Hot on the heels of “No Son of Mine”, FOO FIGHTERS have unleashed another dose of “Medicine At Midnight” in the form of “Waiting On A War”. In stark contrast to the bludgeoning “final f*ck you to 2020” (UPROXX) of its predecessor, “Waiting On A War” is a sprawling melodic opus that gradually builds to a patented FF rave-up.
If “Waiting On A War” seems to have an especially emotional heft to its lyrics, well, that’s because it does. Dave Grohl recounts the personal anecdote that inspired the song: “Last fall, as I was driving my daughter to school, she turned to me and asked, ‘Daddy, is there going to be a war?’ My heart sank as I realized that she was now living under the same dark cloud that I had felt 40 years ago.
“I wrote ‘Waiting On A War’ that day.
“Every day waiting for the sky to fall. Is there more to this than that? Is there more to this than just waiting on a war? Because I need more. We all do.
“This song was written for my daughter, Harper, who deserves a future, just as every child does.”
Celebrate Grohl‘s birthday tonight (Thursday, January 14) with FOO FIGHTERS‘ network TV debut performance of “Waiting On A War” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“Medicine At Midnight” will be released on February 5 via Roswell Records/RCA Records. The nine-song, 37-minute effort was produced by the FOO FIGHTERS and Greg Kurstin.
“Medicine At Midnight” track listing:
01. Making A Fire
02. Shame Shame
03. Cloudspotter
04. Waiting On A War
05. Medicine At Midnight
06. No Son Of Mine
07. Holding Poison
08. Chasing Birds
09. Love Dies Young
The first single from the disc, “Shame Shame”, was released in November. An accompanying music video for the song was directed by Paola Kudacki and co-stars Grohl and Sofia Boutella. “Shame Shame” renders in stunning black and white an interpretation of a recurring dream that’s haunted Grohl since his childhood days.
Grohl told SiriusXM‘s Alt Nation about the “Medicine At Midnight” musical approach: “It’s our 10th album, and it’s our 25th anniversary. We’re. like, okay, let’s look back at all the stuff that we’ve done before. We’ve made that loud sort of noisy punk rock fast stuff. We’ve made the sleepy acoustic kind of gentle acoustic record stuff. We’ve done the three- or four-minute-long bubblegum rock and roll, pop, single thing before. And it was, like, well, what haven’t we done? And we had never really made a groove-oriented sort of party record.
“It’s hard to put the words ‘dance’ or ‘funk’ or ‘disco’ in the same sentence as the FOO FIGHTERS; it scares the shit out of me,” Dave admitted. “But all of us grew up loving rock and roll records that you could like bounce around to, like THE CARS. Like, oh my God, we love THE CARS. Or David Bowie‘s ‘Let’s Dance’. Or POWER STATION. Or THE [ROLLING] STONES‘ ‘Tattoo You’ — things like that. We’re, like, ‘All right. We’ve never really explored that territory before. Let’s do it.
“We’re lucky in that everybody in the band has diverse influences and everybody loves different kinds of music, but I honestly think we’re capable of doing almost anything,” he said. “So if we put our minds to it, we can kind of chameleon and turn into a death metal band, or we could be like THE CARPENTERS. So we just have to come together and make the decision, like, ‘All right, which way do we wanna go? Which way are we gonna turn the wheel?’ And this time we did it to make this party record.”
Photo credit: Danny Clinch
