Violet Grohl has taken aim at male musicians with “attitude problems”.
The 19-year-old singer-songwriter, daughter of Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl, recently spoke to The Forty-Five about her upcoming debut album, ‘Be Sweet To Me’ – out May 29 via Auroura Records/Republic/Island.
One of the record’s tracks, ‘Cool Buzz’, takes aim at the hypocrisy of men in the hardcore scene, who Violet said hide behind a progressive veneer, but don’t welcome women into their spaces.
“It still feels like an exclusive scene,” she said. “Especially when you wanna listen to really hardcore shit and run around and mosh, there’s a lot of ‘Oh, you’re too delicate, you’re too feminine, this isn’t your place.
“But I do wanna be in that space, and I know there are a lot of other girls who want to be there too. So I think more girls should make punk music, if these spaces aren’t gonna allow it.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, she touched on being dismissed as a “nepo baby” and spoke about the importance of her friendships with female musicians, in particular with Persia Numan (daughter of synth-pop legend Gary Numan), who she collaborated with on ‘What’s Heaven Without You’.
Having spoken warmly about her kinship with Persia Numan and Dora Jar, Grohl then said turned her attention to her male peers, saying: “I don’t like male musicians my age.”
“I don’t care,” she continued. “They have attitude problems. They’ve been saying this about us for so fucking long – it’s time that they sit down, be quiet and play their music.
“The best advice I’ve been given is that it’s OK to say no or that you don’t want to do something,” she said. “For a lot of women, it took them a really long time to accept and implement that into their lives. It’s inspiring to be around the kinds of people who don’t give a fuck and will say whatever they feel.”
In the same interview, Grohl – who was recently added to the line-up for Reading & Leeds 2026 – urged her doubters to attend her shows, saying: “Come listen to my music and then you can decide for yourself if I’m worthy of this career or not. This is my passion, this is my thing, and it’s all I want to do.”
She also recalled performing with the surviving members of Nirvana – Dave, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear – at the Fire Aid benefit concert in LA last year.
Violet looked back on when she first realised she wanted a music career, saying: “It was around the time I started singing backing vocals for my Dad. It was such a crazy experience.”
She also spoke about how she had been “following Billie Eilish since the beginning”, adding: “Watching her open up this path for female musicians in this alternative pop space that’s still beautiful, it was just so incredible to me.”
Violet began hitting the road with Foo Fighters in 2018, providing backing vocals at numerous gigs. She performed with them at the tribute concerts held for late Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022, too, and featured on the band’s 2023 song ‘Show Me How’. Violet appeared with Foo Fighters at that year’s Glastonbury to perform the track.
She released a cover version of ‘Nausea’, originally by Los Angeles punks X, alongside her father Dave in 2021. The Foos frontman credited his daughters for introducing him to Eilish in 2019. Then, in 2022, Dave said Violet and her generation would “create the next revolution”.
Later in the new interview, Violet discussed deciding that she wanted to focus on “alternative rock music” for her own project, after teaming up with producer Justin Raisen (Kim Gordon, Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira).
“That’s what felt right to me at that time of my life,” she said. “And we just had this weird telepathic thing.”
Dave previously expressed his desire to appear on Violet’s first album. Earlier this year, he revealed that he had “no idea” that his daughter had signed a record deal until she told him at dinner.
“She made this album with a producer named Justin Raisen, and she did it on her own,” he explained. “She met the producer, and they would go to the studio every day and she would send me songs when she was finished. But I had absolutely nothing to do with this record at all.”
He added: “So, I’m totally uninvolved. I’m the dad who wants to be there and know everything. And she’s just totally doing her own thing. It’s amazing.”
Violet signed a major record deal at the start of this year, and shared the songs ‘Thum’ and ‘Applefish’. In March, she released the single ‘595’, which was “inspired by a vintage t-shirt advertising a phone sex line”.
The singer is yet to announce any UK headline dates in support of the forthcoming ‘Be Sweet To Me’.
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