The “cheesy” pop song Dave Grohl wanted to cover
It’s hard not to picture Dave Grohl as one of the more wholesome characters in rock and roll.
He might not be the kind of guy that’s in bed minutes after a performance by any stretch, and his reputation has taken its fair share of heavy dents in the past few years, but if you had the good fortune of being able to go ask him out to grab a beer, there’s a pretty good chance that he would do it. But becoming one of the goofy uncles of rock and roll does mean having to put up with a little bit of weapons-grade cheese every once in a while as well.
But as far as Grohl is concerned, cheese was never a bad thing. If you’ve seen any of Foo Fighters’ videos, he’s a natural ham in front of the camera, and even if the song is serious, you can guarantee that the video is going to be a good time whenever he has the right idea, whether that’s them cosplaying as the greatest rejected soap opera of all time in ‘Long Road to Ruin’ or bringing the Mentos commercials into the music industry during ‘Big Me’.
Then again, Grohl did at least have a few standards when he started making his records. He wanted to collaborate with people and make as much music as he could half the time, but even when switching from one genre to the next, he knew to separate himself from bands that were clearly into making music for the money rather than the joy of making it.
And while Grohl has found a way to be a bit more diplomatic about the bands that he doesn’t care for nowadays, it’s not like he was the same character when he was first putting Foo Fighters together. The entire appeal of the budding rockstar is to behave like a little bit of a badass, and that meant Grohl taking people to task whenever they weren’t delivering, like when he talked about being embarrassed watching anything with Brad Pitt in it during the 1990s.
If there was one Achilles heel that Grohl had, though, it was a great pop song. There are many people who have gladly talked shit about any other pop act on the charts during whatever decade they were in, but while ‘Gangnam Style’ by Psy was already a strange choice from Grohl when talking about his favourite tunes from the 2010s, he was definitely a Spice Girls convert when he heard the tune ‘2 Become 1’.
For any other rock act, this would be considered the antithesis of music, but Grohl was asked to name a “cheesy” song that he loves, he was so moved by the ballad that he actually considered covering it, saying, “‘2 Become 1’ by the Spice Girls. I just pulled that off the top of my head. That’s amazing! I can’t believe that came out of my mouth. [Sings] ‘When two become one…’ I might have to do an acoustic version.”
While it’s hard at any point to tell whether Grohl is joking half the time, it’s not like the tune is that far off from the kind of tunes that he loved back in the day. This was the kind of guy that would listen to AM Gold radio hits as much as he did Slayer, and since he has made an EP’s worth of Bee Gees cover songs and weep like a baby while listening to ABBA’s comeback, what’s stopping Grohl from spicing up the Foos’ discography?
It wouldn’t be the first thing that everyone would think of, but given his track record, it’s not like the song would be a trainwreck right off the bat or anything. Grohl was a master arranger when it comes to those kinds of songs, and if he managed to get away with making a rock and roll version of Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, there shouldn’t be anything stopping him from throwing Spice Girls into his regular cover rotation.
