Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl talked with Billboard about the health of rock & roll and how awesome 2011 was for their band. Here's my favorite segment.

When you come out of your "bubble" and deliver these massive hits, does it surprise you that radio gets behind it and people respond the way they do?

You have to understand, we're a really simple band. We think we suck and we try really hard to make good records and we practice. We don't feel like the biggest, best band in the world. We just feel like the same five dorks that were touring in a van 17 years ago, that hasn't changed. But there was a time about 10 years ago when we would get asked to come play an awards show or a radio festival or something like that and we'd show up and be the only rock band. Here we're on a bill with pop artists like Pussycat Dolls or some new rapper and then we get up and beat the shit out of our instruments. And I started wondering, "Why are we even here?" I wondered if they just needed a "rock band" -- "Who's a rock band? Call the Foo Fighters." Then I started thinking maybe we actually represent something to people, maybe when they hear the name "Foo Fighters" they just think rock'n'roll, and I thought, "Wow, that's cool." Then over the years playing shows I'd look out at the audience and see kids with Nirvana shirts and their parents with Foo Fighters shirts -- which seems upside down -- and I'd see moustaches and kids at their first rock concert. Our audience became so diverse I thought, "Man, they just want to see a rock show." Go see Bruce Springsteen. Go see Tom Petty, AC/DC, Roger Waters, any of these people. Go see Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. I went to see Soungarden four or five months ago; I didn't stand in the VIP section, I ran down and got crushed in front of the stage and danced around sweaty with a bunch of people I didn't know for an hour and 45 minutes.

I don't think there's anything wrong with rock at all. It's overlooked. And right now, the current musical climate is not unlike it was back in 1991, right before Nirvana [Grohl's former band] got popular. The late '80s was full of over-produced pop that kids had nothing to grab hold of -- they had no way of connecting to this hair metal band singing about fucking strippers in a limousine on Sunset Boulevard. Who can relate to that? Then you had a bunch of formulaic pop songstress bullshit, and music was boring. And then a bunch of bands with dirty kids got on MTV and rock'n'roll became huge again. And I feel like that's about to happen. Something's got to give. It can't be song contests on television for the rest of our lives. It can't be the same playlists on every radio station for the rest of our lives. It can't be music made entirely by computers with people talking over it the rest of our lives. It can't go that way, it just won't.

You can read the rest of the Q&A here.

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Rise Against and some other artists were twitter-hacked by supporters of Republican candidate for president Ron Paul. Rise Against eventually deleted the tweet and eventually commented, "As you would all assume, We DO NOT support Ron Paul."  No Doubt and Nicole Scherzinger's twitter accounts also posted pro-Ron Paul messages. Billboard observed that each of these artists are signed to Interscope Records, which may or may not be a coincidence.

Depeche Mode co-founders Martin Gore and Vince Clarke announced their first collaboration since Clarke left Depeche Mode after the group's first album. The techno-leaning VCMG put out the Spock EP late last year. Their debut full-lengthSsss should drop March 13.