Thousands of rock fans packed into Daytona International Speedway this weekend as Welcome to Rockville returned with another stacked lineup.
But among the festival’s most anticipated performances was the Foo Fighters, who took the stage Friday, May 8, fresh off a major Billboard milestone.
While their performance was slightly pushed back due to typical Florida weather delays, the band’s set blended newer material from their new album Your Favorite Toy with the staples fans have spent decades screaming along to. In addition to classics like “My Hero” and “Everlong,” the group also performed newer tracks, including “Window,” “Your Favorite Toy,” and “Of All People.”
“We played shows before where the weather f*cked it up, and everyone goes back to their cars and they wait it out,” frontman Dave Grohl said to the crowd. “And I sit here, and I think about it, and I’m like, ‘I wonder if they’ll all come back,’ …and I’m so f**king happy you guys came back.”
The appearance came just days after the Foo Fighters earned their eighth No. 1 album on Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart with Your Favorite Toy. According to Billboard, the album moved 27,000 units in its first week following its April 26 release. The band is tied with Pearl Jam for the second-most No. 1 albums in the chart’s history, behind only Linkin Park.
On Your Favorite Toy, many fans have zeroed in on “Of All People” for its raw sound. The track leans heavily into the gritty energy of the underground punk scene that exploded in Los Angeles during the 1980s, a sound that would later influence both grunge and bands like Nirvana and Foo Fighters themselves.
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The album also marks the band’s second full-length release since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins.
As for Welcome to Rockville itself, the festival has quietly become one of the biggest rock events in the country, evolving from a small one-day gathering in 2011 into a four-day Daytona Beach destination that now draws hundreds of thousands of fans each year.
This year’s lineup leaned heavily into the kind of bands that dominated rock radio and MTV in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Alongside Foo Fighters, major acts included My Chemical Romance, Guns N’ Roses, and Alice Cooper, while artists like The Offspring, Turnstile, and Simple Plan rounded out the nostalgia-packed bill.
