Foo Fighters is one of the most prominent alternative rock bands of recent years, and despite being said to have risen from the ashes of Nirvana, they have achieved success on their own merit and continue to be one of the most influential and beloved groups.
Their leader is Dave Grohl, the former drummer of Nirvana, another of the most remembered bands and a hallmark of grunge and hard rock.
Dave Grohl has been trending in recent hours for publicly confessing that he was unfaithful to his wife, Jordyn Blum, and as a consequence, he had a daughter outside of marriage who was recently born.
But at Radiónica, we want to remember the funny anecdote behind the day that Dave Grohl discovered reggaeton, an urban genre that is among the most consumed today.
It was 2017 when Foo Fighters was releasing Concrete and Gold, their ninth studio album. The album was planned to showcase a fusion between hard rock and pop, with the band’s characteristic experimental touch. However, in one song, they may have gone a bit too experimental and alternative.
“Run” was the first single from the album to be released. It is a hard rock song that becomes more intense as the seconds pass. At some point, the song reaches its peak where the eclectic guitar and drums kick in with a rhythm that sounds very familiar today.
Dave confessed in an interview with the newspaper El País that he didn’t know what reggaeton was. He made the song, added the late Taylor Hawkins‘s drums, and thought he had discovered “the best rhythm in the world.” When they showed it to producer Greg Kurstin, he told them “Oh, it’s a reggaeton beat.”
Dave asked what reggaeton was, and they showed him several songs that used the same rhythm but slower. “Then I realized that all of Justin Bieber’s songs have it, and I thought ‘oh, no’,” he shared in the interview with a comically disappointed face.
Taylor Hawkins added: “I think it’s great. It’s pretty funny that we’ve taken the most popular rhythm right now, unknowingly, and made a song with it.”
Despite this, the song was very well received by both the public and critics. So much so that it received two nominations for the Grammy Awards, one for Best Rock Song and another for Best Rock Performance.
Its music video is also fun, featuring the band members disguised as elderly people in a sort of nursing home from which, at a moment of revelation, they decide to escape, running and leaving chaos in their wake.