Foo Fighters - Greatest hits

In addition to the dozen-plus anthems that have charted the band’s rise to Grammy winning, multi-platinum, arena and stadium headlining status the world over, Foo Fighters’ Greatest Hits features two newly recorded songs available only on this compilation: The new single “Wheels” and “Word Forward”–both recorded especially for this collection at the band’s own fabled 606 studio complex with producer Butch Vig. “Wheels” is also the subject of the latest soon to be classic Foo Fighters video, appropriately included on the deluxe DVD and reuniting the band with director Sam Brown who lensed the unforgettable clip for “The Pretender.”

Greatest Hits covers every phase of the 15-year-and-counting run that began with 1995’s Foo Fighters, with its classic singles “This Is A Call” and “Big Me,” and has since yielded six platinum-plus records and as many Grammys . The double-platinum The Colour & The Shape, originally issued in 1997 and since reissued in a deluxe 10th anniversary edition is recalled here not only by “Monkeywrench,” “Everlong” and “My Hero,” but by the first ever studio recording of “Everlong (acoustic).” Consecutive Best Rock Album Grammy winners There Is Nothing Left To Lose (1999) and One By One (2002) are represented by two pairs of classics respectively: “”Learn To Fly” and “Breakout,” and “All My Life” and “Times Like These,” while 2005’s two-disc electric/acoustic 10th anniversary opus In Your Honor yields the perennial FF final encore “Best Of You.” The intimate 2006 acoustically augmented theater tour documented on the Skin + Bones album and DVD is commemorated here by that collection’s title track. Greatest Hits is completed by “The Pretender” and “Long Road To Ruin,” a double shot from 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, which earned the Foos their third Best Rock Album Grammy and set off
the band’s biggest ever headlining tour, which peaked with a two-night stand at London’s Wembley Stadium attended by 165,000 fans-setting the venue’s two-night attendance record-and immortalized on the 18-song Foo Fighters: Live At Wembley Stadium DVD.

FOO FIGHTERS: GREATEST HITS
All My Life
Best Of You
Everlong
The Pretender
My Hero
Learn To Fly
Times Like These
Monkeywrench
Big Me
Breakout
Long Road To Ruin
This is a Call
Skin and Bones
Wheels
Word Forward
Everlong (acoustic)

For all their achievements, including a half-dozen acclaimed albums (with global cumulative sales of more than 5 million) and more than twice that many signature chart singles and album tracks – Switchfoot has yet to release a ‘greatest hits’ anthology. For the first time, THE BEST YET pulls together Switchfoot’s history representing all six albums they recorded on the two principal labels of their career: the indie re:Think Records and Columbia, where their 2003 breakthrough broke the platinum barrier.

The 18-song collection THE BEST YET – featuring one newly-released song, “This Is Home” (from the summer 2008 movie soundtrack of Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) – will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting November 4th through Columbia/Legacy, a division of Sony, and Credential Recordings, a division of EMI Christian Music Group. The release of THE BEST YET follows (by two weeks) Switchfoot’s conclusion of the groundbreaking 23-city “Music Builds” Tour. A portion of the funds raised during the tour benefits Habitat for Humanity affiliates located in the tour cities.

In addition to “Dare You To Move” and “Meant To Live,” THE BEST YET also turns to The Beautiful Letdown for four other tracks: “This Is Your Life,” “On Fire,” “Twenty-Four,” and the title cut, “Beautiful Letdown.” At the Gospel Music Association (GMA) 2004 Dove Awards in Nashville, The Beautiful Letdown won for Rock/Contemporary Album of the Year, and “Meant to Live” won for Rock/Contempo¬rary Recorded Song of the Year. Across the country at the San Diego Music Awards, Switchfoot earned Best Pop Album and Album of the Year honors, as well as Song of the Year for “Dare You To Move.” (At the 2005 Dove Awards, “Dare You To Move” won Rock/Contempo¬rary Recorded Song of the Year and Short Form Music Video of the Year as the band also took Artist of the Year honors. In 2006, “Dare You To Move” made ASCAP’s Top 50 list of Most Performed Song of 2005.) The Beautiful Letdown was certified RIAA double-platinum in December 2004, and Switchfoot followed up less than a year later with the RIAA gold Nothing Is Sound, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200. In addition to the RIAA gold single “Stars” (which won Short Form Music Video of the Year at the 2006 Dove Awards), the album was the source for “Lonely Nation” and “The Shadow Proves The Sunshine.”

Switchfoot – Jon Foreman (vocals, guitar), his brother Tim Foreman (bass, backing vocals), Jerome Fontamillas (guitar, keys, backing vocals), Drew Shirley (guitar), and Chad Butler (drums) – has maintained a strong commitment to social and humanitarian causes ever since their ascendance into the rock pantheon. Since the band’s inception, they have been actively involved in such projects as DATA, Bono’s THE ONE Campaign, Invisible Children, Habitat for Humanity, and To Write Love on Her Arms. They also founded the Switchfoot Bro-Am, a surfing and music benefit-event. In conjunction with their new indie label, lowercase people records (formed in October 2007, after their departure from Columbia).

Although more than a dozen of the tracks on THE BEST YET are drawn from Switchfoot’s Columbia years – The Beautiful Letdown (2003), Nothing Is Sound (2005), and Oh! Gravity. (2006) – the collection also reflects the band’s earlier years. After playing only a handful of gigs around Southern California as Chin Up, the band was signed to Charlie Peacock’s new indie label, re:Think Records in 1997.

Renaming themselves Switchfoot (a surfing term), the band released their debut album in June 1997, The Legend Of Chin (with “Concrete Girl”). That year, they received an ASCAP Award and San Diego Music Award, both for Best New Artist. The industry began to take notice of Switchfoot with their second album for the re:Think label, 1999’s New Way To Be Human (“Only Hope,” “Company Car”). With New Way To Be Human, Switchfoot cracked the Billboard Heatseekers chart (at #31).

The next album, 2000’s Learning To Breathe (with “Learning to Breathe” and “Love Is the Movement”) again scaled the Heatseekers chart (#34). It received a Grammy Award nomination and at the San Diego Music Awards it won Best Pop Album and the band won Best Pop Artist. In 2001, Jon Foreman went on to win the Les Paul Horizon Award for the Most Promising Up-and-Coming Guitarist.

A giant break came in 2002, with A Walk To Remember, the high school love story starring Mandy Moore. The movie soundtrack featured four cuts by Switchfoot, including “You” (from The Legend Of Chin), “Only Hope,” “Learning to Breathe,” and a new song, “Dare You To Move.” In addition to Switchfoot’s original version of “Only Hope,” Mandy Moore recorded a version that she sang in the film.

Switchfoot was on the rise. Another San Diego Music Award, Best Adult Alternative Artist for 2002, and the exposure from the movie led to their signing later on in 2002 with Columbia. The Beautiful Letdown, their first major label album, was an instant pop sensation, riding into the Top 20 (#16) on the Billboard 200 chart. It took nearly a year, however, for Switchfoot to notch their first pop hit in 2004, “Meant To Live” (#18), which scored big on the Alternative and Top 40 charts and earned RIAA gold. A second Top 5 Alternative hit followed six months later, “Dare You To Move.”

The Beautiful Letdown was certified RIAA double-platinum in December 2004, and Switchfoot followed up less than a year later with the RIAA gold Nothing Is Sound, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200. In addition to the RIAA gold single “Stars,” the album was the source for “Lonely Nation” and “The Shadow Proves The Sunshine.”

Switchfoot’s final Columbia album was 2006’s Oh! Gravity. (with the title single, “Awakening” and “Dirty Second Hands”). The album rose to #1 at iTunes, #18 on the Billboard 200, and was named Album Of the Year at the San Diego Music Awards in 2007. Switchfoot’s legions of dedicated fans patiently await news of their band’s first independent new album on lowercase people records, expected in the spring 2009.

THE BEST YET by SWITCHFOOT (Columbia/Legacy 8869738346 2)
Selections: 1. Dare You To Move (D) • 2. Meant To Live (D) • 3. Stars (E) • 4. Oh! Gravity. (F) • 5. This Is Home (G) • 6. Learning to Breathe (C) • 7. Awakening (F) • 8. This Is Your Life (D) • 9. On Fire (D) • 10. Only Hope (B) • 11. Dirty Second Hands (F) • 12. Love Is the Movement (C) • 13. Company Car (B) • 14. Lonely Nation (E) • 15. The Shadow Proves The Sunshine (E) • 16. Concrete Girl (A) • 17. Twenty-Four (D) • 18. The Beautiful Letdown (D).

Album key:
A – from The Legend Of Chin (issued June 1997, as re:Think 51595)
B – from New Way To Be Human (issued March 1999, as re:Think 51688)
C – from Learning To Breathe (issued September 2000, as re:Think 51736)
D – from The Beautiful Letdown (issued February 2003, as RED Ink/Columbia 71083)
E – from Nothing Is Sound (issued September 2005, as Columbia 94581)
F – from Oh! Gravity. (issued December 2006, as Columbia 82880)
G – from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian original soundtrack (issued June 2008, as Walt Disney Records D00074202)