A protest song wired for the present—John Fogerty straps “Fortunate Son” to a modern engine with the Foo Fighters, and the old spark catches fresh fire.
Start with the essentials that anchor this duet in time. In 2013, Fogerty revisited his Creedence catalog on the collaborative album Wrote a Song for Everyone, and he put “Fortunate Son (with Foo Fighters)” in pole position—track one, running 3:29. The album arrived on May 28, 2013 (Fogerty’s 68th birthday) and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, his highest U.S. album entry since Centerfield in 1985. In other words: this version wasn’t a standalone single with its own chart line, but it led a record that reintroduced Fogerty’s songs to a broad, multigenerational audience the week it came out.
The story behind this cut is as straightforward—and as satisfying—as an old V-8 catching on the first turn. Fogerty cut the track with the Foo Fighters at their Studio 606, letting the band play like a band: Taylor Hawkins on drums, Nate Mendel on bass, and an all-guitars front—Dave Grohl, Chris Shiflett, Pat Smear, and Fogerty himself—stacked across the stereo field. Hawkins and Shiflett add background vocals; the mix, by Bob Clearmountain, leaves the rhythm section unvarnished and the guitars right up under your hands, the way CCR records always felt on a dashboard speaker.
If you heard the original 1969 single through a tiny transistor—or in a movie theater decades later—you know its conscience: a class cry, not a shot at soldiers. Fogerty has said it again and again, and this remake doesn’t walk that back; it underlines it. The New Yorker caught the feel exactly when it called this album opener a “pile-driving” take—heavier, yes, but faithful to the song’s moral backbone, that refusal to let privilege write the bill that other people have to pay. What changes here isn’t the message—it’s the muscle. The Foos lean into the backbeat and let the riff grind a little lower, so the lyric’s grit flashes against fresh chrome.
For older ears, the meaning lands where it always has: in the plain words and the way the melody carries them. “It ain’t me.” Four syllables you can sing with your jaw set, and a chorus that feels like a hand laid, steady and sure, on a younger shoulder. Fogerty writes in pictures—“senator’s son,” “millionaire’s son”—and you can still see the marble and the polish. The Foo Fighters don’t decorate those lines; they underline them. Hawkins sits just ahead of the beat, Mendel anchors the low end without fuss, and the guitars argue and agree the way bar bands do when the room is on their side. It’s the rare remake that restores a song rather than repainting it.
There’s craft worth savoring, too. This isn’t plug-and-play nostalgia; it’s old-school record-making. The session at Studio 606 (and the album’s meticulous credits) tells you what you’re hearing: live players, minimal studio perfume, and a mix that privileges impact over gloss. You can hear Clearmountain’s hand in the balance—snare that speaks, rhythm parts that breathe, Fogerty’s vocal riding the crest without getting swallowed by the roar. Put on headphones and you’ll catch the small camaraderie: a shouted count-in ghosting the intro, harmony scraps tucked behind a chorus—human details that make a canonical song feel present tense again.
And then there’s the context of its release. By placing this track first on Wrote a Song for Everyone, Fogerty wasn’t just courting recognition; he was staking a claim. The album—a guest-list celebration that Rolling Stone later named one of 2013’s 50 Best—wasn’t meant to “improve” the old records so much as re-inhabit them with friends who grew up under their spell. That it entered the chart at No. 3 simply confirmed what listeners already knew: these songs still work in the air of the present, and this one, especially, keeps finding its audience.
Play “Fortunate Son (with Foo Fighters)” now and the years compress. The lyric’s target—entitlement dressed up as patriotism—hasn’t aged out, and neither has the groove. What’s changed is the frame: a veteran songwriter standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a band that came of age decades later, proving the fuse still burns bright. For those who first met this song on AM radio, the remake carries a quiet grace—you can feel the old pulse, but you also hear new hands keeping time. That’s how great music keeps its promises. It remembers where it came from, and it learns how to speak to the room it’s in. John Fogerty did both here, and with the Foo Fighters in the room, “Fortunate Son” sounds exactly like what it’s always been: a working-class truth set to a beat that refuses to sit down.