Villains

2017 | Rock

Spotify | Amazon

"I'll tell you where the gold is. It's in the ground. You wonder where's the reason? It's in the lost and found."

Trivia

• Hit #3 album on the Billboard 200 in its first week, hit #1 on the Top Album Sales chart.
• Villains is the first Queens of the Stone Age album to not feature any special guest musicians.
• Reddit users suspect this song is a reference to band members asking where in the desert Josh hid the gold.

THE HOT TAKES

Luke Tatum

What a jam! I'm a massive fan of the Songs for the Deaf era of QotSA, and this very much takes me back to those days. To make things even better, this is a detached critique of either a) the cyclical nature of revolutions, or b) the casual ease with which the public is whipped into a frenzy and then subsequently put back to sleep. We are up in arms at the slightest provocation calling for a new American Revolution, but we still make it to work on time and you're damn sure we won't miss the Super Bowl party.

Sherry Voluntary

QOTSA is one of my favorite bands. They have a uniquely big American sound. This song is lyrically very disjointed and metaphorical, but because of the name and some of the lines it seems to me to be talking about how revolutions and uprisings come and go and things may change but end up right back in authoritarianism. The lyrics “Pretty pets, once were wild, Domesticated love slave, give us a smile, You got a number, is it the same?, Who you belong to?, You feral or tame? (Probably tame)” In my mind this describes how the elite look at people as “pretty pets” who were once in control of their own lives, but now are tame. They’ve numbered us to show us who we belong to, and the more they push us and box us in with laws and regulations. The more they impose upon us, the more many of the domesticated animals love them and are tamed. Libertarianism brings us outside of that way of thinking. We become undomesticated as we grow in our understanding of libertarian philosophy.

Nicky P

When I first read it I took it as a commie revolt anthem. Sherry and Luke told me I was crazy, so I went out into the great wide open World Wide Web & started searching for whatever it was that I was missing. Reddit had some thoughts of course and eventually I found what I needed. So there’s a few things going on in this one I guess. The first note is the nod to the cyclical nature of revolution and perhaps to human life. However, while talking about the rise of the revolutionaries it also points out the collectivism that drives it. The brutality of mob mentality. When asked where is the gold, the narrator mocks, it’s in the ground. If you want wealth you cannot obtain it but through your own efforts. The song also seems to point out that people subscribing to these types of movement where individuality is crushed allow groupthink to drown out reason. Where is it? Hiding in the list & found, waiting to be reclaimed when the zietgeist has passed. Homme’s best friend is a known conservative and homme is from a known desert culture that prides itself on rigged individualism & survival. We need more generator parties is the idea I think.