“Times Like These” by Foo Fighters

"Times Like These" sits fourth on One by One, the Foo Fighters' 2002 album, and it came out as the record's second single in 2003. It was born in a bad patch. The first sessions for the album went tense and sour, the band stepped away for three months, and Dave Grohl spent that stretch feeling like a stranger to himself and wondering whether the Foos had a future at all. The song is about that uncertainty, and one line tips its hat to Hüsker Dü's New Day Rising, the work of one of Grohl's favorite bands.

Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett share the writing credit and co-produced it with Nick Raskulinecz, who also engineered. Grohl sings and plays electric guitar alongside Shiflett, Mendel plays bass, Hawkins handles drums and percussion, and Jim Scott and Bob Ludwig are credited on the mix.

Under the hood it's craftier than it sounds. It's in D Mixolydian and runs at 145 BPM, the intro lurches between bars of 8/4 and 7/4, and the chorus is grouped in threes instead of fours, which is why that restless guitar figure keeps tripping over its own feet before the chorus throws the windows open. After the band version ran its course, Grohl released a solo acoustic take that found friends on pop and adult contemporary radio.

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