Learn to Fly

Dave Grohl wrote "Learn to Fly" about wanting to learn how to be a pilot, something he hoped to do at the time. The song was recorded for There Is Nothing Left to Lose, the third Foo Fighters album, and Roswell and RCA released it on October 18, 1999 as the record's lead single. It arrived after a period of change for the band, which had formed in Seattle in 1994 when Grohl, formerly Nirvana's drummer, started the group as a one-man project to release solo material.

The single became the band's first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 19, and gave them their first number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It spent 13 weeks at the top of the Canadian rock radio charts, setting a record, and reached the top 40 in Australia, Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and the United Kingdom. It stayed their highest-charting Hot 100 song until "Best of You" reached number 18 in 2005.

Jesse Peretz directed the music video, a parody of the movie Airplane! and the Airport films, set on a commercial airliner. Jack Black and Kyle Gass played cabin cleaners who hide narcotics labeled "World Domination brand 'Erotic' Sleeping Powder" in the coffee-maker, incapacitating everyone who drinks the coffee. Each band member played himself plus several other roles, with Taylor Hawkins as a flight attendant and Grohl as an FBI agent. The video won Best Short Form Music Video at the 2001 Grammy Awards.