Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has finally conceded defeat in his long-running drum battle with 10-year-old Nandi Bushell.
Across lockdown, the pair have taken part in a series of back-and-forth musical challenges issued to each other.
Bushell, a YouTube star who has been impressing fans for years with her drum covers, was noticed by Grohl after her take on Nirvana‘s ‘In Bloom’ went viral earlier this year.
“She’s beating the crap out of her drum set, and when she does drum rolls, she screams,” Grohl said in a new appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, remembering watching the ‘In Bloom’ cover. “I was like, oh my God, this kid is a force of nature.”
“There was nothing I could do!” Grohl said of the drum battle, which he has now conceded to Bushell. “I was literally being called out by the school bully — ‘I’ll see you on the playground after school!’ Every time she would put out these videos on her page, I’d be like, oh my God, I’m gonna get my ass kicked again.”
After Grohl noticed the ‘In Bloom’ cover, the frontman responded to a challenge posed by Bushell in August, in which the aspiring rocker challenged the 51-year-old to a drum-off through a video she posted of a cover of Foo Fighters’ hit song ‘Everlong’.
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Grohl then composed Bushell her own superhero theme, which Bushell then duly responded to, penning Rock and Grohl – The EPIC Battle’.
In a recent video call organised by the New York Times, the first time Grohl and Bushell had met and spoken in real time, the pair agreed to write a new song together. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you. I feel like I’m meeting a Beatle,” Grohl gushed early in the conversation.
Foo Fighters recently announced details of their 10th album ‘Medicine At Midnight’, and shared new single ‘Shame Shame’.
“This is our Saturday night party album,” Grohl told NME of the new record. “It was written and sequenced in a way that you put on, and nine songs later you’ll just put it on again.”