Queens of the Stone Age - Go with the Flow

I want something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live.

Album: Songs for the Deaf [3rd album]
Recorded: Los Angeles, California
Genre: Rock, Hard Rock, Stoner Rock, Desert Rock
Album Release: August 27th 2002
Single Release: April 7th 2002 [second single]
Length: 3.07
Producer: Josh Homme & Eric Valentine
Vocalist: Josh Homme [age 29]
Label: Interscope

Music Video


Live on Jay Leno in 2003

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (albums): Certified platinum
UK (albums): Certified platinum
UK (singles): Certified gold
USA (albums): #17
USA (albums): Certified gold
Spotify: 220,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 107,000,000 +
Grammy Award Nominee 2004: Best Hard Rock Performance (losing to Evanescence)
MTV Video Music Awards Nominee 2003: Breakthrough Video (losing to Coldplay)
Kerrang Best Albums of 2002: #1

Credits & Gear

Bass, drums, guitar, rhythm guitar, vocals

Details

• 'Songs for the Deaf' was the first QoTSA album to feature Dave Grohl on drums although it's Gene Trautmann playing here.
  
• Singer Josh Homme regularly hosted a series of jams called 'The Desert Sessions' which is where he first came up with a draft of this track. The original didn't have Homme on vocals.
  
• Second song wrote for the album.
• All of the musicians in QoTSA, with the exception of Josh Homme, have at some point been replaced.
• Homme plays his guitar using modified blues scales, with some notes out of key, which creates an unpredictable, down to earth, honest style of music. I say "down to earth" and "honest" because some of the notes are conventionally 'wrong' or technically 'out of key'. It's unpolished and deliberately unprecise in a way that's reminiscent of a bygone era when tools to correctly tune an instrument weren't readily available. Also, through repeated use, older instruments would get bent out of shape and couldn't be tuned to play 'perfectly'. That a successful rock star, who could afford any guitar he wanted, would choose to play an instrument in such a way is perhaps an affectation but it's done with the right intentions, in service of the sound, as a deliberate artistic choice.
  
  In blues music, by tuning the third and seventh notes half a one down, to make them blue, the effect is 'sad' but the way Homme employs it makes it interesting to the ear. If the player knows a note will be 'blue' he can compose the other instruments in a way that's complimentary and the overall effect doesn't sound off unless it was intended.
  
  The rhythm section pulses hard and features tight, repetitve drums played at a high bpm. Homme has described the repetitiveness of the music as a rock version of electronic styles such as trip hop and their music is indeed trippy. Listening to it is like smoking weed in the desert while driving around and breaking the speed limit because you have nothing better to do. I listen to this desert rock and look at Homme's ginger head and find myself no longer surprised that the song sounds as if it was written by someone with heat stroke. It's amazing what a flaming ginger head, talent and an ungodly heat can do.
  
  
• 'Songs for the Deaf' is about a long drive around California and was recorded there. It features the moronic ramblings of fake radio DJs. Bassist and songwriter Nick Olivieri described the skits as "we don't get played on the radio so I figured we should talk shit about them".
  
  
• While QoTSA were touring 'Songs for the Deaf' in the UK an actual group of deaf people turned up expecting songs made especially for them. They had their money refunded. (Josh Homme recounted the story to Q Magazine)
  
  
• The song is ostensibly about a guy in a relationship with a girl who doesn't love him. He knows she uses men for a thrill and is doing the same to him but he can't bring himself to leave her. On a deeper level, it's about how relationships at the turn of the millennium had become shallow. People line up "little soldiers in a row falling in and out of love" for easy romance and easy love only to find that their relationships end just as easily. The singer wants a deeper connection and wonders if others feel the same way "I want something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live". However, he didn't make the rules he just plays the game, so he'll go with the flow as quick and easy was how it was in 2002.
  
  Soon after releasing the song Homme would meet the woman he was looking for when he started a relationship with the singer Brody Dalle in 2003. They would go on to get married and start a family. It's notable that a rock star on a career high is lamenting the lack of love in his life. He had easy access to fast, meaningless women but rock in 2002, at least in the case of QoTSA, had moved on from the 'Girls, Girls, Girls' eighties mentality typified by the likes of Motley Crue and into an existential search for meaning amidst the hangovers and discarded g-strings.
  
  
• There is a cover version by Royksopp.
  
  
  
  

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