All My Life

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Lore & Background

Dave Grohl has said that the song is about how he enjoys performing oral sex on women. "['All My Life'] is a little dirty. I'm very fond of giving oral sex to women. It's a pleasure-giving experience - giving someone something that they'll remember for the rest of their lives, and if you do it right, they will." The song was originally an instrumental, and Grohl had no idea how he was going to sing it. Their manager told them, "That's the song!" and the band responded, "Really? You think that's the one people will like?" Grohl notes that the band wanted a heavier-sounding song for a single, saying they were "coming out with 'Learn to Fly' and 'Next Year' and other songs that had middle-of-the-road melodies."

In Their Own Story

The music video, directed by Grohl, is a performance video because he wanted to "sort of show everybody this is what it's like when we play live" as opposed to the comedic videos the band had done before such as "Big Me" and "Learn to Fly." In the video, the band (with Chris Shiflett making his first appearance in an official Foo Fighters music video) performs the song on stage in front of a video screen at The Forum in Inglewood, California, near Los Angeles (the video was actually shot inside Bakersfield's Mechanics Bank Arena, which was called Centennial Garden at the time). At the conclusion, it is revealed that they had been performing in an empty arena. As of November 2023, the song has 107 million views on YouTube.

Reader's Guide

The song won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance, spent ten straight weeks at number 1 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, and peaked at number 3 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It was also a top 5 hit on the UK Singles Chart. It became the 6th best performing alternative song on the Alternative Songs chart of the decade and the 10th best performing rock song on the Rock Songs chart of the decade. In September 2023, for the 35th anniversary of Alternative Songs (which by then had been renamed to Alternative Airplay), Billboard published a list of the top 100 most successful songs in the chart's history; "All My Life" was ranked at number 55. In March 2005, Q magazine placed "All My Life" at number 94 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. It was nominated for the Kerrang! Award for Best Single. In 2020, Kerrang ranked the song number two on their list of the 20 greatest Foo Fighters songs, and in 2021, American Songwriter ranked the song number five on their list of the 10 greatest Foo Fighters songs.

Did You Know?

• Dave Grohl has said the song is about how he enjoys performing oral sex on women, calling it 'a little dirty.'
• The song was originally an instrumental that went through several versions, including one where the middle section sounded like 'Wipe Out' by the Surfaris.
• The music video was shot inside Bakersfield's Mechanics Bank Arena (then called Centennial Garden), not at The Forum in Inglewood as depicted.
• In September 2023, Billboard ranked 'All My Life' at number 55 on its list of the top 100 most successful songs in Alternative Songs chart history.
• The song appears in the 2003 film Identity and the 2004 film The Perfect Score, and was used in the trailer for the 2005 film Sahara.