Songfacts®:

• Dave Grohl wrote "Of All People" after unexpectedly bumping into a drug dealer from the 1990s who had been supplying heroin to people in his circle. "I hadn't seen them in 30 years, and they're alive, healthy and sober," he told The Guardian. "I was so happy that this person survived, while at the same time, I was devastated, because of all of the people I know that we've lost to exactly that drug."
  
  The unspoken shadow hanging over the song is Kurt Cobain, whose 1994 death still echoes through Grohl's writing decades later.
  
  Grohl described the feeling as an internal argument he couldn't settle - a collision of fury, grief, and involuntary relief. "I was so f---ing angry, but at the same time so grateful to see them alive and well. A conversation within myself, feeling so conflicted and divided."
• When Grohl read the completed lyrics to his therapist, he asked: "Is this survivor's guilt?"
  
  Of all people, you survived
  When no one else could stay alive
  You know you should be dead
  But you're alive instead
  
  Grohl's vocal escalates to a raw, incredulous climax: "Of all people - YOU survived?!", turning the song's emotional conflict into an almost accusatory outburst. Think the cathartic scream of "All My Life," but aimed inward rather than outward.
• Grohl wrote "Of All People" and co-produced it with his Foo Fighters bandmates and Oliver Roman, their longtime in-house engineer.
• Foo Fighters recorded "Of All People" for their 12th album, Your Favorite Toy. Running just 2:34, "Of All People" is the shortest track on the album and one of its most viscerally aggressive, a blast of melodic hardcore punk that tears through its subject matter without pausing for breath.
• Foo Fighters debuted "Of All People" live on February 22, 2026, at St. James' Church in Dingle, Ireland, as part of a taping for Other Voices, the celebrated Irish TV music series. The Other Voices episode aired on April 6, 2026, ahead of the song's release. With Pat Smear sidelined by a broken foot suffered in a gardening accident, Jason Falkner, the veteran power-pop guitarist and former member of Jellyfish and the Three O'Clock, filled in on guitar at the Dingle show. The band played the song again the following night at The Academy in Dublin.
• Dave Grohl wrote "Of All People" in response to his encounter with the drug dealer, channeling the confusion and anger that night and recording it the very next morning in the small studio above his garage. "You write something really quickly, and the next day you record it and it's done," he told the BBC. "That's the photograph, that's the one moment that you catch."
• For the video, director Alex Acy recruited Swiss extreme skiers BPC (Buldoz Project Crew), a group known online for "snowless skiing": riding skis on concrete, glass, and other off-snow terrain. We see the BPC members pulling off high-stakes urban and mountain stunts while the song rages underneath.
  
  "Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I discovered BPC and snowless skiing," said Grohl. "It's either the gnarliest extreme sport I've ever seen, the most fun anyone can have before a guaranteed trip to the hospital, or both. It's an honor to be the soundtrack to this madness."