The Pretender

"The Pretender"
Single by Foo Fighters
from the album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
Released	August 21, 2007
Format	CD
Recorded	March - June 2007
Genre	Hard rock
Length	4:28
Label	Roswell/RCA
Writer(s)	Foo Fighters
Producer	Gil Norton
Certification	Gold (RIAA)[1]
Foo Fighters singles chronology
"Cold Day in the Sun" (2006) "The Pretender" (2007) "Long Road to Ruin" (2007)

"The Pretender" is a song by the American alternative rock band Foo Fighters. It was the first single from the group's 2007 album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. It is one of Foo Fighters' most successful songs; only "Learn to Fly" and "Best of You" beat its position on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

In a 2007 interview with XFM, frontman Dave Grohl stopped short of explaining the meaning behind "The Pretender", but alluded its roots go to current political unrest. Grohl noted,

"That's the thing with lyrics, you never want to give away specifics, because it's nice for people to have their own idea or interpretation of the song. But, you know, everyone's been fucked over before and I think a lot of people feel fucked over right now and they're not getting what they were promised, and so something to do with that."^[2]

Grohl also told XFM "The Pretender" wasn't initially planned for the album and happened really quickly.

"That song didn't happen until later on in the session. We didn't go into making the record with that song and it happened after we recorded a lot of stuff. Up until that point, I didn't know if we had a good opening song or not. So after we recorded it, I thought, 'oh this is perfect, we have the song to open the record,' and it just became everybody's favorite song. ... It's the type of song that I look forward to opening shows with and it came together really easily. We put that song together in, I don't know, a day, whereas a lot of the other songs we worked on for weeks."^[3]

Reception

This song was #47 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007.^[4]The song was a 2008 Grammy Award nominee for Best Rock Song and Record of the Year. It won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance the same year. This song was also #94 on MTV Asia's list of Top 100 Hits of 2007.^[5] The music video was nominated for a 2008 MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video, but lost to Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day".^[6]

This album was the fourth consecutive Foo Fighters album to have a song reach the top of the U.S. Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. "The Pretender" was the most densely played alternative rock song of 2007. It holds the record for longest running #1 in the Modern Rock Tracks' history, with 18 weeks at #1.^[7] It also spent 6 weeks at #1 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It made the Triple J's Hottest 100 in Australia placing in at number 6.

Fuse TV ranked the song as the number one alternative rock video of 2008.

Music video

The music video was directed by Sam Brown. It is presented in letterbox format and heavily employs pans, zooms, and tracking shots. It consists of the band performing the song in an airplane hangar with many strip lights on the ceiling. Behind the band is a large red screen, which is thick and solid. The band is then faced by what appears to be a riot police officer, who stands behind a black line on the floor, around 30 feet or so from the band. He has the number 21 on his bullet-proof vest. As the song progresses, he is joined by more riot police officers, and a panning shot shows us that to his left, the numbers on the officers' vests descend all the way to "05". Assuming that there are the same number of officers on the man's right side, it can be gathered that there are 41 officers overall. As the quieter bridge begins, the video slows down as the officers charge at the band. Just as the band repeats the song's louder chorus, the screen suddenly explodes and a red liquid erupts from the red screen overwhelming the police officers but affecting the band to a lesser extent. At the end of the video, Dave Grohl is shown slamming his guitar on the floor as he falls to his knees. The visual effects in the video were done by Mechnology Visual Effects in Burbank, California.

Track listing

• 2-track CD^[8]

1. "The Pretender"
2. "If Ever"

• Maxi CD^[9]

1. "The Pretender" - 4:31
2. "Come Alive" (Demo) - 5:31
3. "If Ever" - 4:15
4. "Monkey Wrench" (Live from Hyde Park video) - 5:35

• 7"^[10]

1. "The Pretender"
2. "Bangin"

Chart positions

Appearances in other media

• This song is part of the soundtrack list of the TV drama Californication (season 1, episode 9).
• "The Pretender" is the song that played with the 2008-2009 Boston Bruins pre-game video.
• This song was among the first to be released as downloadable content for the next-gen versions of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, in a band-specific pack which also comprised "This Is a Call", from the eponymous debut album, and "All My Life" from One by One. It is also a playable song in the game Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades.
• The song was released for the Rock Band series on November 3, 2009. This song has the most phrases on vocals out of all Rock Band songs.
• The song was used for Darts players walk on's during the 2009 Las Vegas Dessert Classic

Notes

External links

• Video at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash)