Your Favorite Toy

Your Favorite Toy is Foo Fighters’ twelfth studio album, released April 24, 2026 via Roswell Records/RCA Records. It is the band’s first record with drummer Ilan Rubin, who joined in 2025 following Josh Freese’s tenure after the death of Taylor Hawkins in March 2022.

The album emerged from an intense period of personal upheaval for frontman Dave Grohl, who disclosed entering therapy six days per week for over seventy weeks. Recorded primarily at Grohl’s home studio and Studio 606, the record was made without a click track, inspired by Steve Albini’s stripped-down production ethos. Grohl described the creative process as beginning with forty to fifty solo instrumental recordings, before the band found their footing and completed the album in roughly three to four weeks. Lead single “Caught in the Echo” was described by the band’s press materials as the most explosive album opener since “Bridge Burning” from 2011’s Wasting Light.

The album was reportedly conceived under the working title For Good, before the band changed course to avoid overlapping with the unrelated film Wicked: For Good, settling instead on the title of the record's second single^[1]. On Metacritic the album drew a score of 74 out of 100, reflecting generally favorable reviews. Rolling Stone called it some of the most powerful music the band has made, and Pitchfork described it as the leanest, meanest Foo Fighters record in three decades, while NME favorably compared its raw energy to the band's 1997 breakthrough The Colour and the Shape^[1].

Reception was not uniform. The A.V. Club argued the band sounded like it was flying on autopilot across several tracks, and PopMatters was openly skeptical of Grohl's lyric writing on the album, going so far as to suggest the record might have worked better as a solo project than a full band statement^[2]. Consequence took a more favorable view, noting that where much of the album stays fixed on Grohl's grief and self-examination, tracks like “Amen, Caveman” stand out for turning that introspection outward into a wider reckoning with the world beyond his own life^[3].

Other critics split along similar lines. Loudersound's Mark Beaumont called the record a ferocious reaffirmation of the band's post-grunge power, framing it as a reactive life document that surfaces the marital upheaval Grohl was navigating without ever naming it outright^[4]. Exclaim! was less convinced, describing the album as sonically punishing and short on dynamic range, though it singled out the comparatively restrained, country-blues-inflected "If You Only Knew" as one of the record's few standout hooks^[5].