Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDXXVIII--Foo Fighters: Next Year

After I left the music business, I spent two years trying to make a living as a freelance writer, failed miserably, ended up dead broke, and moved back in with my Mom to avoid starvation.  It also meant I had to leave my beloved St. Louis for a not so beloved Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Eventually I got a job with KMart, and a few months into my tenure I was asked where I'd be willing to move.  I was told the best answer was anywhere, so I put anywhere with the secret hope I'd miraculously end up back in St. Louis. Somewhere in the midst of these changes, this week's tune was released, and it reminded me (though the song itself had absolutely nothing to do with my situation) every time I heard it about my desire to get back home.  Alas, I never got back, but life, as it often does, had a funny way of working out.  And yet still, our song of the week holds a special place in my heart....

I wrote about the Foo Fighters in November of 2020, so I'll just update their bio this week.  On the bright side, the band released another album, won four more Grammys, played at President Biden's inauguration, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  On the sad side, their long time drummer Taylor Hawkins passed away last year.  The band continues on, however, and might I add that their contribution to music over the past twenty-five years has been quite impressive. 

"Next Year" was the fifth and final single released from their 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose.  The single, though it received a decent amount of airplay, did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100.  The album, however, reached the top ten, and won a Grammy for Rock Album of the Year.

Fun Fact:  Of this week's tune, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl said, "Next Year is a piece of shit!  That song is so stupid.  It's weird."  Contrary to Grohl's assertion, my weekly half-assed research has shown that the song is a solid favorite of the band's countless fans, myself included.

One of the reviews of "Next Year" compared it favorably to Oasis' hit "Wonderwall" (I like the song but that's a bit of a stretch) but noted that the Foo Fighters at their best owed a lot to Brit Pop...which I thought a spot-on observation.  The music is sticky sweet pop, Grohl's vocals capture all its sticky sweetness, and the band, from the jangly guitars to Taylor Hawkins drumming (which seemed to take on a life of its own in my listening this week), wraps itself around the stick sweetness and it all makes for a dandy piece of pop pie.  Grohl has said the song is about an Air Force pilot thinking about going home after his tour of duty, all the while without knowing if he will get home because of the inherent danger of his missions.  In the end, it's a song about going home, and that's a sentiment most of us have, and can relate to, every day (albeit considerably more safely than the pilot).

Lyric Sheet:  "I'm in the sky tonight/There I can keep by your side/Watching the whole world wind around/I'll be coming home next year..."

Enjoy (Note that there's an album version and a shorter version that was released as the single--even though I'm more familiar with the single version, after hearing both I liked the extra minute and decided to feature the longer one.):

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCVII--Foo Fighters: Big Me

 This week's featured tune is brought to you by the caramel industry...because it's a gooey and sugary sweet slice of pop music.

The Foo Fighters began in 1994 when Dave Grohl of Nirvana fame went into the studio to record some of his own tunes as a way of reconciling with Kurt Cobain's suicide and the end of Nirvana.  Grohl recorded an album's worth of material, playing all of the instruments himself, and after the sessions, handed out cassette copies to friends and acquaintances to see what they thought of his solo project...and shortly thereafter got a record deal.  Grohl had to hire a band to tour, and the Foo Fighters have now been recording and touring for twenty-six years.  Impressively, four of the five band members have been in the group for twenty-three years or more, and the fifth has been an on again/off again member since the beginning.  Over their career, the Foo Fighters have released nine studio albums (with two of them reaching #1 on the album chart), and will be releasing a tenth next year.  They've also released 53 singles, with two of them hitting the top twenty.  The Foo Fighters have won 11 Grammys, and have also won an MTV Video Music Award.  Not a bad career for a one off project....

Fun Fact:  A foo fighter is what American World War II pilots called unidentified flying objects.  Dave Grohl later admitted that had he known he would have a career with the band he would have called it another name, saying that "...it's the stupidest fucking band name in the world." (Which is a rather dubious assertion, as it's really not such a bad name for a band)

"Big Me" was the fourth single from their above noted debut album, the oh, so cleverly titled Foo Fighters.  The single was released in 1996, but failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.  The album is the second best selling of their career, and peaked at #23 on the Billboard 200.

"Big Me" was written as a love song for Dave Grohl's then wife (sadly, the song has far outlasted the marriage which ended after three years), and while lyrically it might not match "How Do I Love Thee," musically it's mind-blowing catchy.  Every time I hear it the song will stick in my head for days, but it's so melodically wonderful that I'll be bopping around the house singing it to my heart's content.  The instrumentation is as simple as it gets, guitars (at their jangly best), bass, and Grohl doing his usual drum driving beat.  Grohl's vocals are soothing soft, and accentuate the melody flawlessly.  This one isn't going to change the world, but it's a fine and dandy way to say "I love you."

Lyric Sheet:  Well I talked about it/Put it on/Never was it true/But it's you, I fell into..."

Enjoy:

263,000+ Dead Americans Because of Donald Trump's Incompetence

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXCII--The Postal Service: We Will Become Silhouettes

My introduction to this week's tune was actually an acoustic cover version by the Shins while listening to Pandora at the thrift shop I used to work at a few years back (and come to think of it, listening to Pandora was pretty much the only highlight of that job).  I go back and forth as to which version I prefer depending on my musical tastes at the time, though I eventually decided on the original version for this post out of a sense of fairness to its creators....

Here's the part where I'm supposed to play the cool pop music expert who knew that Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie fame) and Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley fame--both bands I've written about for FNJ) were in The Postal Service...but sadly until I started my half-assed research this weekend I had no clue (or if I did I'd completely forgotten).  Anyhoo, the Postal Service had its beginnings when Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello put a song together for a compilation album, liked what they had done, and began work in earnest on an album of their own which they made via mailing each other music and lyrics (hence, The Postal Service).  The band released its one and only album in 2003, had some success with it, and proceeded to spend the next ten years thinking about a follow-up.  They reunited in 2013 for a reunion tour, and at its end, announced the band was splitting for good.  And that's about as easy of a band history as I've yet written.

Fun Fact:  The label The Postal Service released their one and only album on, Sub Pop, had only one album in its history outsell the Postal Service's LP:  Nirvana's debut album, Bleach.

"We Will Become Silhouettes" was released in 2005 from their one and only album, Give Up.  It would eventually reach #82 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, though it had much greater success in Canada, reaching #3 (so many cool kids in Canada!) on the Canadian charts.

Despite it's rather upbeat music, "We Will Become Silhouettes" is not the happiest of songs--it's subject matter is what becomes of us after a nuclear holocaust.  The narrator tells the tale of being stuck in his home (eerily familiar...) and wanting to go outside but he cannot because if he does the fallout will invade his body until he eventually explodes.  Yeah, happy, happy, joy, joy for a Sunday night.  Still, despite its rather maudlin story, there is a touch of the resilience of the human spirit in it, and I suppose that's enough for me.  Gibbard delivers some fine vocals and the song is amazingly catchy for such a downbeat message.  I'd guess you'd need somewhat of a cockeyed view of the world to appreciate this one.  And to think you saw it all on Friday Night Jukebox....

Lyric Sheet:  "Because the air outside will make our cells/Divide at an alarming rate until our shells/Simply cannot hold all our insides in/And that's when we'll explode (and it won't be a pretty sight)...

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLXXXIX--Nirvana: Lithium

In hindsight, it's quite possible that what we saw in the 90's with the alternative revolution was the end of rock and roll as we know it.  And while there will always be any number of bands and performers who continue the tradition, it's hard to imagine rock and roll ever again being the be all end all of popular music (for better or worse...).  One thing is for certain, though--if Nirvana was the last of a breed, rock and roll went out with a bang and not a whimper.

It would be hard to underestimate just how influential Nirvana was in its rather short lifetime.  They literally were the linchpin of a musical revolution--I worked selling music when their second album exploded and our alternative music section went from maybe six to eight rows of CDs to well over a hundred over the next couple of years.  Though they were only together from 1987 to 1994 and only released three studio albums over the course of their short-lived career, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their initial year of eligibility (2014).  Even more amazing (to me, anyway) is despite their small studio output, they've sold over 75 million records worldwide.  Since their demise, bassist Krist Novoselic has gone on to become quite the political activist, and drummer Dave Grohl went on to quite a bit of success as the front man for the Foo Fighters.  The elephant in the room of all of this, of course, is the death of Nirvana's leader, the man who didn't want to rule the world, Kurt Cobain, by his own hand with a shotgun blast to the head.  It's easy to wonder what might have been, but in the end it's a lot harder to accept what was and that there are no guarantees that whatever output the band may have had had Cobain conquered his many demons, wouldn't have tarnished their legacy. 

Released as the third single from Nevermind, their generation altering 1991 album, "Lithium" would reach #64 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  While the song did not have quite the commercial success of their biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," here in the U.S.A., it did hit number one in Finland--who knew there were so many cool kids in Finland?

The easy choice would obviously be "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but oddly enough it was "Lithium" that turned me into a Nirvana fan.  My kid brother and I were on vacation in L.A. the weekend Cobain died and you couldn't turn on a music station without hearing all Nirvana, all day and all night, and my brother was convinced that Cobain had written the line, "I'm so horny, that's okay, my will is good" for the both of us because we were both single at the time and not having a whole heck of a lot of luck with women.  While my brother was most assuredly wrong, it did get me to listening to the song and despite having questioned whether their work was for people much younger than I (I was all of thirty-five) became a big Nirvana fan.  "Lithium" (supposedly the song is about a man who turns to religion after his girlfriend has died to keep himself from committing suicide) is really your prototypical Nirvana song, alternating between the soft and the hard, with excellent vocals from Cobain, and featuring perhaps more than most of their songs the talents of Novoselic (his bass playing is pretty much the backbone of the soft parts) and Grohl (his drumming is the driving force of the hard parts).  Taken as a whole, I wouldn't be afraid to say it is perhaps Nirvana's best song, though I'm sure plenty of others would disagree.  In the end, it's an existence questioning song from an existence questioning album, and as far as I know, the only song in history whose chorus is the word "Yeah" sung over and over (to excellent effect, I might add).

Lyric Sheet: "Light my candles, in a daze, 'cause I've found God..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee