Waiting On A War

Foo Fighters released "Waiting On A War" on January 14, 2021, as the third single from Medicine at Midnight. The date was chosen to celebrate frontman Dave Grohl's 52nd birthday. Grohl told NME the sprawling ballad "is the most recognizable song off the album as Foo Fighters."

The song came halfway through the recording process for Medicine at Midnight. It originated from Grohl recalling the worries he had as a child growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC during the Cold War. He explained in a tweet that all the political tension and weaponry scared him into believing America was heading for nuclear war and everyone was going to die in a nuclear holocaust. "I had nightmares of missiles in the sky and soldiers in my backyard, most likely brought upon by the political tension of the early 1980s and my proximity to the nation's capital," he said. "My youth was spent under the dark cloud of a hopeless future."

Another source of inspiration was a bleak conversation Grohl had with his 11-year-old daughter, Harper, in fall 2020. She saw on the news that the US and North Korea were ramping up tensions. The Foo Fighters frontman took her to school that morning and she asked him, "Dad, are we going to war?'" Harper's question reminded Grohl of how he felt when he was her age. "How depressing is it that childhood could be robbed of that beauty and innocence by this dark feeling of dread," he told NME. "So that's what 'Waiting On a War Is About.'"