Songs for the Deaf was the first Queens of the Stone Age album that featured Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters on drums, who also toured with the band. He replaced drummer Gene Trautmann, who started working on other projects. Grohl had admired Queens of the Stone Age since they opened for Foo Fighters, and had wanted to appear on their previous album Rated R.[9] Guitarist Josh Homme, with whom he had been friends since 1992, while Homme was the guitarist for Kyuss, invited him to join in October 2000. Grohl admitted that he had not drummed for a long time and added that fronting a band was "tiring".[10]
Songs for the Deaf was the last appearance on a Queens of the Stone Age record by Brendon McNichol (lap steel) and Gene Trautmann (drums). It was also the last album to feature bassist and vocalist Nick Oliveri as a full-time member, as he was fired following the tour. The album also included the first musical contribution to a Queens of the Stone Age album by multi-instrumentalists Natasha Shneider and Alain Johannes. Shneider and Johannes, alongside Songs for the Deaf touring recruits Castillo and Troy Van Leeuwen of Failure and A Perfect Circle would subsequently become full-time Queens of the Stone Age members and contribute to the follow-up album Lullabies to Paralyze, released in 2005.[citation needed]
Rounding out the core recording lineup of Homme, Oliveri, and Grohl, was singer/songwriter Mark Lanegan, formerly of Screaming Trees, a band that Homme had toured with previously. Lanegan joined the band as a full-time member in 2001 after having guested on the band's previous album, Rated R, and provided additional songwriting and lyrics, in addition to lead vocals on several songs.[citation needed]
Production
Several songs on the album are reworked versions of tracks previously recorded and released in the Desert Sessions, a side project of Homme with various guest collaborators. "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire" was the opening track of Volume 5: Poetry for the Masses (Sea Shed Shit Head by the She Sore), with vocals originally performed by Mario Lalli instead of Oliveri. "Hangin' Tree" first appeared on Volume 7: Gypsy Marches.[11] "Song for the Deaf" and "Go with the Flow" were previously performed as early as 2001 with the former having very different lyrics and vocals completely by Mark Lanegan.[12] The main riff for "No One Knows" comes from the Desert Sessions track "Cold Sore Superstars".[13]
Grohl's drums were recorded in a small, "dead"-sounding isolation booth, to create a "tight, focused, punchy and kind of claustrophobic" sound. To allow for greater flexibility in positioning microphones, the cymbals were recorded separately. To achieve this, Grohl performed each song twice; for the initial pass without cymbals, he hit electronic cymbal pads, then repeated the performance with real cymbals but a dummy snare and padded toms, so only the cymbals made noise. The takes were then blended. The engineer Eric Valentine credited Grohl for his patience in the process, which he described as "very difficult".[14] In October 2001, while the album was being recorded, Grohl said Songs for the Deaf was his favorite album that he had played drums on.[15]
Homme said the use of fake radio segments gave the album "fluidity". Oliveri said they were a jibe 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."[16]
Artwork
The cover art for the US double LP version of the album is different from the CD version, featuring a red Q (with a sperm cell as the line in the Q and an egg cell as the circle) on a black background with no other text. It was released on red vinyl. The UK vinyl version cover is the same as the CD cover except with the colors reversed. The person on the album disc is musician Dave Catching, who performs on the album.[17]
Both the CD and LP cover have a Parental Advisory seal on most copies, due to the word "fuck" appearing in the tracks "Song for the Dead", "Song for the Deaf" and "Six Shooter", as well as for the violent lyrics of the latter track.
There were also three different album covers that were made for the CD version of Songs for the Deaf. All of the interior artwork for each of the three versions is the same, but there were covers printed in red, magenta, and orange. The most common copy of the album sleeve is the red cover.[citation needed]
Release and promotion
In September 2002, Homme explained the band's goals with the release of the album:
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.[18]
The album was planned for release on August 13, 2002,[19] but was postponed for two weeks.[20] Grohl put Foo Fighters on hiatus[21][22] and delayed their upcoming album One by One to October 2002[23] to tour for Songs For the Deaf. His first performance with the band was at March 7, 2002 at the Troubadour, Los Angeles, and his last was at the Fuji Rock Festival on July 28. He returned to Foo Fighters, with Danzig drummer Joey Castillo announced as his replacement in August 2002.[24][25]
Songs for the Deaf was Queens of the Stone Age's breakout album and garnered the band international recognition. Upon its worldwide release in late August 2002, the album peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200 album chart.[37]
Songs for the Deaf received critical acclaim and is often cited as the band's greatest album to date.[38] On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 from aggregated critic reviews, Songs for the Deaf is assigned a score of 89, indicating "universal acclaim",[26] making the album the third highest-rated on the site from 2002.[39]Josh Tyrangiel of Entertainment Weekly called it "the year's best hard-rock album", giving it an A.[29]Splendid said "the bottom line is that QOTSA turns in another genre-demolishing, hard-as-titanium album in Songs for the Deaf. This is not your father's metal. It's better."[40]Mojo listed the album as the year's third best. Kludge ranked it at number six on their list of best albums of 2002.[41]NME placed the album as the sixth best, with the three singles each making the magazine's "Tracks of the Year" list over the course of 2002/2003.[42]Kerrang! rated the album at number 1 on its "Best albums of 2002" list.[43] Music critic Steven Hyden called the album the greatest hard-rock record of the 21st century.[44]
The album earned the band's first gold certification in the US on January 27, 2003, shifting over 500,000 copies. It was certified platinum in the UK on September 20, 2002, with sales exceeding 100,000 copies,[45] and platinum in Canada.[46] As of June 2007 the total amount of sold copies in the US is estimated at 1,186,000, according to Nielsen Soundscan.[7]
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its "Hottest 100" poll, Australian radio station Triple J ran a "Hottest 100 of the last 20 years" poll in June 2013. Songs that were released between 1994 and 2013 were eligible for the poll and "No One Knows" was voted into eleventh position.[49][50]
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
↑ Berger, Arion (August 14, 2002). "Songs For The Deaf". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 30, 2015. Anointed as the new Nirvana in 1998, the California quartet was actually proof of how much the pop scene missed Nirvana. With Songs for the Deaf, the Queens get louder and weirder and let their bone-bred artiness run loose. This is prog grunge for the unpretentious...
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