Foo Fighters the perfect musical guest for an historic SNL
They debuted their new song "Shame Shame"
At the end of a historic day for America, it seemed only fitting that Foo Fighters were the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Before Joe Biden’s eventual presidential victory, 2020 was supposed to be the FOO’s year. If COVID-19 has clouded your memory (but hopefully nothing else), it’s been twenty-five years since Dave Grohl recorded an album where he played all the instruments in addition to singing as his way of dealing with Kurt Cobain’s death. An album that was released on July the 4th, 1995 by the way. Twenty-five years since Grohl assembled a band under the Foo Fighters moniker and crisscrossed North America in a Dodge van.
In that time they’ve arguably become the biggest rock band in the world, let alone their native America. There aren’t many options these days for a group like them to celebrate such a momentous anniversary or promote new material they’ve been sitting on for months while the live music industry has been in quarantine.
Thank goodness for SNL. 2020 being was it is though, the most anticipated show of its 46th season was delayed by almost an hour for a college football game that went into double overtime. But as Notre Dame beat Clemson and the former’s fans swarmed onto the field to create a superspreader event worse than any Trump rally, the FOOs apparently couldn’t wait any longer and dropped new song “Shame Shame”, the lead single from tenth album Medicine at Midnight coming out February 5th.
Less rawkin’ guitars that we know and love from Foo Fighters, more orchestral-sounding plucking with an oh-so hypnotic beat that has “earworm” written all over it. It also ended up being the first song they performed on SNL, and is really unlike anything in their catalogue.
https://youtu.be/Dh_vJ-E337g
We didn’t necessarily get anything from a 25th anniversary perspective for the second appearance, surprisingly. Rather, they chose to do an almost gospel-y intro of “Times Like These” before breaking out into classic FOO rock out mode. It was preceded by an SNL promo shot of the six of them wrapped in an American flag reminiscent of The Who’s The Kids Are Alright cover. Definitely worth staying up the additional hour for, Daylight Savings Time be damned!
