Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	68/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B–
Chicago Tribune
Consequence of Sound	C–
Entertainment Weekly	B
The Guardian
The Observer
NME	7/10
Pitchfork Media	5.6/10
Rolling Stone

Sonic Highways is the eighth studio album by the American rock band Foo Fighters. It was produced by Butch Vig and was released on November 10, 2014, on RCA Records. In writing the album's eight songs, singer and guitarist Dave Grohl traveled to eight cities across the United States to conduct interviews with musicians, recording engineers, record producers, and other individuals discussing each city's musical history, which he used as inspiration for the songs' lyrics. The band and Vig then traveled to a different recording location in each city to record the songs. Each track features contributions from one or more musicians with ties to that city's musical history. The process was filmed for a companion television series, Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways, which was broadcast on HBO in the months surrounding the album's release.

Despite initially announcing a break after supporting Wasting Light, Grohl later stated in January 2013 that the band had started writing material for an eighth studio album. On February 20, 2013, at the Brit Awards, Grohl said he was flying back to America the following day to start work on the next album. In an August 2013 interview with XFM, Grohl announced that their next album was slated for a 2014 release, saying:

"Well, I’ll tell you, we have been in our studio writing and in the past few weeks we’ve written an album and we are going to make this album in a way that no-one’s ever done before and we’re pretty excited about it... It’s a little ways off – it’s not ready to happen right now – but I think next year is going to be a really big year for the Foo Fighters, without question."

According to lead guitarist Chris Shiflett, Grohl would finish the lyrics just before recording his vocals, the last part of each song. This time the compositions would drift away from "love letters and confused relationships" to deal with the feelings Grohl had regarding each city during production.

On September 6, 2013, lead guitarist Chris Shiflett posted a photo to his Instagram account that indicated 13 songs were being recorded for the album. Keyboardist Rami Jaffee recorded parts for three songs, one of which is entitled "In the Way."Butch Vig, who produced the band's prior album, Wasting Light, confirmed he produced Sonic Highways as well. On July 30, 2014, Vig revealed that the band had finished recording and mixing the new album and that it was slated to be released a month after the Sonic Highways TV series. In an August 2014 press release, Grohl spoke about the album, saying: "This album is instantly recognizable as a Foo Fighters record, but there's something deeper and more musical to it. I think that these cities and these people influenced us to stretch out and explore new territory, without losing our ‘sound’."

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Wikipedia