Foo Fighters Return With ‘Medicine At Miidnight’ Today

Out today (February 5th) is the Foo Fighters' 10th album, the eagerly anticipated, Medicine At Midnight. The album marks the Foos' first new studio set since 2017's chart-topping Concrete And Gold — which was also co-produced by Greg Kurstin. Dave Grohl's 14-year-old daughter Violet supplies backing vocals on the album's opening track, “Making A Fire.”

During a chat with USA Today, Dave Grohl explained that due to the pandemic, the release date of Medicine At Midnight suddenly took a more important role than any of the past albums had: “There was this series of conversations like, 'Should we do it now?' 'It's not a good time.' 'What about now?' 'No, no.'. . . Everyone realized that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. We made these songs to share and it's time to share them.”

Drummer Taylor Hawkins shed light on the musical variety on the new album, explaining, “It's almost like two records in one. You've got your disco, dance-y, groove-oriented album, and then other half is pretty traditional Foo Fighters rock music. So if you don't like the dance-y bits, just fast forward.”

Dave Grohl went on to say that pushing the musical landscape this time out seemed appropriate, admitting, “It was entirely intentional. Knowing that 2020 would be our 25th anniversary and this was our 10th album, I decided the best way to celebrate would be with groove. What a bummer if we made some orchestrated acoustic dirge to celebrate our retirement. That's not how I roll. I'm the last guy at the bar every night. So I wanted this to be the soundtrack to that. We all grew up loving Sly & The Family Stone, (Jimi) Hendrix, Steely Dan, David Bowie, and rock n' roll that makes you want to move. This is the album you do the Molly Ringwald (Breakfast Club) dance to.”

When we last caught up to him, Taylor Hawkins said the band is always game for whatever idea Grohl throws at them next: “The reaction when Dave comes to us with any idea is like, 'Okay.' Y'know, I know Dave and he has a lot of ideas. He's always thinking and he's always coming up with ideas, whether it's a funny T-shirt or an HBO series. He's creative and he likes to do stuff. He likes projects. He likes to work. And so whenever he says something that he wants to do, I say 'Hell, yeah.'”

Dave Grohl told us a while back that after a quarter century, he finds the Foos' continuing success mystifying: “I don't know what it is, but it just keeps on getting better, y'know? And as it all sort of grows and changes, we look at each other every time something happens, like a Grammy nomination or a big show selling out, we look at each other and we're like, 'Can you believe that? Isn't that nuts?' 'Cause we don't feel any different, y'know?”

Taylor Hawkins explained that Foo Fighters are actually bigger in other territories across the globe: “As a band, we've always actually been a little bit bigger outside of America. England, we do really well and Australia we do really well and a lot of parts of Europe we do well. And we do well in America, but mainly in the big cities, you know. We're not huge necessarily in the Midwest and places like that because, frankly, America's big.”