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Aug 22, 2023

What ties the songs on 'Songs for the Deaf' together?

In 2002, Queens of the Stone Age shared their third album, Songs for the Deaf, which shot the band to mainstream success. The record, which features Dave Grohl on drums, is a masterclass in desert

In 2002, Queens of the Stone Age shared their third album, Songs for the Deaf, which shot the band to mainstream success. The record, which features Dave Grohl on drums, is a masterclass in desert rock, with the band providing endless heavy riffs and blinding vocal performances. While frontman Josh Homme takes the lead on most tracks, bassist Nick Oliveri and Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan also lend their voices, giving the record an expansive feel.

In fact, the record was made with the intention of honing “diversity”, according to Homme. Songs for the Deaf features snippets from fictional radio stations at the beginning or end of certain songs, designed to emulate a variety of stereotypical stations. Thus, the listener is meant to treat the album as the soundtrack to a desert drive, with the songs appearing on different stations that play throughout the journey.

He explained: “I’ve been thinking of this album since the first album, not necessarily the radio thing, but to me that isn’t the full concept, the full concept is the diversity of it all, I think we’re supposed to be pushing buttons over the three records. I’ve always looked at our first three records as a set: the first one was to distance ourselves from Kyuss, the second album fanned out the music into different areas and this one takes that out even a little further, I think.”

Homme also claimed that the use of radio snippets gave the album better “fluidity”, allowing his smooth vocals to sit nicely alongside the more abrasive Oliveri or Lanegan numbers.

On the opening track, ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire’, we’re introduced to DJ Kip Kasper, who states: “We play the songs that sound more like everyone else than anyone else,” before Oliveri begins his growling screams of “give me Toro, Gimme some more”. However, at the end of the next track, ‘No One Knows‘, a Spanish-speaking DJ introduces the next song, ‘First It Giveth’, calling the station the place where “the rock lives and does not die.”

According to Oliveri, the radio snippets were partly used to poke fun at “how a lot of stations play the same thing over and over. We don’t get played on the radio, so I figure we should talk shit about them.”

However, the stations are also used to great effect. For example, before ‘God Is In The Radio’ plays, a Christian station flits in and out of earshot. Subsequently, we hear Lanegan challenge the ideas held by many religious fundamentals, who often believe in the notion of music being used to channel messages from the devil.

Songs for the Deaf is arguably the band’s greatest work, demonstrating Queens of the Stone Age’s ability to make an entire record full of rock anthems, which they continue to play to adoring fans over 20 years later.