Who sings the acoustic version of Everlong?

Songfacts®:

• This song is often interpreted to be about the drug addictions and bad habits of the late Kurt Cobain, who was in Nirvana with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who wrote this song. However, according to an interview with Grohl in Mojo magazine, he penned this song during one of the lowest points in his life over Christmas 1996.

  The frontman was sleeping in a sleeping bag on a friend's floor having just gotten divorced from photographer Jennifer Youngblood, and as a consequence was homeless. On top of that Grohl had no access to his own bank account, and both his drummer, William Goldsmith, and guitarist, Pat Smear, were on the verge of quitting the Foo Fighters. In the midst of all this he wrote this love song in about 45 minutes.

• Dave Grohl wrote the song about Veruca Salt frontwoman Louise Post, whom he was dating after separating from his first wife, Jennifer Youngblood. He said "Everlong" is 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."

• The song evokes real love, that feeling of shyness, yet excitement, like the first time for anything. It's a feeling that is so strong that you want it to last forever, even though you know nothing ever lasts forever. in the video, Grohl is trying to protect his girlfriend. When he sees that she is in trouble his hand grows abnormally large and beats down anyone that tries to hurt her. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bec - Melbourne, Australia

• The band performed this on The Late Show With David Letterman on February 21, 2000, when Letterman returned from heart surgery. Letterman explained that the song was important to him during his recovery, and specifically asked for Foo Fighters to perform it on his first night back. The band had to cut short a tour to do it, but they made the appearance and got a ringing endorsement from the host, who introduced them as "my favorite band playing my favorite song." The group became Letterman mainstays, appearing on the show for a whole week in 2014.

  When Letterman did his final show on May 20, 2015, Foo Fighters played this song to close it out, once again getting a stirring introduction from the host. As they played, a montage of memorable moments in Letterman history was shown.

• According to Grohl, this was the first song he wrote with lyrics that were often quoted back to him by fans. He says the line "Breathe out, so I can breathe you in" really resonated.

• There is some whispering at the end of the song. It is a combination of three tracks mixed by Dave Grohl. One track is a love letter being read, another is a technical manual, and the third is a story about the father of one of the studio engineers.

  Louise Post said: "The whispered section of this song was originally the dream I was having when the phone rang. It was a dream about us. [Grohl] later removed it and replaced with his own whispers, one which was a love letter to me."

• The music video is partially a parody of the cult horror film Evil Dead. In the movie, which was directed by Sam Raimi (who would go on to direct the Spider-Man films), a group of friends spend the weekend in a cabin only to be attacked by zombies. The parts of the video featuring Dave Grohl as some kind of a superhero with a giant hand (referred to as "Handor" by some fans) have nothing to do with Evil Dead, though. The video was directed by Michel Gondry, who went on to make Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Gondry used to have dreams where his hand grew to giant size. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Eric - Suffern, NY

• When Grohl first came up with the guitar riff, he thought it was a rip-off of Sonic Youth. He recalled in a 2021 video that he was in a Seattle recording studio, when in between takes, he began strumming "a cool Sonic Youth chord."

  After playing the tune to his bandmates, Grohl ended up showing it to Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, as he was concerned he'd "ripped off this Sonic Youth song somehow."

  After hearing it, Moore asked him: "Why is that a demo? Why isn't that on the album?"

  Grohl said: "It just felt so off the cuff and unofficial that I considered it to be a demo. So then we went and we re-recorded it and that's the song that you hear on the radio today.

• Dave Grohl played an acoustic version of this at one of Neil Young's Bridge School benefit concerts. The Bridge School is a program for children with disabilities, and after Grohl performed, he got a standing ovation. It was the closest he ever came to crying on stage.

• The passionate love Dave Grohl sings about in this song reflects his feelings for his first wife Jennifer when they were at the beginning of their relationship. They were dating for about two years when she moved to Seattle to be closer to Dave (this was in 1994, not long after Kurt Cobain's suicide). The day she moved, he asked her to marry him, and they were wed later that year. Jennifer gave Grohl some stability at a time when he was adrift, but they got married too soon and were divorced two years later. Getting the divorce papers triggered the creative spark for this song and also "Walking After You." That one is more of a woe-is-me heartbreaker about wanting her back, but "Everlong" tapped into the fervor of their young love.

• The song appeared on Friends episode 7.24, "The One With Chandler And Monica's Wedding." This version, which wasn't played by The Foo Fighters, was used at the end of the episode right after Monica and Chandler were married. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Viljo - Tampere, Finland

• In the movie Little Nicky featuring Adam Sandler, you can hear an acoustic version of "Everlong" just before the scene where Nicky falls from Valerie's balcony. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Vincent - Paris, France

• A goofy electronic version of this song plays at the beginning of the Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly" video in a scene were Jack Black and Kyle Gass are cleaning an airplane. Dave Grohl had the electronic duo The Moog Cookbook record this version; he had called on their services before when he had them create an alternate version of "Big Me" for the "Monkey Wrench" video.

• This was used in the 2013 movie The Wolf Of Wall Street, but it wasn't included on the soundtrack album.

• The Foo Fighters have played this song live more than any other, with well over 1,000 performances.

• The song topped Australian radio network Triple M's 2014 list of "Modern Rock 500" tracks.

• Grohl wanted Louise Post to sing the doo-doos, which were inspired by Veruca Salt's 1996 track "Shimmer Like A Girl." As Post was in Chicago at the time, her vocals were done through two different telephone lines in the studio calling her: one connected as her monitor, the other for recording;

  "I sang these back-ups over the phone at 2 a.m. after being woken up from a deep sleep in Chicago by DG who was tracking the vocals for 'Everlong' in LA," she recalled. "He wanted me to sing the doo-doo's. While I was at it, I wrote a harmony for the chorus and sang that too."

• "Everlong" was the last song Taylor Hawkins performed before his death. The Foos' performance, from Lollapalooza Argentina on March 20, 2022, ended with Hawkins throwing his drum sticks to the audience and taking a bow with the rest of the band. He died aged 50 five days later, on March 25, 2022. Following Hawkins' passing, streams of the song multiplied and "Everlong" returned to the singles charts in several countries, including the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Who sings Everlong acoustic?

Who originally sang Everlong?

Does Dave Grohl sing Everlong?

What is Dave Grohl whispering during Everlong?