks had much more to do with where Grohl was, contemplating whether or not he should come to the end of this relationship or press on to make things better.
Even Grohl had to admit that there was that common theme of frail nerves running throughout the record, saying, “I hate writing lyrics, but I love the lyrics more on this album than anything else I’ve ever done. I used to just spit out lyrics, or I’d over-analyse them and lose myself and the plot. But this album begins with ‘All My Life’ and ends with ‘Come Back’ and there’s a theme linking everything together this time, although I didn’t realise it at the time.”
If there was one light in the darkness, though, ‘Times Like These’ was the first tune that Grohl wrote to introduce the next phase of the band, almost like he was recommitting himself to being the frontman he was always meant to be. And as great as it is, it’s almost out of place on the track listing compared to the sombre tone of everything else.
Still, Grohl wasn’t interested in just making a few decent tracks. Every Foo Fighters album had another challenge in store for them, and by going the extra mile, Grohl gave us the inverse of There is Nothing Left to Lose, where people start wondering what the future holds after not having a care in the world.
