Case Study: Foo Fighters

About The Band

Foo Fighters is an American rock band started by musician and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. The band was formed in 1994. The band's name comes from a term used in World War II about strange sky objects (UFOs).

The band, who have achieved a world-wide following, have won many awards for their music, and have released seven studio albums and twenty-eight singles. Foo Fighters have won eleven Grammy Awards. The current members of the band are Dave Grohl (singer), Nate Mendel (bass guitar), Taylor Hawkins (drums) and Pat Smear (guitar).

Andrew Goodwin sub-genres

Andrew Goodwin's theory that each sub-genre of music has it's own conventions can be applied here as all these video's, although completely different in style, manage to include a band performance in the video, a convention of music videos in the rock genre. 

Best of You

The music video amplifies the lyrics because the lyrics could be used for a love song and feature a man and woman having struggles with their relationship but instead has a narrative style where it has images of birth and death, love and hate and order and chaos, symbolised by the montage of children, fire, predators attacking prey and more. The style of the music video is also performance based a convention for the rock music genre.

Long Road To Ruin

This video is a parody on soap operas but also has a narrative style with a love story about the main actor of the soap opera becoming a rock star but losing all his friends in the process and there is also a little bit of a performance in the video as well.  The video illustrates the lyric with the main lyric "long road to ruin," being represented with Dave Grohls character literally driving than the road and eventually off a cliff but also the video shows that his increased popularity and his decrease in friends has been a 'long road,' that has been 'ruined.'

Run

'Run' is a narrative and performance based video that amplifies the lyrics with an over the top and dramatic video. The lyrics 'Wake Up. Run for your life with me,' could be applied to nearly anything but Foo Fighters decided to make it about how old people are treated like children even though ,if they weren't stuck in a home, they could do anything they wanted to. It also could be seen as a representation of how the Foo Fighters have had a longer lifespan that the average band which has caused critics to say they are "too old," but with this video the Foo Fighters are rejecting this and even combating the younger artists at the end of the video.

The Pretender

Lastly, this video is a performance based video that amplifies the lyrics of the song. The video shows the band being defiant by a growing group of a military force. Eventually Foo Fighters use the wall to combat the opposing group as it burst out with a red liquid. The lyrics "What if I say I'm not like the others?" is amplified by the video when looking at the video as representing the band taking a stand against police brutality.