Skip to main content

Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl performs at the Virgin Festival in Toronto September 6, 2008.Yvonne Berg/The Globe and Mail

To say that Foo Fighters front man and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl is not a fan of televised singing contests is like saying Simon Cowell is only a tad prickly.

"When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice , then they think, 'Oh, okay, that's how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight f****** hours with 800 people at a convention centre and then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it's not f****** good enough.' Can you imagine?" he said to Sky magazine back in March.

The rant has suddenly gone viral. Grohl continued: "It's destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old f****** drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they'll suck, too. And then they'll f******* start playing and they'll have the best time they've ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they'll become Nirvana. Because that's exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some s***** old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-a** s***, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don't need a f****** computer or the Internet or The Voice or American Idol ."

Grohl's broadside has been burning up Twitter in past few days, where users have called it, "Just too good" and others have said, "This is why I love Dave Grohl."

Grohl obviously had singing contests on his mind back in March. In his keynote speech at the SXSW festival he implored musicians to find their voice and "Cherish it. Respect it. Stretch it and scream until it's gone." You aren't going to find your voice on The Voice , he added.

That same month he took another swipe at singing contests in an interview with NME.

"I swear to God, if my daughter walked up onstage and sang her heart out and some f****** billionaire looked at her and said, 'No, I'm sorry you're not any good,' I'd f****** throttle that person, I swear to God. Who the f*** are you to say what's good or bad?"

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe