Day After Day #105: No One Knows

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

No One Knows (2002)

Many bands go their entire careers without finding that one song that defines them. In the case of Queens of the Stone Age, a band that has had a long and excellent career, that one song came together on their third album when all the conditions were just right. 

Josh Homme formed QOTSA in 1996 after his previous band Kyuss broke up. Originally called Gamma Ray, the band changed its name after a German power metal band called Gamma Ray threatened legal action. The first two QOTSA albums were recorded with a changing cast of musicians in addition to Homme, receiving good notices from critics and fans. 

For the third Queens album, the core of the band was Homme on vocals and guitar, Mark Lanegan (who Homme briefly toured with as a second guitarist in Screaming Trees), Nick Oliveri on bass and some guy named Dave Grohl on drums (taking a break from his Foo Fighters frontman duties). The conceit of the album was driving from LA to Joshua Tree and hearing different songs on the radio, complete with DJ interludes provided by the likes of Blag Dahlia, Alain Johannes, Natasha Schneider and Jesse Hughes. 

The first single from the album was "No One Knows," and from the first listen it was apparent that this song had something magical about it. Opening with a punchy riff, the song finds Homme singing about a tricky relationship, although he has refused to really explain it.

"We get some rules to follow/That and this, these and those/No one knows/We get these pills to swallow/How they stick in your throat/Tastes like gold/Oh, what you do to me/No one knows."

The song is lean and mean, packing in some furious riffage, Oliveri's driving bass and Grohl's pounding drums as it lurches forward. It's 4 minutes of hot rock groove that hasn't lost any of its power all these years later.

"I journey through the desert/Of the mind with no hope/I follow/I drift along the ocean/Dead lifeboats in the sun/And come undone/Pleasantly caving in/I come undone/And I realize you're mine/Indeed a fool am I."

QOTSA came out of the Palm Desert music scene, but it quickly set itself apart from the stoner rock bands that Kyuss once inspired. Homme fused Krautrock, blues, metal and alternative sounds into a different take on hard rock.

Bolstered by a great video that was co-directed by Michel Gondry, "No One Knows" took MTV and rock radio by storm back when those were still things that had influence over music popularity. The song reached #51 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, #1 on the Alternative Airplay chart and #15 on the U.K. Singles Chart. It's routinely included in the lists of top rock songs of the '00s and top guitar songs of all time. 

Songs for the Deaf was a huge album for the band, breaking QOTSA through to the mainstream and establishing it as a force to be reckoned. Grohl toured with the band on the first leg of its 2002 tour for the album, playing small clubs like the Paradise in Boston that June. I missed that show because I had just become a dad; but I would see them a few more times in the coming years (but not with Grohl, unfortunately). Grohl went back to the Foo Fighters, but honestly, I prefer him playing drums from bands like QOTSA and Them Crooked Vultures (and that other band he was in) than as a frontman.

Queens continued on with different members and lineups for the next few albums, but has featured pretty much the same lineup for the last decade. The band is currently touring in Canada behind last year's In Times New Roman album.

It's no dig on the Homme and the band that their best song came out 22 years and was originally written a few years before that. It's a great goddamn song, pure and simple.