On Aug. 27, 2002, rock band Queens of the Stone Age released their third album, Songs for the Deaf. This was Queens of the Stone Age’s true first hit, placing 17th on Billboard charts and skyrocketing the popularity of the band. Songs for the Deaf is a hard-hitting mix between rock and metal, creating what many fans call ‘desert rock’, accomplishing the dry, arid feel from music alone. 

This album also reinvented concept albums, where each song fits into a story rather than just fitting into an album. Songs for the Deaf is about the road trip back from a Kyuss concert, the band that many members of Queens of the Stone Age come from, including Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri and Alfredo Hernández. This album includes Dave Grohl on many tracks, incorporating his hard-hitting drums. Each song represents a point in the road trip, from downtown Los Angeles to Joshua Tree. In this article, I will be going through the most prominent songs throughout the album, explaining their meaning and significance.

The most popular song by Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”, is a cornerstone of their career. The combination of Josh Homme’s vocals, Dave Grohl’s drums and Mark Lanegan’s bass instantly made this a classic in QOTSA’s discography. “It’s a Mystery”, Josh Homme said in an interview with MTV when asked about the meaning behind “No One Knows”.  “It's kind of almost Beatle-esque with a driving beat, and it’s kind of jumpy.” Yet the lyrics nod to some sort of hallucination-- the type hallucination that you see when you’re stuck in the desert heat for too long. The true meaning of this song may never be known, but maybe that's the whole point of it.

“First it Giveth, Then it taketh away.” The main repeating lyric in this song talks about drug usage-- the idea that it gives you everything you want, just before taking everything away. Drug usage is fairly common in the music industry. It is how most popular artists (especially from the 1970s through the '90s) ran. "First It Giveth" is also an altered quote from the Bible. In Job 1:21, Job writes that, even after God had taken his children, his livestock and his home away, he still praised him. Job explained that he came into this world naked and with nothing, and that he will leave this world naked and with nothing. The only true gift he had was God. The instrumental to "First It Giveth" is fast and hard; the grainy guitar backs up Josh Homme’s singing perfectly, not to mention the double pedal work from Dave Grohl on the drumset. This song is widely renowned as one of the best from QOTSA’s discography.

This song starts off with an eerie sound, right before hitting the listener like a freight train. Homme provides haunting background vocals while guest singer, Mark Lanegan sings harshly on top. This song deals with death in an abstract way. Mark addresses both the contemplation of death and the struggle of life’s journey, interpreting it as a high-speed escape from the inevitable. The track is titled “Song For The Dead” because Josh Homme said it is so heavy that even the dead could hear it. Mark Lanegan put his mark on this album, and is known as a fan favorite.

According to an interview by Greg Prato of Song Facts with Nick Oliveri, bass player for Queens of the Stone Age, “We put the music together and Josh did those lyrics on the fly. Changed them a couple of times, but pretty much did that on the fly. 'Close your eyes and see the sky is fallin'." Homme sings about the world ending right in front of him, specifically the sky falling right in front of him, but he simply is in bliss and does not care. The instrumental switches between melodic vocals and hard-hitting guitar/drums. This song was almost scrapped from Songs for the Deaf, almost being chosen in favor of Nick Oliveri’s song “Open Up And Bleed For Me”, though they ultimately made the decision to choose Homme’s “The Sky is Fallin”.

The bang of this album, “Six Shooter” is only 1 minute and 19 seconds long, though it is hard, fast and heavy. The whole point of this song was to be an explosion to get listeners to the next melodic song, an almost filler track to this album. Even if it is such a short song, it is definitely one of my favorites. “Six Shooter” brings back Kyuss for one track, sounding almost exactly like “Green Machine”, a heavier metal track released in 1992 on “Blues for the Red Sun” by Kyuss. 

This self-titled track is one of, if not the heaviest, most aggressive tracks on the album. Mark Lanegan, who wrote this song along with Josh Homme mentioned that “A Song for The Deaf” should be so loud that even the deaf could hear it. Mark and Josh wrote the lyrics, almost acting as ignorant by getting blindness mixed up with deafness. Acting as someone who thinks they understand the world but truly knows nothing. According to Lanegan, he was going for a “deaf, dumb, and blind kind of thing.” “A Song for the Deaf” ends with a male radio station host who signs off, ultimately ending the album with a radio station being shut off.

Though “A Song for the Deaf” is the formal ending to the album, there is one last acoustic track, titled “Mosquito Song”. Josh Homme sings in a melodic tone, not like on other songs from QOTSA’s album, more like Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This track also has Dean Ween playing guitar-- playing a more acoustic and mellow track. The string section in the background plays an almost buzzing sound, like mosquitoes surrounding you. Homme sings lyrics about the circle of life, mosquitoes using humans as nothing but food, at some point, putting us down into the ground, reincorporating us into the soil of the earth. 

Sources: 

• American Songwriter - Josh Homme and the meaning of "No One Knows"

• Song Facts interview with Nick Oliveri