One By One (2002)

One By One (2002)

Though well-received upon its release in the fall of 2002 and going on to win their second consecutive Grammy for Best Rock Album, the status of One By One in the Foo Fighters’ catalog has diminished in the subsequent decade. This has to be partially attributable to the album having been mainly written off by the band themselves. In the lead-up to its release, they talked it up as usual, but as early as the press cycle for its follow up In Your Honor in 2005, Grohl was already clearly distancing himself from One By One. “I was kinda pissed at myself for the last record. Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it,” he told Rolling Stone in 2005.

The band’s distaste for One By One is understandable given the album’s fraught history. Despite it being the first album with guitarist Chris Shiflett in the fold — and, consequently, the first recorded by what would become the core, longest-lasting Foo Fighters lineup — it can be viewed as a beginning only in hindsight. In reality, the band almost disintegrated in the process. There was dissatisfaction with the initial, drawn-out recording process, the band members becoming frustrated by the songs and the sheen of expensive production. There was personal strife, with infighting and drummer Taylor Hawkins suffering a drug overdose.

Eventually, they decided to give the album another go and re-recorded almost all of it in a two-week burst. The result was the released version of One By One, the ostensibly “rougher” takes. It does bear the scars of its birth, remaining one of the heavier Foos outings and their most consistently dark, but also still feels overly slick and compressed. Though the band’s personal bias wouldn’t usually be grounds for dismissing an album, Grohl’s quote happens to be dead-on. The hooks just aren’t here in the same abundance as the other Foos records. Until I listened to One By One for this piece, I hadn’t gone back to it for years, and could hardly remember the titles or melodies of anything beyond the first four tracks. Not inconsequentially, these were also the songs the band deemed good enough to be released as singles. I would imagine they’re also the four songs Grohl still held in high-esteem during that Rolling Stone interview.

The strength of those songs makes the overall experience of One By One all the more disappointing. Opener “All My Life” is still a Foo Fighters classic, and along with “Times Like These” remains amongst the band’s most successful and recognizable singles. I’ve always been partial to the churning buzz of “Low,” and “Have It All” effectively reversed the band’s typical approach by having a riff-driven verse that tumbles into a gentler chorus. As the album goes on, though, it seriously drags, trudging through a succession of second-rate Foo Fighters material that manages to feel undercooked and overdone at the same time. There are moments of greatness here, songs that proved the band hadn’t lost it. Aside from these exceptions, One By One just doesn’t endure in the same way as what came before or after.