Everlong (1997)

"Everlong" is a song by American rock band Foo Fighters, released in August 1997 as the second single from their second studio album, The Colour and the Shape (1997). The song reached number 3 on the US Billboard Alternative Songs chart and the Canadian RPM Rock/Alternative chart. It is often regarded as the band's signature song.

"Everlong" was the last song performed live by drummer Taylor Hawkins before his death in March 2022. As a result of his death, the song experienced a minor resurgence and entered the Billboard Global 200 at number 123, the band's first appearance on the chart. In 2021, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song number 409 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Production

In late 1996, Dave Grohl was lodging at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington, recording what was to be the second Foo Fighters album. While playing around with his guitar during downtime between takes of the song "Monkey Wrench" (which is in drop D tuning), he stumbled on a "Sonic Youth rip off" riff, which he felt had the same vibe as one of that band's songs, "Schizophrenia". He took a liking to it and decided to develop it into a song, the band jamming on what became the verse. The song had not progressed beyond this rudimentary draft by the end of those sessions.

Shortly thereafter, around Christmas time, Grohl returned to his residence in Virginia. As he was going through a divorce, he decided to stay at a friend's house, using a sleeping bag on the floor. It was there that he wrote "Everlong" as a proper song, in 45 minutes. The lyrics were inspired by Grohl's ongoing romance with Louise Post of the band Veruca Salt: "That song's about a girl that I'd fallen in love with and it was basically about being connected to someone so much, that not only do you love them physically and spiritually, but when you sing along with them you harmonize perfectly". Grohl recorded a demo of the song soon after, during a visit to a friend's studio in nearby Washington, D.C. He describes the demo, on which he played all the instruments, as being essentially the same as the album version, but "super raw".

Grohl returned to the West Coast to continue work on The Colour and the Shape. He met with producer Gil Norton at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood again, and played the "Everlong" demo for him. Norton was impressed. Soon, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear joined Grohl and Norton, and the group recorded the song. The solo guitar intro was recorded through an Astatic JT40 microphone, which outputs "dull" recordings with "no clarity". Grohl wanted Post to provide vocals. She was in Chicago at the time, however, so her parts (doo doo doos alongside the lead guitar riff, and harmonizing on the chorus) were recorded using two separate telephone lines in the studio, one for her monitor, and the other for recording. Grohl recorded his chorus harmonies through the JT40, which provided vocals at a similar level of fidelity as Post's. For the breakdown, Grohl recorded three spoken word tracks, one telling a story from assistant engineer Ryan Boesch's childhood, of being punished for disturbing his father's sleep, and two others of Grohl reading random passages from a book. The three tracks were planned to be blended together, but only the first was used in the final mix.

Critical reception

"Everlong" is widely regarded as one of Foo Fighters' best songs. In 2020, Kerrang ranked the song number one on their list of the 20 greatest Foo Fighters songs, and in 2021, American Songwriter ranked the song number two on their list of the 10 greatest Foo Fighters songs.

"Everlong" reached one billion streams on Spotify on December 2, 2023, the 55th birthday of the Foo Fighters' bassist, Nate Mendel.

Music video

The surreal, satirical video for "Everlong" was directed by Michel Gondry. It is, in part, a parody of the film The Evil Dead. The version of the song used in the video is longer than the single and album versions.