The song “Everlong” by the foo fighters was written by Dave Grohl and produced by Gil Norton.“Everlong” was the second single released as part of the foo fighters’ album “The Colour and the Shape”; it peaked at 3rd place on the US Alternative Songs billboard in 1997 and went on to achieve a double platinum certification in the US. The song was written during the break-up Grohl’s first marriage. I like this song because the lyrics are touching, and when I listen to it while I’m sad it gives me hope that things will eventually get better. In this blog post I’m going to discuss five musical elements of this song: lyrics, timbre, texture, meter, and tempo.
Lyrics:
(Like in my previous post, I’m including a link to the lyrics below in order to avoid cluttering the post.)
https://genius.com/Foo-fighters-everlong-lyrics
The first musical element that we’ll discuss is the lyrics and the story they tell. To me, the lyrics in this song clearly tell a story of being in love and hoping that the moment will never end. This is corroberated by the song writer Dave Grohl himself who once said “That song’s about a that I’d fallen in love with and it was basically about being connected to someone so much, that not only do you love them physically and spiritually, but when you sing along with them you harmonize perfectly.”
Timbre:
A song’s timbre is the quality or characteristic of a piece of music’s sound. I personally think that this song’s sound has a rolling feel that continues the same for the entire song. I think that this consistency is especially important because the song is about wishing for a single moment and feeling to last forever.
Texture:
A piece of music’s texture is how many different parts (melody, harmony, etc.) the music has and how they fit together. For example, “Everlong” has a clearly homophonic texture where there is a single melody (the vocals in this case) supported by a background harmony (heard here as the instruments). Homophonic texture is often used in rock music.
Meter:
In music, meter is the term used to describe how beats are organised in a song. After listening to the song and referencing some online sources it is clear that “Everlong”uses 4/4 time. This time signature appears often in music today, so much so in fact that it has earned the nickname “common time”.
Tempo:
A song’s tempo is the speed of the beats in a song, it is oftem tracked in beats per minute or bpm for short. When looking online there appears to be a little bit of variation in what tempo people think this song has (between 152bpm and 158bpm) but 158bpm seems to be the most common answer. The tempo, just like the other elements of this song, appears to remain consistent throughout the song.
Sources:
Explorations in Music 
To add to your comment on the ‘rolling’ feeling through the song; I think its is because all of the instruments are being played in a fast tempo and there are little breaks between. I like how you connected that element to the meaning of the lyrics.This song makes really good use of dynamics. The verses are played at a base level of sound but then it gets much louder during the chorus which I think really emphasizes the meaning of the lyrics. And after the chorus it gets really soft then loud again, a nice contrast.
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Hi, what an awesome song to choose. I am a huge fan of the Foo Fighter’s as well. When it comes to this song, I can relate to how it makes you feel because I feel the same. This song does give me hope when I think of a bad break up and it does have an uplifting component. The way you broke down the musical elements was right on point. The tempo of this song is phenomenal! The tempo and the lyrics stuck out most to me. When I am feeling down, sometimes I like a fast paced, up beat song that I can just rock out to! One element that could have been added is harmony. The harmony in this song wasn’t broken up or hard to follow. As long as I could follow the beat and tempo, I could follow the harmony. Due to this song being interestingly put together, the harmony of it is quite interesting. Great song!!
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Love your choice for this assignment, Foo Fighters are one of my favorite bands and I love their music.
I had never really thought much about the timbre of this song, of course this class is teaching us these things so it’s fitting, and I agree that it has a rolling timbre that stays fairly consistent which works with the theme of the song and wanting a moment to last forever. This is a fun song and is fairly fast tempo-ed, which I find to be fairly true for a lot of their songs, which might be why they’ve continued to be one of my favorite bands to listen to.
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