The Sky Is A Neighborhood

Album: Concrete and Gold (2017)
Charted: 63
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Songfacts®:

  • This somber, blues-driven anthem about hardships was inspired by some stargazing. "One night I was lying out looking up at stars," Frontman Dave Grohl said. "Just imagining all of these stars as places that have life on them as well, and I decided that the sky is a neighborhood, that we need to keep our s--t together in order to survive in this universe full of life."
  • The song was recorded in a single afternoon by Grohl and his fellow Foo Fighters band members.
  • Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins premiered the song with a live acoustic version. The pair was performing at benefit show Acoustic 4 A Cure IV in San Francisco with Wallflowers keyboardist Rami Jaffee in May 2017, when they decided to air the tune.

    "I figured on the way up here, I thought 'f--k it let's play a new song man'," said Grohl introducing the track. "We've never played this song in front of anybody. It's called 'The Sky Is A Neighborhood.'"
  • The full band performed the track live for the first time on June 16, 2017 during a festival performance in Iceland where the Foos also debuted another new song, "La Dee Dah."
  • The eerie music video was directed by Grohl himself, featuring his daughters 11-year-old Violet and 8-year-old Harper. The clip sees the Foos, complete with scary lights for eyes, performing on top of a wooden cabin. Beneath them the two girls are reading a songbook. Then things get really weird with a series of extraterrestrial happenings.
  • Dave Grohl credits a YouTube video of astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson discussing the wonders of the universe as a major influence on the celestial banger. "It basically talks about the atoms that comprise life on Earth and make up the human body are traceable to the beginnings of our universe," he told Rolling Stone. "Stars that go unstable and collapse and explode and just scatter their guts, their fundamental ingredients of life are all over the universe and forming solar systems and stars orbiting planets have the ingredients for life itself."

    Grohl added: "And when you look up at the night sky, you realize that you're not only part of the universe, but the universe is part of us. It really moves me."

Comments: 2

  • Ann from NomanslandI would say nearly each of Grohl’s songs brings a tear to the eye.
    Then what about “Stranger things”?
  • Dartanyon from NewzealandThis article really helped me understand the moving song featured as "sky in the neighborhood" this song just brings a tear to the eye.
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