Songfacts®:

• The opening track of Medicine at Midnight, "Making A Fire" was the first song written for the album and paved the way for its upbeat, David Bowie-esque pop sound. Speaking to Steve Lamacq's BBC Radio 6 Music show, frontman Dave Grohl said: "We felt like that was the perfect place to start. The groove in that song, it's almost like a DJ sort of breakbeat. We had touched on something we hadn't necessarily done before."
• Medicine At Midnight is a departure of sorts from the band's normal loud hard rock sound with nods to funk and dance. Grohl explained to NME that since it's the Foo's 10th record they decided to do something that sounded fresh, so they set out to record a party album.
  
  "A lot of our favourite records have these big grooves and riffs," he said. "I hate to call it a funk or dance record, but it's more energetic in a lot of ways than anything we've ever done and it was really designed to be that Saturday night party album. It was written and sequenced in a way that you put on, and nine songs later you'll just put it on again. Y'know, songs like 'Making A Fire.' To me that's rooted in Sly & The Family Stone grooves, but amplified in the way that the Foo Fighters do it."
• I've waited a lifetime to live
  It's time to ignite, I'm making a fire
  
  The song serves as an introduction to the album as Grohl stamps his intention to make a groove-oriented party record.
• Foo Fighters reunited with Greg Kurstin (Kelly Clarkson's "What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)," Adele's "Hello," Sia's "Cheap Thrills") for Medicine At Midnight. The hitmaking producer and former jazz pianist first worked with the band on their previous record, Concrete and Gold. Here, he shepherds the group into their new dance rock sound.
  
  "As a pop producer, he's well versed in writing songs with groove," Grohl told The Sun. "As a jazz musician, he's brilliant when it comes to finding a feel or vibe or energy."
• Grohl's teenage daughter, Violet, contributed harmony vocals to this relentlessly upbeat song. The Foo's frontman explained to the BBC that every afternoon he would take a break from laying down Medicine At Midnight and go pick her up from school. Sometimes she'd want to come back to the house where they were recording the album and she'd sit on the couch and do her homework.
  
  One day, Greg Kurstin asked her, "Hey Violet, would you like to do a backup vocal?" So she got behind the microphone, and sang the "high vocal" on this song's chorus.
• This song originated with someone giving Grohl a very light guitar as a present. "I picked that thing up and wrote so many of the new songs on it. That was the first thing I played on it," he said. "It was such a weird riff. I had to kind of try to find a melody. That was the hardest part with that song."
• Mark Ronson released a stripped-back, bouncy version, where members of Antibalas, the Budos Band, the Dap-Kings, El Michels Affair, La Buya, Menahan Street Band, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Tuatara all provide a backdrop to Dave Grohl's gravelly vocals. A back-up vocal quartet featuring Violet Grohl (Dave's daughter) supports the refrain.
• The song climbed to #1 on Billboard's Rock & Alternative Airplay chart. It was Foo Fighters' ninth leading song on the tally and the third from Medicine at Midnight, following "Shame Shame" and "Waiting On A War."
  
  "Making a Fire" also topped Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, becoming Foo Fighters' 11th #1 on that listing.
• This won for Best Rock Performance at the Grammy Awards in 2022. Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform, but just nine days before the ceremony, their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died at age 50, so they called it off. Foo Fighters also won Best Rock Song for "Waiting On A War" and Best Rock Album for Medicine At Midnight.