Violet Grohl talks Foo Fighters fan pressure, women in rock, and debut album 'Be Sweet To Me' • Interview • DIY Magazine

“I don’t know exactly what people are expecting of me, but they’re expecting SOMETHING of me,” Violet Grohl admits with a grin. “I guess I do have a name to live up to, to some extent. I don’t want to let anyone down.”

We have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be an issue. Whether in reference to her dad Dave (who is by all accounts “very supportive”), or the myriad fans ready to use his career as a yardstick against which to measure her forthcoming debut, Violet’s vaguely amused ruminations about filling those Foo Fighters-shaped boots are put to bed almost as soon as she opens her mouth.

On record, she’s a force to be reckoned with, vital and unvarnished. In person - speaking to DIY today, having just wrapped on our shoot at her label’s London studio - she’s a pleasure, both thoughtful and open, humble and humorous. That ‘nicest guy in rock’ reputation runs in the family, it seems; though this is day two of a packed press schedule that will take her from the US to Paris - via the UK - in little more than 72 hours, you get the sense that, after a childhood spent just shy of the spotlight, she’s genuinely enjoying stepping centre stage - on her own terms.

“There definitely is a bit of pressure,” she admits, her scarlet-tipped fingers occasionally reaching for a surreptitious pull of her vape. “I’m kind of a perfectionist and I definitely have Imposter Syndrome when it comes to stuff like this; on the one hand, I’m getting to play live and make music with people, and at the same time my brain is [saying]: ‘you’re not deserving’, or ‘you’re not capable of doing that’. I feel like that’s more the struggle I deal with - currently, at least.”

As for the external noise, she notes that “I try not to tap into that unless it’s valid, from people that matter. It’s [a case of] navigating how I can somewhat appease people or give them listenable music, but also do this for myself. I’m not doing it because of external pressure; it’s an added factor.” Essentially, in a hypothetical world where Violet Grohl was Jane Doe, she’d still find her way to making music? “I really think so,” she says firmly. “Music and dance are universal languages.”

“There definitely is a bit of pressure. I’m kind of a perfectionist and I definitely have Imposter Syndrome when it comes to stuff like this.”

Having first dipped her toe in this world as a younger teenager - she contributed vocals to Foo Fighters’ 2023 single ‘Show Me How’, and memorably joined the band on stage for their 2022 Taylor Hawkins tribute shows - Violet (who’s still only 19) is now gearing up for her artistic debut proper, the gutsy, uncompromising alt-rock of ‘Be Sweet To Me’.

At first glance, its ‘90s-indebted sound feels (unsurprisingly) like the most natural of fits, but she notes that, as a dedicated crate-digger with expansive, genre-indiscriminate taste, the album’s character actually emerged “after a lot of trial and error”. Key to solving this puzzle was producer Justin Raisen, whose collaborators range from Charli xcx to Lil Yachty to Kim Gordon - the latter of whom, in fact, can claim partial credit for sending Violet his way. “My dad went to go see Kim Gordon play in Copenhagen,” she explains, “and after the show he went and hung out with Kim and our manager Gabby, and Justin and I got brought up at some point during the conversation. My dad sent me Justin’s number, and so he and I just started texting and sending music to each other. It fell into place in a really cool way.”

Effusive in her praise for his spot-on touchstones and eclectic CV, Violet recalls an instant connection whereby, after a while spent testing the waters with different producers, “he and I just clicked.” “He was pulling these references - things that are really near and dear to me, or that maybe the average listener might not know - and I just thought: ‘okay, this is who I should be working with’,” she nods, citing his expansive palette as the perfect springboard for in-studio experimentation. “By that point, it had been solidified in my head for a while that I wanted to do alternative music, and when I met Justin I realised there was a perfect opportunity to do so much, because his discography is so broad.”

Practically, too, having Justin by her side in his LA home studio proved invaluable, not least in terms of tempering that pesky perfectionist streak. “It can be really difficult for me to work on my own, because I don’t have anyone to tell me ‘okay, three vocal takes is enough’. [Alone], I’ll get so frustrated with myself that I’ll just shut down and lose motivation for it, so to have people around you giving you ideas or saying ‘that was great’ has helped me let go of that a little bit. I’m definitely not as uptight about stuff like that anymore.” She pauses, then laughingly caveats: “but, you know, I still want my vocal track to sound as good as possible.”

“Obviously there are loads of women in rock and alternative music, but they don’t get portrayed in a way they should be. They don’t get the recognition they deserve.”

The result, then, is a record that leans into the murkier maelstroms of The Breeders or PJ Harvey, but also floats with an atmospheric lightness of touch recalling The Sundays or Mazzy Star. ‘Often Others’, for example, builds into a tidal wave of urgent guitar squalls before crashing to shore; ‘Pool Of My Dreams’, meanwhile, is all woozy synths and soft-edged electronic textures. Epitomising the deft scope of ‘Be Sweet To Me’ is January’s double single ‘THUM’ / ‘Applefish’: an A-side which roars to life with all the winning attitude of early Wolf Alice (who Violet hasn’t yet heard, but gamely promises to give a spin); and a B-side which, we suggest, invokes Elizabeth Fraser’s evocative, ethereal voice (or, indeed, Ellie Rowsell’s).

Violet beams: “I mean, you hit the nail right on the head - she’s one of my biggest vocal influences. Hearing Cocteau Twins for the first time opened up this whole world of alternative music for me that I didn’t really know was there. I think I was 13 when I heard ‘Heaven Or Las Vegas’ for the first time, and I just [thought]: ‘oh my fucking god, this is crazy!’. It’s so beautiful, and so gritty at the same time; the melodies and lyrics are a little nonsensical - in that they don’t go to the places you expect them to - and I just totally fell in love with that.”

If Elizabeth Fraser is her musical North Star, then elsewhere, it’s David Lynch whose light burns brightest, the director’s impressionistic penchant for surrealism and the uncanny a perpetual inspiration for Violet’s own preference of symbolism “that make me feel something very deeply” over “straight storytelling”. “I love art that makes you have to think,” she affirms. “I’m really inspired by movies that you have to watch two or three times to actually understand them; the full picture is there, you just have to look for it.”

In ‘Be Sweet To Me’, this lyrically manifests as tracks which revel in relative ambiguity; rather than spoon-feeding the listener, they zoom in on diverse details (the paranormal activity of ‘Bug In The Cake’, say, or the phone sex line of ‘595’), using them as microcosmic explorations of grief, desire, and identity. Between rhapsodising over Twin Peaks (“I’ve gone back to it five or six times now”) and bemoaning the “fucking miserable” ubiquity of fried attention spans and AI (“Why are we being so blase about it? It’s a scary time for art”), Violet emerges as someone very much cast in the mould of her heroes, interested not in easily digestible, signposting slop, but in expectation-subverting art.

“Some of us are more masculine, and some of us are more feminine, and I feel like lots of cool shit can come from tapping into something that maybe doesn’t feel like your first nature.”

In practice, this looks like the mic-drop dynamic shift of closer ‘Plastic Couch’, or the self-assured rev of ‘Cool Buzz’ - a swaggering sonic eyebrow raise that points out the hypocrisy of men who purport to be progressive, but still close ranks when it comes to accepting women in their professional circles. Across the album’s 11 tracks, she draws on the duality at the core of Soundgarden’s majestic ‘4th Of July’ to play with ideas of power, (mis)perception, and gender.

“I fucking love Chris Cornell so much - his writing and voice are just on another fucking level,” she exclaims. “Because his vocal range was so broad and he stayed up in those high places a lot, I’ve only heard women do good Soundgarden covers. There’s something so spectacular about that; there aren’t many male artists that only a woman can cover, and I feel like [those male artists] had to tap into some part of themselves that’s more gentle, more feminine, more emotional - whatever it might be - to portray that in the way they do.

“Everyone has that balance in them,” she muses, “and it’s important. Some of us are more masculine, and some of us are more feminine, and I feel like tapping into whatever that opposite side might be for you is really special - lots of cool shit can come from tapping into something that maybe doesn’t feel like your first nature.”

For most of her ‘90s forebears, though, masculinity was still de rigueur; the third wave feminism which characterised the decade manifested in the popular imagination as ‘ladette culture’, which saw women take up space by rejecting feminine stereotypes to instead adopt typically male behaviours - unruliness, recklessness, belligerence. 30 years on, and the spectrum of ways in which female musicians are permitted to perform gender and express femininity has undoubtedly widened; Violet cites POPPY as a prime example of someone who “really goes full feminine and makes fucking METAL music”, describing her as “kick-ass”.

And yet, Violet maintains, when it comes to rock/alternative circles, “it doesn’t feel like women have the foot forward. Obviously there are loads of women in rock and alternative music, but they don’t get portrayed in a way they should be.” She lowers her voice, giving it a mocking frat drawl: “‘you’re a chick, but you’re also kind of a dude because you play guitar’.” Those women, she notes, also “don’t get the recognition they deserve”. Take POPPY - “if you mention her to the average person, they might think of ‘Poppy from YouTube’ or whatever, not her screaming, amazing metal music. So I definitely feel that, if no one else is gonna give us that spotlight or give us that narrative, we just have to do it ourselves. You just have to really lean into it all the way and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

A shrinking Violet, this ain’t. There may be more eyes and ears on ‘Be Sweet To Me’ than your typical debut album, but Miss Grohl has already been around the block enough to know there’s one opinion that matters above all else - and no, it’s not his.

‘Be Sweet To Me’ is out 29th May via Auroura Records / Republic Records / Island EMI Label Group.

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