“My Hero” by Foo Fighters

"My Hero" is the anthem at the heart of The Colour and the Shape, the Foo Fighters' second album, released on Capitol in 1997, and it went out as the record's third single in January 1998. Gil Norton produced it and Chris Sheldon mixed it, and together they gave the band a sound as big as a stadium without sanding off the grit.

Dave Grohl does a lot of heavy lifting here: he sings lead, plays guitar alongside Pat Smear, and pounds the drums himself, and you can hear it in the way the song builds, a tense, rumbling verse that tumbles into a chorus hit so hard it sounds like the kit might split. Nate Mendel holds the bottom end, and the songwriting credit goes to Grohl, Mendel and Smear.

Grohl has described the song as a tribute to ordinary heroes, and that's the key to its pull: it's not about rock gods or saviors, it's about the regular people you actually look up to. It peaked at number six on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart, but its real life is on stage, where it has turned into a Foo Fighters classic and a fixture of the band's concerts.

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