Song Of The Week: 3/25/12

Song: "Better Living Through Chemistry"

Artist: Queens Of The Stone Age

Album: "Rated R"

Year: 2000



According to Queens Of The Stone Age frontman, Josh Homme, "Better Living Through Chemistry" is an anti-drug song. However, it's not an illegal drugs anti-drug song!! It's more a shot at the government issued drugs, i.e. prozac, etc., that are deemed "okay" to take daily because they are legal and supposedly good for you. Homme stated basically it's like the government telling you it's ok to become an addict on "their" drugs, but God forbid they catch you with marijuana. Queens Of The Stone Age has been a band going back to 1996. Without going so much into the history of the band, which I did on my very last blog post (i've been on a bit of a Queens kick lately!), i'll kind of just go back to the time when the band released their second album "Rated R". In 2000, Queens Of The Stone Age released their second album, "Rated R", which would prove to be a breakthrough album for the band. While not being the mainstream crossover success that the band's 2002 release, "Songs For The Deaf" would be, "Rated R" was the first album for Queens Of The Stone Age to start generating a buzz around the band. People were starting to notice this band from California and their unique style of rock music. It was hard to categorize Queens to any form of music out at the time. They weren't quite grunge, definitely not mainstream rock, perhaps alternative in a sense that they were definitely on to a different sound. Their songs were big time riff orientated, maybe a little Zeppelin-esque without having as much crossover radio appeal. This mesh of styles gave Queens a sound that set them apart which is probably why people started to gravitate to them. It was fresh and new and appealing. "Rated R" would be the first album to feature bassist Nick Oliveri, who played with Homme in their former band Kyuss, as well as the first time Mark Lanegan of The Screaming Trees would appear on a Queens record, a relationship that would last throughout future Queens recordings. In 2010, Homme reworked "Rated R" and re-released it in a "Deluxe Edition" package which included the whole "Rated R" album as well as b-sides and live tracks. Currently, as of November 2011, frequent collaborator Alain Johannes stated that Queens was hard at work in the studio and that he was really excited about some of the things that they were working on, calling it some amazing stuff. So, with that being said, look out for some new material from Queens to be coming out in the near future.