Foo Fighters - GreatestHits

Wed 16th Dec, 2009 in Music Reviews

There’s probably no band out there more deserving of a greatest hits collection than the Foo Fighters, but possibly also no band where a best-of feels so superfluous. It doesn’t help that the band’s sophomore album The Colour And The Shape is a seminal classic – or that every one of the band’s singles (most of which are on this album) were so radio-heavy that anyone even remotely interested in the Fighters has probably heard them to death. However, if you were interested in the Foos, but never enough to go out and buy any of the albums, this is the package you’ve been not-too-eagerly waiting for.

With a past as rich and varied as the Foo Fighters’, there was a chance here to showcase some of the lesser-known, but often better, tracks from their six studio albums. Instead, the album takes the easy way out, collecting all your favourite Foo Fighters singles and mashing them together into one radio-friendly mix tape. The album also could have done with being in chronological order, to show the evolution of the Foos as we know them, but instead it jumps around all over the place, mixing early and late-period singles like there’s no difference between them – which is rarely true, if ever.

Of course, considered as standalone songs, these singles are pretty damn fantastic. Everlong and My Hero were probably some of the weirdest songs to be considered mainstream rock in 1997, while Breakout, All My Life and The Pretender sees them at their thrashing, moshpit best, even if the albums they came from weren’t always able to maintain that frenetic mood. The drums drive and the guitars pound, even on weaker tracks like Learn To Fly and Long Road To Ruin, and the inclusion of early songs Big Me and This Is A Call shows how far they’ve come from the DIY-aesthetic of their debut.

One way to judge a best-of is by the inevitable inclusion of the new songs, and here the Foos have let themselves down. There are two new songs ( Wheels and Word Forward ), as well as an acoustic version of Everlong, which would be new to most, but old to anyone who heard it place in the top ten of Triple J’s hottest 100. But both of them are the most radio-friendly generic rock the band has ever produced, and that’s saying something. Neither of them adds anything to the band’s career catalogue, and should probably have been left behind.

In the iTunes/Amazon/MP3 age, the concept of the greatest hits album should be a thing of the past – when listeners can sample and compile their own favourite tracks into a best-of, why would they pay a record label to do it for them? Reports are that Dave Grohl wasn’t happy with the release – he thinks that not only should a best-of come at the end of band’s career, but that the tracks selected are not the band’s best, and there are a few key tracks missing. RCA should have listened to him. Chalk this one down as a good listen, and a missed opportunity.

Foo Fighters: Greatest Hits is out now on Sony Music.