Some #longreads for your weekend, as we bring “Foo Fighters Week” to a close…

Fulfilling our need to have a #longread specifically on the Foo Fighters, Consequence of Sound takes a look at the career of Dave Grohl for their FACES retrospective.

Speaking of the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl came up in the music controversy of the week, as the industry deals with the fallout of Taylor Swift pulling her music from Spotify.  First, I’d recommend reading this letter from songwriter Aloe Blacc which illustrates how the Spotify business model shortchanges artists, and then taking a look to see that pop artists aren’t the only ones concerned about the streaming service.  Dave Grohl, as per his usual, gave his own opinion on Spotify, which of course was only half-reported in headlines around the internet (the qualifier “But I can understand how other people would object to that” changes the tenor of his response).  Of course, as the frontman of a band that CAN sell out Wembley, he’s in a different spot than a lot of other musicians, so I’d weigh his sentiments with only a grain of salt.

For some reason, I feel this is the right weekend to finally getting around to reading an extended essay on Billy Joel from the New Yorker.

It may be hard for some of our younger readers to believe, but there was a time when Ice Cube was a legitimate musician, but one of the most feared rappers on the planet!  Relive those years at least for a little bit (or experience them for the first time, if that’s the case) with this AV Club look back to his landmark album The Predator.

And finally, with Pink Floyd releasing their first album in decades this week with The Endless River, Pitchfork takes the opportunity to explore the unexpected connection between the prog rock of Floyd and the evolution of punk and other independent music.