Foo Fighters: Rank the albums

Will someone give that man some bloody rope. Ahhh yeh, its another generic ranking list of a Stadium Rock band that many people love and many people also hate due to their undisputed popularity. Dave Grohl’s band are just about as famous as chips, so I’m ranking their 7 studio albums from least best to best. George Best. He’s my favourite Best.

7) One By One 

(2002)

Don’t let the fact that it contains one of their best songs, All My life, deceive you into believing this albums a corker; it is actually by far their weakest record. It would have been a lot better if they had just released the first 4 songs on the album as an E.P.; songs such as Burn Away and Halo are so tame and weightless it’s a huge surprise Grohl even allowed for them to be released, and the album as a whole lacks the drive that all the other Foo Fighters albums seem to have. As Grohl put it himself, “four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life”.

6) In Your Honor 

(2005)

Can you hear me? Hear me screaming? Yes we can hear you screaming Dave. The opening lyrics of this double album give you a very good impression of what the first half is going to sound like: heavy, loud, brash, in deep contrast to the second half, which contains soft, melodic acoustic numbers. The acoustic side is a lot better than the heavier one; What If I Do?, Friend of a Friend, and Virginia Moon are just lovely, and there’s a lot more consistency in the mellow tracks than there is in the heavy ones, which largely sound like a Grohl being locked in a room for an hour whilst suffering from an extreme mental breakdown. Of course the epic Best of You will always be the song that motivates you to run up that steep hill at the end of your weekly run, Resolve is a decent tune and In Your Honour is a cracking opening track, but for the only time in a Foo Fighters album, the weakness is the heavy tunes.

5) Foo Fighers 

(1995)

Whilst in Nirvana Grohl held back loads of material he wrote because he didn’t want to interfere with the Cobain-led songwriting dynamic. After Cobain died Davey G tried to release this album anonymously, but inevitably the excitement of the Nirvana drummer releasing an album on which he played all the instruments and sang on caught the Rock world’s attention and everybody found out it was him. Ok it wasn’t exactly George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, but it was a decent first go by Grohl, Good Grief, Exhausted and I’ll Stick Around particular highlights, but some of the songs clearly aren’t that serious and some of the track changing is bordering on ridiculous, particularly following the intensely aggressive and heavy song Oh, George with the mellow country bluesy song For All the Cows. But for a guy sitting in a record studio and writing and recording his own songs in a non-serious way for the first time, its not a bad album at all.

4) Wasting Light 

(2011)

Yeh lets go and record this album in my garage said Dave. Lets not use computers said Dave. Lets have 3 guitarists on this album said Dave. God Dave’s so demanding. Many could have been sceptical about Grohl’s methods in the lead up to this album, but their heaviest album yet was actually pretty darn decent. Fierce, hard-hitting and loud, this album is everything that the heavy side of In Your Honour isn’t; consistent. From the opening track Bridge Burning, you know what you’re going to get, fast paced drums, a barrage of guitars and Grohls loud wailing. The album is successful in that even though it sticks with purely head bangers throughout, it still manages to harness an emotional side, reflecting on life and death, and tracks such as I Should Have Known, (a track with hints about Grohl's feelings concerning Cobain), Walk, and These Days are particular highlights, and if you've ever had a bad day, put White Limo on very loud, and you may just feel a little better. It may just be one of the heaviest best sellers of all time- and you can only respect Grohl’s ‘nothing left to lose’ (sorry) approach to the recording of Wasting Light.

3) Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace

 (2007)

Ohhh controversial. I say this as the typical Foo Fighters nerd doesn’t always seem to rank this album too highly, but I think its brilliant. The reason I think the album is so successful is rather than bluntly separating the heavy and softer songs of their previous album In Your Honor, it this time married them into a perfect harmony, and resulted in some spectacular songs such as Let It Die and Come Alive, which both perfectly build up tension by starting off slight and melodic and until by the end have exploded into extreme head nodding territory. The softer songs are even better than the ones on In Your Honour- the dark but also beautiful Stranger Things Have Happened, the emotional piano led Home and the infectious and blissful Statues. It of course contains the obligatory lead single that all Foo Fighters albums seem to have Pretender, a goose bump hair raising rock yarn, and despite the un-catchy and un-memorably long album name, this album has the heart that was lacking on some of their previous albums, and this is as rounded a Foo Fighters as you’re going to get.

2) There is Nothing Left To Lose

 (1999)

Someone gave Mr Grohl a guitars effects pedal for this album, and it worked absolute wonders. Their most Pop-Rock album, There is Nothing Left to Lose was a departure from their previous work- softer vocals, more melodies, and guitar effects absolutely everywhere. But it was brilliant. Grohl’s force as a song-writer is probably most strongest in this album, taking a more relaxed, easy-going, laid-back type approach, but with great effect, producing songs that are nice and easy on the ears, particularly Learn To Fly (easily their best video too), Generator (where Grohl had to sing with a tube in his mouth), the stunningly blissful Ain’t It the Life, and the incredibly epic Aurora, a melancholic and graceful tune which slowly builds up to an epic drum and guitar duel. The head bangers are few and far between, but the ones that are there are impressive and involve the first track Stacked Dead Actors, an enjoyably aggressive and angry anti-Hollywood song (many believe the song is also about Courtney Love) and last track M.I.A., and first single Breakout. Taylor Hawkins first album on the tin cans is remarkably impressive; if Dave Grohl was going to give up playing the skins on his albums he would have to be replaced by someone with extraordinary talent, and luckily Hawkins drums are epic, with Snare solo’s absolutely everywhere. This was the first album where it wasn’t Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters playing Dave’s songs; they were the band Foo Fighters playing Foo Fighters songs. The result is absolutely marvellous, a memorable piece of melodic Pop-Rock, a blissful piece of work that is one of the finest showcases as to why they are one of the biggest and most popular bands in the world.

 1) The Colour and the Shape 

(1997)

This was tough; it was incredibly hard to adjudicate whether this was better than There Is Nothing Left To Loose or not. But I think what just about tips this album over the edge is the quality of certain individual songs which have made the Foo Fighters name. Although There is Nothing Left To Loose may be more consistent, it is the pleasant black sheep, the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service of the Foo Fighters discography, and The Colour and the Shape is what most fans would want from a Foo Fighters album, containing several of their best songs. Lets go from the start. Grohl ropes you in with a tepid and slow song Doll, and just when you think ‘hang on, are we about to be listening to an easy-listening quiet album’ BAM Monkey Wrench picks you up and throws you against the wall, and the album is off and running. The album has several highlights, and defines the bands effective soft-to-loud formula, with the classic and beautiful Everlong, probably their best song ever written, being an archetype of this formula. My Hero is a thudding and emotive tribute to the ordinary man, February Stars showcases Grohl’s talent as a singer for the first time, and New Way Home is in my opinion one of the best album closers I’ve ever heard, with Grohl letting us know in no uncertain terms that he’s not scared anymore. See You and Walking After You are impressive pop songs showing Foo Fighters weren’t all about the screaming. The album was such a unique and impressive collection of songs, and one which many young Rock fans often look to when they are learning of and getting into Rock Music. The album showed Grohl had a heart and decent vocals, and that all in all rather than just being ‘the drummer from Nirvana’ Grohl had now defined himself as a respected song-writer and front man.