Foo Fighters is the eponymous debut studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on July 4, 1995 by Roswell and Capitol Records. Dave Grohl wrote and recorded the entire album himself, apart from a guest guitar spot by Greg Dulli, with the assistance of producer Barrett Jones at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle, Washington, in 1994. He claimed that he recorded the album just for fun, describing it as a cathartic experience to recover from the death of Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain.
After Grohl completed the recordings, he chose the name "Foo Fighters" for the project to hide his identity, and passed cassettes copies of the sessions to personal friends. When the tapes attracted record label interest, Grohl signed with Capitol and recruited a full band to perform the songs live. The album was promoted through extensive tours and six singles, two of which received music videos.
Upon its release, Foo Fighters earned positive reviews, praising its songwriting and performances, and was also a commercial success, becoming the band's second-best-selling album in the United States. It also peaked within the top five of charts of United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Following the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in April 1994, drummer Dave Grohl entered a state of depression, and found it difficult to both listen to music and play instruments. He was uncertain of what to do next, even considering abandoning his musical career despite a few invitations by bands such as Danzig or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to become their drummer, because "it would just remind me of being in Nirvana; every time I sat down at a drum set, I would think of that."
Grohl's first musical performance following the demise of Nirvana was performing with The Backbeat Band at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards in June, during which he was invited by Mike Watt to take part in his album Ball-Hog or Tugboat?. After enjoying the performance, Grohl figured he could do his own musical project, which could work as "some sort of cathartic therapy, to go out and record these songs that I'd written by myself." Grohl afterwards booked six days at Seattle's Robert Lang Studios, which were located near his house, where he would record "my favorite songs I had written in the past four, five years that no one had heard" with the assistance of producer Barrett Jones, with whom he had recorded the demo tape Pocketwatch in 1992. The idea was to have Grohl playing all instruments and release it under a name that would make people believe it was a band, similar to Stewart Copeland's Klark Kent.