“Best of You” by Foo Fighters

"Best of You" was the lead single from In Your Honor, the Foo Fighters' fifth studio album, in 2005. Dave Grohl wrote it after turning up on John Kerry's campaign trail during the 2004 presidential race, and by his account it's a song about breaking free of whatever holds you back. The writing credit goes to the whole band: Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett.

It starts as a tense, coiled strum and builds and builds until Grohl is shredding his throat on the chorus, the kind of full-body howl that sounds like it costs him something every time. Nick Raskulinecz co-produced it with the band and mixed it, with Mike Terry engineering, and they let the guitars pile up into a wall.

It became the band's highest-charting single in the US at number 18, in the UK at number four and in Australia at number five, and it sat atop Billboard's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks for four weeks and Hot Modern Rock Tracks for seven. It won the Kerrang! Award for Best Single and drew Grammy nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. After the band played it at Live Earth it charted again in the UK, and in 2023 Billboard ranked it 91st among the 100 most successful songs in the history of its alternative chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.