Best Moments From NYC Underplay

“I feel like we should play some old-school s–t,” Grohl told the crowd with excitement as the band took the stage. “Let’s start out with the oldest school we’ve got.” To open, Grohl busted out “Winnebago,” which he initially wrote and recorded for his Nirvana-era solo project Late! and then rerecorded during the sessions for the Foo Fighters’ debut. That version of the song appeared as the B-side for the debut’s closer “Exhausted” – which Grohl trotted out as the encore’s penultimate song, explaining that it used to close the band’s early shows.

And the crate-digging wasn’t confined to Foo Fighters’ oldest material. “We got a deep cut – who wants a deep cut?” Grohl said a few songs into the show before unexpectedly launching into “La Dee Da,” an album track from 2017’s Concrete & Gold, and the only song from that album the Foos played on Friday.

It’s a testament to the band’s deep catalog and staggering commercial success that although it played five Alternative Airplay No. 1s at Irving Plaza, it left seven on the table – and that while the setlist contained 14 Alternative Airplay top 10s, 20 other Foo Fighters songs with that distinction remained unplayed.

“We’re gonna do something we didn’t do for a long time,” Grohl said as the band returned to the stage for its five-song encore, introducing “A320,” from the soundtrack to 1998’s Godzilla. “Anybody see that masterpiece? Listen, I love Matthew Broderick just as much as the next guy…

“We recorded this song and then we were SO excited it was gonna be in the Godzilla movie,” Grohl continued, turning to longtime Foos guitarist Pat Smear. “We went to the movie theater while we were on tour, do you remember that? We were in the Midwest somewhere. I don’t think I’d ever gone to a movie theater on tour in my life. And we sat through that entire, three-hour, um… epic. And we were like, ‘S–t, they didn’t put our song in!’ And it was at, like the tail-end of the credits. So we’re bringing it back.”

It was the fourth time the band has played the rarity this year – but only the eighth time in its history, because its 2026 revival follows a 25-year hiatus.

For all the pomp that defines the Foo Fighters today, Grohl still cherishes his punk roots. After eight songs, he told fans he loved “the enthusiasm” but to make sure that nobody got hurt.

“The second time I saw Iggy Pop play, I was like, ‘I’m gonna do a stage dive!’” Grohl reminisced. “I f–king grew up doing stage dives. And I got all the way to the front of the f–king venue, and I jumped to the middle of the barrier, and two security guys dragged me outside and f–king opened the door with my head. And they were about to kick my ass, and I was like, ‘I’m out! I’m out!’ The end.”

Grohl then thanked the audience for standing in line to get the show’s coveted tickets, and sharing the unusually intimate evening with the band. “This oddly feels much more at home and familiar to us,” he said – before adding, in a classic bit of Grohlian puckishness, “This is our last song,” some two hours before the concert actually ended.

Foo Fighters played six of the 10 songs from Your Favorite Toy, and it was remarkable just how neatly they slotted in with the band’s classics. Many have hailed the album as a “return to form” – a bit of an oversimplification of Foo Fighters’ creative evolution and offering over the last couple decades – but it’s undeniable this is the band’s most straightforward, no-frills material since at least 2011’s Wasting Light. And it bodes well for Foo Fighters’ upcoming festival and stadium dates that, even if highlights like “Caught in the Echo,” “Of All People” and “Spit Shine” reverberated through Irving Plaza with punk ferocity, it was easy to imagine them echoing similarly into the upper decks of the world’s biggest venues.

Four years after his death at age 50, longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins still looms over Foo Fighters. Midway through the set, as the band kicked into 2011 power ballad “These Days,” Grohl smiled in agreement when a fan yelled the late drummer’s name.

“I’m glad whoever it was shouted Taylor’s name,” Grohl said after the following song, another 2011 power ballad, “Walk.” Prior to the show, he explained, an old friend had been showing him Foo Fighters pictures from 20 years earlier.

“Sometimes it feels like no time has passed at all; sometimes it feels like it’s been a f–king lifetime,” he reflected as the band geared up for emotional fan favorite “Aurora,” from 1999’s There Is Nothing Left To Lose. “But, every time we do this song, we do it for Mr. Taylor Hawkins.”

You can take the band out of the stadium, but you can’t take the stadium out of the band. For every Grohl promise of a deep cut – which, to be clear, he delivered on in spades – the band had corresponding megahits. “This is not a deep cut,” Grohl said during the iconic introduction to 2007’s “The Pretender,” still the longest-running Foo Fighters Alternative Airplay No. 1.

As fans began to wave their arms to the music, Grohl encouraged them: “You can use stadium hands! That’s what I call them, stadium hands.

“You know, sometimes I ask the audience if they love rock and roll music,” he continued. “I’m not gonna ask you if you like rock and roll music, because you’ve got f–kin’ stadium hands right now!”

For “The Pretender,” and so many other cuts throughout the night, the crowd of superfans raged, turning the club’s floor into a mosh pit. “Jesus f–king Christ!” Grohl yelled in genuine amazement when the song ended.