“Everlong” by Foo Fighters

"Everlong" was the second single from The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters' second album, released on Capitol in 1997, and it's Dave Grohl's show from top to bottom. He wrote the music and the words, sings lead, plays guitar alongside Pat Smear, and gets behind the kit too, pounding the drums with a manic urgency that keeps the song sprinting.

Nate Mendel's bass locks everything down, and Gil Norton's production keeps the guitars dense and buzzing while the melody soars over the top. Chris Sheldon mixed it, and Bradley Cook and Geoff Turner engineered and recorded it. The result is all rushing chords and yearning vocals, tender and ferocious in the same breath.

It reached number 3 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and on Canada's RPM Rock/Alternative chart, and it's often called the band's signature song. It carries extra weight now: it was the last song drummer Taylor Hawkins played live before his death in March 2022, and the small surge of interest that followed put Foo Fighters on the Billboard Global 200 for the first time, at number 123. Rolling Stone ranked it 409th on its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs.

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