The Foo Fighters released The Teacher, a new song from its much-anticipated upcoming album But Here We Are, and it's almost as long as homeroom — clocking in at just over ten minutes.
The track clearly deals with loss and the mourning the band is going through for its late drummer Taylor Hawkins, who passed away suddenly in March 2022 at the age of 50 while on tour with the band in Colombia.
The song opens with lyrics like, “Sun goes down, windows wide, one step closer to the other side” with famous frontman Dave Grohl's face silhouetted against a dark tree with the sun setting in the night sky behind him.
Other lines hint at the fleeting nature of existence, with poetic words like “Hurry now boy, time won’t wait, the here and the now will separate. There are some things you cannot choose, soul and spirit moving through.” Grohl's stream-of-consciousness meditation on grief continues throughout the verses: “Two cold stones on a riverbed, ripped and torn, cannot mend. Old white candles on a dusty porch, one flame down, another born.”
The messy, extended track feels like a commentary on the complicated ways grief comes and goes in waves, and the difficult emotions it brings up. Grohl clearly had a close friendship with Hawkins. Certain lines are poignantly repeated throughout the song: “You showed me how to breathe, but never showed me how to say goodbye. You showed me how to be, but never showed me how to say goodbye. Every page turns, it’s a lesson learned in time. You showed me how to breathe, but never showed me how to say goodbye.”
Foo Fighters recently announced a new drummer for the band, but this album features Dave Grohl exclusively behind the kit, with this song in particular playing like a bittersweet goodbye to their beloved friend and drummer Taylor Hawkins. The full new album But Here We Are will be available on June 2nd.
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