The last Foo Fighters album, 2023’s But Here We Are, was a profound act of public grieving, the band’s first music since the tragic death of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins only a year earlier. “Someone said I’ll never see your face again/Part of me just can’t believe it’s true,” Dave Grohl sang on the LP’s determined anthem “Under You.” For a band whose three-decade run has always been marked by how uncannily well-adjusted they seem, seeing them power through such a major loss in real time made for what was arguably the most emotionally intense listen in their discography. That is, until now. The band’s 12th album, Your Favorite Toy, is the next chapter in that story of fighting through grief and looking forward. Yet where its predecessor often had a reflective tone, their latest is about high-energy garage-rock catharsis, getting in a room and blasting away and letting the noise be your guide.
“Do I? Do I? Do I?” Grohl repeats at the start of album-opener “Caught in the Echo,” his voice distorted in a vengeful blur. He’s asking a question, but it feels like a command, indecision as an honest call to arms. The song bangs: The band’s three guitarists lock into a punk-torpedo riff that could’ve come from a Fugazi record, driven forward by new drummer Ilan Rubin. The song builds tension until Grohl’s drill-sergeant “Do I?”s resolve in a more direct question: “Who can save us now?” That’s something he’ll puzzle through on many songs here. “I’m a puddle on the ground,” he admits on the ominously chugging “Window,” before the guitars let in some sun and he’s brightened by seeing the face of someone he loves. On “Your Favorite Toy,” Grohl howls against shallow distractions through a glam-grunge maelstrom, offering a bit of cautionary rock-star wisdom: “Try not to choke on the glitter,” a passing line with deep resonance in his story. Yet when he sings “Ain’t that a pity/Ain’t that a shame,” on the Sabbath-worthy haymaker “If You Only Knew,” he does so mockingly, as if the idea of getting slowed down by the past isn’t an option, at least not for him.
That doesn’t mean the ghosts here aren’t scary. The album’s most poignant song is “Of All People,” in which Grohl runs into a drug dealer who used to sell to the rock & roll elite way back in the day. The song’s Eighties L.A.-punk riff is poignant, evoking that scene’s less-than-zero ethos, and his sense of horror at seeing this person still stalking the streets hits hard. “You know you should be dead/But you’re alive instead,” he sings. The song engages with a universal moral riddle: Why don’t bad things happen to bad people when the good ones so often leave us way before their time? It’s pretty deep stuff for a two-and-half-minute power-pop ripper.
The response to that apparently inescapable problem comes in a song like “Spit Shine,” a burst of seething guitars and dervish drum pummel where Grohl leaps out of the blur to remind us, “Don’t forget, we’re lucky if we get out alive.” Your Favorite Toy can be slashing and scabrous; sometimes it’s downright bleak (as on the moody assessment of fame “Child Actor” or the pessimistic, politically-tinged “Amen, Caveman”). But at 10 fast, extremely catchy songs, it flies by and demands repeat immersion. Songs here that start off surprisingly bracing resolve into big, sleek choruses, the work of firm believers in the power of heroic, high-protein mainstream alt-rock as a salve against encroaching darkness. The album ends with its emotional centerpiece, “Asking for a Friend,” a statement of purpose that starts out at power-ballad speed and ends up racing to the hopeful horizon. “Searching for something to pray/Words I can use/To lay your worry down,” Grohl sings. He’s found those words right here.
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.