Since the challenge began, Foo Fighters have recorded stripped-down live sets and comical fake commercials, all with the goal of maintaining their connection to their audience.
“What I realized was more than any sort of technical contest, this was something that was bringing people a lot of joy at a time where everyone could use a little bit,” he said, adding, “it actually changed the way I look at what my band does in this time.” Rock ’n’ roll is commonly considered to be in cultural decline - in a 2014 review of the Foo Fighters album “Sonic Highways,” The New York Times pop music critic Ben Ratliff declared, “Rock doesn’t lead the discourse anymore.” That diagnosis has grown only more pronounced in more recent years as genres more suited to streaming have flourished, and yet here’s video proof that rock’s elemental pleasures haven’t fully lost their allure among a younger set.įor Grohl, the challenge helped reorient his priorities during this bizarre year. There’s also something fundamentally charming about a 51-year-old white, male, longtime Angeleno bonding with a 10-year-old multiracial Brit through the power of social media, over a style of music that supposedly matters less than ever. Grohl has been musically active since the 1980s, whereas Bushell started drumming when she was 5, in 2015. Part of the appeal is the way their bond transcends generation and geography. He recorded an original song about Bushell (sample lyric: “She got the power/She got the soul/Gonna save the world with her rock ’n’ roll”) Bushell returned the favor with her own song, “Rock and Grohl.” Cumulatively, the videos have attracted millions of views across YouTube and Twitter, making it a truly rare uncomplicated feel-good story from the last few months. Grohl conceded defeat, and since then the two have continued playing music for each other. Nonetheless, Bushell volleyed back another astute and overjoyed performance in two days. Grohl is her favorite drummer, and when asked why, she answered, “He thrashes the kit really hard, which I like.” In a separate video interview, Bushell offered a very simple reason for why she decided to call out Grohl: “He’s a drummer, ’cause he drummed in quite a few bands, so why not?” Bushell is 10 years old, and the clarity of her logic - her favorite word might be “epic” - was blessedly refreshing.
The rules of a drum-off aren’t formally sanctioned by any governing body, but Bushell’s exhilarated facial expressions and mastery of the song’s breakneck pace meant Grohl was in for a battle, should he choose to accept. This time, Bushell had prefaced her cover of the 1997 Foo Fighters song “Everlong” with a direct challenge to a drum-off. But toward the end of the summer, another one of Bushell’s videos made its way to Grohl via a flood of texts from friends around the world. That said, he experienced it like any piece of content - you watch it, you enjoy it, you pass it on and then move on. The sight of Bushell wailing away immediately impressed Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer who played “In Bloom” on the band’s 1991 breakthrough album, “Nevermind.” Grohl is not a social media user, and he only learned about the viral clip when the album’s producer, Butch Vig, sent it to him. Sometimes her father, John, and brother, Thomas, accompanied her, but Bushell was the star, combining technical virtuosity with bright-eyed showmanship (and some enthusiastic yelling).
The internet is an open playing field for regular people performing impressive feats, and over a couple of years, Nandi Bushell, a resident of Ipswich, England, had attracted a solid audience by expressively covering famous songs by a genre-diverse range of artists including the White Stripes, Billie Eilish and Anderson. You didn’t need to know every note of Nirvana’s angst-rock classic “In Bloom” to marvel at the spectacle of a little girl drumming along to the song in perfect synchronization last November, her face scrawled over with joy and passion.
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