Dave Grohl had the title locked in. The song was called "For Good," the album was going to be called For Good, and the reasoning was right there in the lyrics. Then Jon M. Chu's Wicked sequel arrived in theaters.
"I was so pissed," Grohl told Radio X's John Kennedy in a recent interview.
The song in question, now called "Your Favorite Toy," contains the line "Someone threw away your favorite toy for good." Grohl said the phrase worked on multiple levels as an album title. When Wicked: For Good opened in November, that reading evaporated. He changed the song's title and the album title followed.
Wicked: For Good was the second half of Chu's two-part adaptation of the Broadway musical, starring Erivo and Grande. Chu explained his own title decision to Variety, saying the creative team had always referred to the film internally by the name of its penultimate musical number. "Who wants a movie called Wicked: Part Two?" he said. The title, in his framing, was about direction and destination.
The collision between those two decisions left Grohl without the name he wanted for Foo Fighters' 12th studio album.
Your Favorite Toy was released in April and marked the band's return after a turbulent period that included the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022. Grohl described the title track as the creative pivot point for the entire record. "We stumbled upon it after experimenting with different sounds and dynamics for over a year, and the day it took shape I knew that we had to follow its lead," he said in a statement. "It was the fuse to the powder keg of songs we wound up recording for this record. It feels new."
The band announced the album in February when they shared the title track. Grohl called it the key that set the tone for everything that followed.
Foo Fighters will play the Welcome to Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, Florida on May 8, followed by Bottlerock Napa Valley on May 23 before a run of European dates. They return to North America for a show at Toronto's Rogers Stadium on August 4, with dates running through late September.