Author’s Note: The following entry was written two months before Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins tragically passed away at the age of 50. Prayers to Taylor and his family; may he rest in peace.

And yet, The Offspring were not the ultimate example of a good band blowing their opportunity to regain their former glory this year. For that, we now turn to Dave Grohl.

“Shame Shame” – Foo Fighters

Alternative
#10 peak (December 19, 2020 – January 9, 2021)
#40 year-end, 17 weeks on chart in 2021

Rock
#1 peak (December 19, 2020 – January 23, 2021)
#6 year-end, 19 weeks on chart in 2021

This entry is not going to be fun to write, because of the pedigree I’m knocking down a pedestal here. Dave Grohl is one of the most iconic rock stars of all time. He is likely one of the greatest drummers of all time. His songwriting resume includes “Everlong,” “My Hero,” “Learn To Fly,” “Best Of You,” and “Walk.” He seems like such a nice guy. And this is the first time I’m discussing him on this blog. Well, second, because Nirvana was on my last best list for “Come As You Are.” But this is the first time I’m discussing his main project, the Foo Fighters.

It’s no secret that the Foo Fighters have a long and well-established career on the Alternative rock music scene. And with the exception of their 2002 album One By One, all of their albums have been well-received. Up next on my docket when I finish 2021 is my project on the best and worst in Rock for 2011. As the year the Foo Fighters released one of their most acclaimed albums Wasting Light, I will probably be saying a lot of nice things about them in that project. All I can ask Dave and the Foos on “Shame Shame” is: What happened?

It’s a question worth asking not just for the shocking drop in quality compared to their standard work, but also because the other singles from its parent album Medicine At Midnight were pretty good. Not “Everlong” levels of quality, and they won’t be appearing on the best list, but still perfectly decent rock songs. “Waiting On A War” was my favorite out of their three singles that made both the Alternative and Mainstream Rock charts this year, and while it was essentially a re-write of “Times Like These,” it still had a powerful hook and really stepped it up in the final minute to create a song that could stand on its own two legs. “Making A Fire” wasn’t bad either, featuring backing vocals from Grohl’s daughter Violet. So with that said, I am just baffled that the Foo Fighters decided to turn out this as the album’s lead single. For years, “Next Year,” from 1999’s There Is Nothing Left To Lose, a song Grohl himself has called “a piece of s**t” and “so stupid” and “weird,” stood as the band’s worst single due to its boring repetitiveness. Well, now it has a brother.

Dave Grohl has stood up for “Shame Shame” saying that it is unlike anything the band has ever done before. Songfacts has added that while the song is most likely a stream-of-consciousness rambling from Grohl, some have interpreted that the song is about a stalker. And after reading these lyrics…

If you want to
I’ll make you feel something real just to bother you
Now I got you
Under my thumb like a drug, I will smother you

Oh God, it just might. At least “Every Breath You Take” was cryptic and used an unreliable narrator to hide the fact the song was about a stalker. This though, with its threats to make this person uncomfortable… is just shameful.

(Ba dum tiss)

But anyways, bad pun aside, the Foo Fighters have intended this song as a song about a groove, based on Dave Grohl’s background as a drummer. The song doesn’t use a traditional bassline, as Nate Mendel’s only contribution is a keyboard part used as its bass. It’s good that the Foo Fighters tried to experiment, especially considering they are a band that could just easily get away with releasing the same rock and roll songs over and over and over again. But to say this experiment failed would be a gross understatement. It blew up. Excuse me, this song is too quiet for an explosion. It evaporated. It vanished. The main problem with “Shame Shame” is that this song is one great, big pile… of nothing. NOTHING. The song starts, it ends, and it makes absolutely no impact on the listener. “Shame Shame” is a 4 minute, 17 second dead zone.

The only noteworthy parts of the instrumental come in within the first twenty seconds. First, there’s Taylor Hawkins’s drums. In a song that is so minimalist, so naked in its composition, Hawkins’s drums easily dominate the song. While Hawkins is easily the musician doing the heavy lifting on “Shame Shame,” that is not necessarily a good thing. The way his drums are paced, even with his sixteenth notes in the drum pattern, make it sound like this song is moving in slow motion. And then there’s the guitar part. The nineties were among the greatest eras in guitar history, and the Foo Fighters have no shortage of great guitar riffs. Grohl’s descending opening riff in “Monkey Wrench,” the heroic ascending pattern in “Learn To Fly,” the vicious dueling guitars in “Low.” All we get on “Shame Shame,” however, is a bland, characterless three note riff. It goes A-G, then A-B-G on an acoustic guitar for almost the entire song, at the same, slow, sluggish pace. It is unbelievably boring. The only interesting dynamic comes in the chorus when a string section comes in, backed by the basic Am-G-F-D chord progression. This is the best the Foos could come up with?

And then we get to the song’s hook. It’s just Dave Grohl singing “Shame… shame… shame… shame” slowly descending down the scale. It is so anticlimactic. I’m running out of words to describe how ssslllloooowwww this song is. It never speeds the heck up. It is content with walking a marathon, without recognizing the memo that the 5K is for running and not for walking. And I know I bash songs, particularly pop songs, for basing themselves on catchiness alone, but if there were ever a song from 2021 that adds fuel to the argument that songs need to be catchy, it’s “Shame Shame.” Not only are the hooks slow-developing and not attention-grabbing enough to stay with you, they’re repetitive. Also, when I listened to the hook and finally able to hang on to part of the hook in my brain, my 1990’s obsessed mind made a connection… to another band.

Meet Ash. They are one of many British Indie groups from the 1990’s I fell in love with during graduate school. My strategy to introduce them to Americans is, if you like Weezer, you’ll like Ash. Like Weezer, they are a band of geeks armed with an obsession for power chords and shredding solos. Especially on their earlier material, frontman Tim Wheeler sounds less like Tim Wheeler and more like Rivers Cuomo’s younger brother because their voices are nearly identical. Even their discographies, at least for their first four albums, are remarkably similar. Just like when Weezer delved deeper into their love of 80’s hard rock and glam metal on the heavier and more abrasive Maladroit, Ash went more technical in 2004 with the heavier and more abrasive Meltdown. And that’s where the comparison to “Shame Shame” comes in.

On Meltdown, the first single was “Clones,” a vicious and brutal rocker. And on that song, just like on “Shame Shame,” Wheeler sings a descending “Shame, shame, shame, shame” melody line. When I realized the similarity between the two songs on “Shame Shame,” I almost dropped my drink. The Foo Fighters forgot to realize that there was another song 17 years earlier that did the same line right before the chorus. No, it is not a plagiarism, as they are in different keys, and while the two melodies go down identically on the first three notes, the Foo Fighters go down an extra octave for an extra note. But the fact that I instantly recalled this separate song speaks to just how much better “Clones” pulls this off. “Clones” has a higher melody, allowing Wheeler to stand out more than Grohl does. And of course, “Clones” also gets its melody done way faster, allowing you to focus on Rick MacMurray’s powerful drumming and the crushing guitars. All you have in the background in “Shame Shame” is that limp acoustic guitar line. Ugh.

A lot of critics use not the most obnoxious song or the song with the most obvious level of badness to decide the worst song of the year, but the song with the least amount of good. I do not use this strategy, but for 2021, I can’t think of another song, with the exception of my #1 worst song, that has less good about it than “Shame Shame.” The entire song is a four minute waste of time, from its uncatchy melody to its boring riff to its cataclysmically slow rhythm that moves at a snail’s pace for the entire length of the song. And the whole thing is just sad. The Foo Fighters have given us such great music over the previous two and a half decades. They did not need to do this, to release a half-baked song just because it was different. I never thought in a million years I would be handing the award for Worst Mainstream Rock Song of the Year to the Foo Fighters, but here we are. They are just lucky Alternative music decided to take a downturn and release two songs worse than this.

UP NEXT: After two surprising stumbles by two legendary bands, a familiar face to the worst list returns at #2.

SOURCES

Fan, Alexander. “Chris Shiflett and Nate Mendel Tells Us How Foo Fighters’ Unexpectedly Funky New Single ‘Shame Shame’ Happened.” Tone Deaf 8 November 2020. Web. 3 January 2022 https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/chris-shiflett-nate-mendel-foo-fighters-new-single-shame-shame/.

Kaloi, Stephanie. “The Meaning Behind ‘Shame Shame’ by Foo Fighters.” The List 13 May 2021. Web. 3 January 2022 https://www.thelist.com/409098/the-meaning-behind-shame-shame-by-foo-fighters/.

IMAGE SOURCES

Medicine At Midnight album cover from Wikimedia

Photo of Ash from IMDB