Weekly Poll: Favorite Foo Fighters Album • Page 2

Have their been murmurs of them recording? I kind of got the sense they were going to be on hiatus for awhile.

 

their longest gap has been five years between albums. which will be met next year. i just doubt they go longer than that. idk.

they also aren’t notorious for telling us what they’re doing haha. they’re the band that gets meme’d for surprising you with an album on your phone.

 

Looks like there’s an interview with Adam Clayton from last year where he said they’d written some songs but hadn’t recorded much yet. He also talked about the chances of an Achtung Baby 30-year tour, which seems unlikely given the state of the world!

 

I think with Foo Fighters having ties to Nirvana, Alanis Morrisette, Scream, Sunny Day Real Estate, Me First and The Gimmie Gimmies, Wallflowers, No Use For A Name, Queens of the Stone Age and a ton more projects and well known artists I would put them ahead. They are a stylistically arena rock band and they’ve maintained popularity.

Before them I would have said U2, then briefly Nirvana. I never would of thought Coldplay currently, but I guess they are pretty huge too. Maybe in the UK Coldplay wins that.

I guess I view the mainstream heavy metal view of heavy metal rock having AC/DC, and then Metallica who still haven’t been dethroned I don’t think.

I also don’t trust streaming or Spotify numbers when it comes to older genres of music because heavy mainstream music because people still buy that stuff as physical copies. Maybe that’s short sighted, but the Foo Fighters and Metallica fans I know travel to see those bands and consume everything. Playing your physical copies or purchased downloads don’t add to streaming numbers.

Foo Fighters even had to make a video once to release to their fans that they are not breaking up (which a funny video). To me, that’s how you know your big. Also, music legends want Dave to play with them (Prince, Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Tom Iommi, on and on). Foo’s a re just huge.

Like I said, I am a fan at a distance now, but my level of respect for the band and interest in them is still quite high conserving how little I listen to their music.

 

the streaming argument for older artists is fair but it also applies to all of the artists i mentioned, who have more streaming numbers than the foo fighters

 

I don’t have a paid streaming subscription either. I’ll sample and streaming off sites like YouTube and bandcamp. I guess it can be actually hard to tell. I do know some artists that have huge streaming numbers I have never heard of. When approaching popularity, I am kind of using traditional methods.

 

the traditional methods of the charts include streaming numbers in their “sales” now. streaming has become as traditional as it gets.

metallica is one of the few rock bands that is still a reliant bet to sell an album platinum numbers relatively shortly after release, while touring pretty constantly. they’re definitely bigger.

i prefer foo fighters. it’s fine. but there are definitely bigger bands out there right now.

 

Looking at highest grossing concert tours is honestly a pretty good metric. Leaving aside Ed Sheeran at the top, who is helped to that rank by the sheer number of shows he played on his last tour, the top 10 includes U2, Guns N Roses, The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Roger Waters, AC/DC, and Metallica. Not sure where the Foos would land (they aren't in the top 20), but I think that's a fair showing that they aren't quite on the same level globally as a few other bands. There are arguments for how "active" a few of those are, but it's still a good measure of global reach and popularity.

List of highest-grossing concert tours - Wikipedia

 

I guess I am just talking about general popularity for “rock”. Not sales and more general familiarity.

I would say Metallica for “metal” which I don’t even personally feel it should be described as.

They are just so well known. Not sure about venue sales or streams. Just knowledge of the band by the general public. People know about these bands whether they want to or no. Also good branding helps.

 

the genre distinction is pretty arbitrary. listening to something like run or white limo, there isn’t much difference between that and post black album metallica

 

Agreed, Metallica has been rock since 1991

 

You guys are far more informed than the general population though haha.

 

i don’t think the general public knows enough recent material from either band to have a care/thought about any of this, or who the biggest bands in the world are haha

 

Interesting to read through this conversation because it's definitely something I've mulled over before. Always figured Green Day would be up there as well in terms of biggest modern rock bands. The Killers, maybe, but maybe also not so much after Day & Age/Battle Born eras.

 

killers are a good shout up there with tame impala as far as modern bands go

 

Green Day were definitely in that stratosphere 2004-2010ish. Probably not anymore.

 

Kings of Leon could probably be included in the conversation, at least during that 2009-2012 stretch. I guess they're not really up there anymore.

 

I think some longevity at or near the top is required. That’s just me though. Arcade Fire, fun, Pearl Jam, Bush, The Strokes, The Offspring, Rage Against The Machine...so many bands that are/were huge but could dethrone Foo Fighters and Metallica in terms of biggest band. Coldplay and Green Day are both huge acts too.

 

there are several bands that have had moments. i think the point of the person originally mentioning foo fighters, which is fair, is that they haven’t waned that much over ... 25 years

 

also i love the strokes but their popularity at its absolute apex was never a quarter of foo fighters or metallica in a down year cmon lol

 

The popularity of The Strokes tends to be overstated in retrospect, just because they were such critical darlings. My favorite part of Meet Me in the Bathroom is when they are wondering why their songs were never hits on the level of "Mr. Brightside."

 

No mention of RHCP, huh

 

And no mention of Soundgarden, Linkin’ Park, or Nickelback (sorry, they were big).

When I say U2 was probably the biggest rock band before, that doesn’t mean other hugely successful bands like Aerosmith weren’t huge either in terms of popularity. Nothing wrong with being anywhere near the top in an era.

I know people had The Beatles and The Rolling Stones split pretty evenly, our opinions aside.

 

Probably a fair argument that RHCP had the belt in like ‘06/‘07 and lost it to Coldplay in ‘08. They definitely haven’t been anywhere near that level since, though.

Linkin Park were probably the biggest rock band of the 2000s, if we’re being honest. At least the early 2000s.

 

Limp Bizkuit had like a year and half to two year run of being hugely popular. Glad that didn’t last.