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"Everlong"
Single by Foo Fighters
from the album The Colour And The Shape
Released	1997
Format	CD
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	4:10
Label	Roswell/Capitol
Producer(s)	Gil Norton
Foo Fighters singles chronology
"Monkey Wrench" (1997)	"Everlong" (1997)	"My Hero" (1998)
Alternative cover
(CD2)

"Everlong" was the second single released from the Foo Fighters' second album The Colour and the Shape. It was released on 2 main discs in 1997. It is a mid-tempo love song regarded by many fans as one of the band's best. It has unofficially become the band's trademark song and is traditionally performed last during the band's concerts.

Although the song is normally performed with electric guitars, vocalist/guitarist Dave Grohl's solo acoustic variation gained popularity after an impromptu rendition on Howard Stern's radio show in 1997.

The drumbeat (performed by Grohl on the album recording) was a result of experimenting with the new wave music style.

During the instrumental break, three indecipherable tracks whispered by Grohl can be heard. The exact wordings are unknown, but the source materials are believed to be a love letter, a technical manual, and a story about a studio technician's father. Grohl himself has only confirmed the use of the technical manual.

• Ranked #45 in Kerrang! magazine's "100 Greatest Rock Tracks Ever" (1999)
• Ranked #39 in Kerrang! magazine's "100 Greatest Singles of All Time" (2002) (Although it must be noted that the magazine's editor complained about the song's position, claiming it to be "The best track ever to be imprinted onto plastic")
• Ranked #22 in Stylus magazine's "100 Music Videos of All Time" (2006)

David Letterman has named "Everlong" to be his favorite song. It was performed by the Foo Fighters on the 21 February 2000 episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, his first since returning from heart surgery. Letterman introduced them as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." He had been impressed with their first performance of the song on his show in 1997, which coincided with its initial release as a single. The song was performed again for the comeback episode at the personal request of Letterman, who also promoted the band's current album at the time, There Is Nothing Left to Lose. "Everlong" itself is not featured on the album.

In the sitcom Friends, the acoustic version of "Everlong" is played as exit music for Chandler and Monica's wedding.

The movie Little Nicky also features the acoustic version of "Everlong".

The song is also featured on the T.V. show Daria in the episode "Lane Miserables" while Daria watches, from a window, as Trent and Monique walk away.

Dave Grohl has stated in Kerrang! Magazine (May 2005) that one-time girlfriend and Veruca Salt vocalist Louise Post is mainly the inspiration for the song and wrote it about their "...crazy, retarded, passionate, freak-out relationship" at the time. Grohl also stated that he thought it was a Sonic Youth rip off.

In 2005, Bronson Arroyo included a cover of "Everlong" on his album, Covering the Bases. It featured Stephen King reading a passage (presumably written for the song itself) during the song's breakdown.

Another acoustic version of this song concludes both the 2006 live CD and DVD Skin and Bones.

In order to accommodate the music video's running time, the song's final chorus is repeated with a brief interlude in between, which apparently consists of the song running backwards.

Contents 1 Video 1.1 The first scene 1.2 The first dream 1.3 The second dream 1.4 The interlude dream 1.5 Continuation of the second dream 1.6 The final scene 1.7 The narrative technique 2 Single: Track listing 3 Chart positions

The video is directed by visionary director Michel Gondry and parodies the likes of great horror b-movies such as The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It starts with a shot with two burglars (played by Pat Smear and Nate Mendel) heading for a house and with a view of the inside of the house with pictures of a happy couple all over the walls (respectively played by Dave Grohl as the husband and Taylor Hawkins, impersonating the wife) and ends up in the bedroom with the couple sleeping in bed. From then on, we enter the dreams of the husband and the wife.

This dream takes place in a party in which the husband saves his wife from two ill-intentioned characters, beating them up with his right hand which swells as he gets angry. The two "bad guys" disappear. The couple proceeds to a room with a giant phone with an obviously deafening ringing. The husband tries to pull up the giant receiver and then wakes up with a start, realizing that what he hears is in fact his phone (in the bedroom). He answers and we realize that his wife is on the phone as he turns to her with a worried look on his face.

The viewer understands, by the outdated outfits of both the husband and wife and the extras, that the husband is actually reenacting one if his recollections through this dream, probably the first time they met (thus playing with the cliché of the rescued woman falling in love with her saviour).

The wife is sitting in an old house lost in a dark forest when she is threatened by the same two evil characters seen in the first dream, while her husband is gathering wood logs outside the house. The scared wife gives a phone call to someone who proves to be her husband in reality. It ends up with the previous scene of the husband answering the phone call.

The husband then intentionally falls asleep again to rescue his wife once again. But he finds himself laying in bed with several women who have their legs spread over him. The legs prove to be the logs he was picking up in the second dream. He has managed to enter his wife's dream.

The husband runs to the house and saves his wife once again from the two evil characters whom they throw unconscious into a small pond.

In this scene we see the two evil characters (who prove to be the two burglars of the first scene) standing by the side of the couple's bed in reality. Then the group members come out from their guises with their instruments and finally we see the whole band playing in the bedroom.

The way the dreams are told is somewhat original because these dreams are seen one after the other while they are actually dreamt simultaneously (a technique which Jean Genet possibly used in his play The Balcony.) The scene with the husband answering the phone is used as a fulcrum between the two dreams.

CD1:

1. "Everlong"
2. "Drive Me Wild"
3. "See You (Live Manchester Apollo 25th May 1997)"

CD2:

1. "Everlong"
2. "Requiem" (Killing Joke cover)
3. "I'll Stick Around (Live Manchester Apollo 25th May 1997)"

Year	Chart	Position
1997	Official UK Singles Chart	No. 18
1997	Modern Rock Tracks (US)	No. 3
1997	Mainstream Rock Tracks (US)	No. 4
1998	Official New Zealand Singles Chart	No. 34
1998	Official Euro Hot 100 Singles Chart	No. 36

Foo Fighters This box: view • talk • edit
Dave Grohl | Taylor Hawkins | Nate Mendel | Chris Shiflett
William Goldsmith | Pat Smear | Franz Stahl
Discography
Albums: Foo Fighters | The Colour and the Shape | There Is Nothing Left to Lose | One by One | In Your Honor
Singles: "This Is a Call" | "I'll Stick Around" | "For All the Cows" | "Big Me" | "Monkey Wrench" | "Everlong" | "My Hero" | "Walking After You" | "Learn to Fly" | "Stacked Actors" | "Generator" | "Breakout" | "Next Year" | "The One" | "All My Life" | "Times Like These" | "Low" | "Have It All" | "Best of You" | "DOA" | "Resolve" | "No Way Back/Cold Day in the Sun"
EPs: Five Songs and a Cover
Live albums: Skin and Bones
Live DVD's: Everywhere But Home | Skin and Bones
Related Bands
Nirvana | Sunny Day Real Estate | The Germs | Scream | Probot | Queens of the Stone Age | Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders | The Fire Theft | Tenacious D | Late!