"Grohl added that there was a bigger focus on melodies even in heavier tracks such as "The Pretender", "Let It Die" and "Erase/Replace", and that album closer "Home", a ballad featuring Grohl on the piano, was "the best song I've ever written".The songs of the album are noted for their changing dynamics – with "middle sections [that] turn into this mass orchestrated swarm and ridiculous time signatures" which include musical references to 1970s soft rock bands such as Wings, Eagles and Bread - summed by Hawkins by saying the band "wanted to make sure that everything 'built' on this record, that each instrument started somewhere and went somewhere else in the course of a song".