The Foo Fighters dropped the third preview of their upcoming 10th studio album Medicine at Midnight on Thursday (Jan. 14), the emotional give peace a chance anthem “Waiting on a War.” They then followed up with an official video on Tuesday (Jan. 19).
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The mostly-acoustic song was inspired by a disheartening conversation singer Dave Grohl had with his daughter Harper last fall that reminded him of his own fears of nuclear annihilation when he was her age.
“Last fall, as I was driving my daughter to school, she turned to me and asked, ‘Daddy, is there going to be a war?,'” Grohl said in a statement. “My heart sank as I realized that she was now living under the same dark cloud that I had felt 40 years ago. I wrote ‘Waiting on a War’ that day. Everyday waiting for the sky to fall. Is there more to this than that? Is there more to this than just waiting on a war? Because I need more. We all do.”
Grohl dedicated the song to Harper, who he said, “deserves a future, just as every child does.”
The pain, fear and hope Grohl talks about feeds the song’s simple, but high-impact lyrics, which open with the lines, “I’ve been waiting on a war since I was young/ Since I was a little boy with a toy gun/ Never really wanted to be number one/ Just wanted to love everyone,” which tumbles into the affecting chorus, “Is there more to this than that? (x3)/ Is there more to this than/ Just waiting on a war?”
The four-minute Greg Kurstin-produced song, which features acoustic guitar, strings and subtle bass and drums, picks up the pace and intensity as it moves through a second verse about waiting for the sky to fall and scenes of a little boy lost turning to the radio for solace. The final minute of the track then explodes into a patented Foos rager, as the languid pace triples up and the song charges to a frenzied, cathartic conclusion.
“War” is the third track the band has released from the nine-track, 37-minute album so far, following on the heels of “No Son of Mine” and “Shame Shame. Medicine at Midnight is due Feb. 5.
Watch the video for “Waiting on a War” below.
This article has been updated.