Well the conversation and evening progressed but one thought kept creeping back into my mind. Didn't the Foo Fighters win a Grammy for Best Rock Album at some point during their career? The question consumed me, I was almost sure they had won and I grew increasingly amazed and bewildered that such an 'average' band in my eyes and in the eyes of others I supposed, could win a Best Album Grammy in such a diverse and eclectic genre and somehow do it with a singer that screamed in many songs.

So I looked into it the following day and let's just say I was blown away. The Foo Fighters have six studio albums. All six have been nominated for Rock or Alternative Album of the Year. All six! And they have won three times! What's so crazy about that you ask? Well I have never been able to sit through and listen to an entire FF album without skipping multiple songs. I can't even simply zone out and let songs play through. I literally have to skip them. And even individuals I know as fans of the band have much the same experience, though maybe not as pronounced as my own.

We are talking about a genre with stalwarts such as Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Beck, Coldplay, Bjork, The Flaming Lips, REM, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day. And more recently The White Stripes, Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Each and every one of those bands has put out at least one album, if not multiple albums, that has been phenomenal from the first note to the last. Not just an album with songs that you can 'deal with' or zone out to but albums that were and will continue to be amazing works of art. That to me is the big difference. I have never viewed a FF album as a work of art, yet more then a handful of their contemporaries have produced just that. Works of art. Arcade Fire's Funeral, Coldplay's Parachutes, The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, or five of the seven Radiohead albums to date. And that's the short list.

Below I've compiled a list of some of FF's best contemporaries and included their number of Grammy's for album of the year in these two particular genres. Note the Grammy's frequently move bands back and forth across these two genre's so I included both in my analysis. Also note that in regards to total number of albums I am only counting albums released since 1990 since that is when the first of these two genre's started being awarded. And finally not all winners are included, for example Sheryl Crow.

What is also interesting to take note of is the number of actual nominations each band has received. Though this information is difficult to find. The biggest loser once this info is taken into account though is Bjork. She has been nominated five times and each time has come away empty handed. And for those of you who might question the inclusion of newbies Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, know that both have been nominated twice but have run into the buzz saw known as The White Stripes three times and Gnarls Barkley once collectively. The only band on the above list that has never actually received an Album of the Year nomination is Incubus even though they have produced six albums that are far and away more artistic, more cohesive, and simply better then the six produced by the FF.

But that still doesn't tell me why or how the Foo Fighters are actually winning all these awards among such serious competition. From the limited information I can find I don't think any band has had such an enormous number of albums nominated when compared to the Foo's and perhaps the chosen competition has been weak during the award ceremony but I don't think that explains it all. It left me wondering if they were in fact more popular then I suspected and if perhaps that had something to do with it. So using the below MySpace data regarding page views, song plays and fans maybe we can gleam some other insights. Data is presented in a per day basis using total numbers versus the number of days each individual account has existed. Radiohead and REM are incalculable because of missing account creation data and Bjork does not have an account.

As you can see the Foo Fighters are certainly among the most popular and take home the number three position. Amazingly though, the one group without any Album of the Year nominations was the clear winner using the MySpace metrics, Incubus.

But there is one thing that the Foo's have that Incubus or anyone else for that matter, doesn't. A direct connection to the genesis of alt/rock, Nirvana. A band that changed music but because of their untimely demise, a band that never had a chance to continue their metamorphosis and fulfill their promise of becoming one of the best of all time. I can't help but think that David Grohl, an amazing drummer but an average singer and songwriter, has somehow managed to usurp those dreams of greatness and mask his new band as Nirvana 2.0 in the publics' subconscious for all these years. A cleaner, smoother, more shiny and poppy version of the forevermore, infinitely sustained ideal that was Nirvana. Something the mass public can grip a little tighter without being so scared of what it might see. Thus catapulting them to a level of commercial and critical success they otherwise would never have attained. Their Grammy's are really homage's to Nirvana that have gone way too far. And I don't think Cobain would have been proud to receive a Grammy for an album the likes of which the Foo Fighters have won for. Unfortunately for us music fans we were robbed of the opportunity of seeing where Cobain would have taken Nirvana. Not only that but we are also missing out on what life would be like if the Foo Fighters supposed greatness wasn't shoved down our throats.