#57

#57. Queens of the Stone Age - My God Is the Sun (#97, 2013)

11th of 2013

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Because I'm sometimes in the interest of questioning my own mindset, I'm always fascinated by that adage that your favourite in a big series is often the one you encountered first. I've got loads of these. The first Final Fantasy game I ever played was FFX, and I have a lot of fondness for it, but struggle to find the enthusiasm for the rest of the series which doesn't seem to have that same spark that appeals to me. I can rationally recognise the improvements that have come along with newer Pokémon games, in terms of balance, design, general quality of life, but it's far easier for me to pick up the Kanto region games than anything else because it came first.

The obvious aspect at work here is that your first one is inevitably going to be more special. Anything that comes after it is going to feel like it's changing some of the winning aspects, but even if they're still there, then they're running on those previous fumes and won't feel as special. The moment of discovery and joy becomes immortalised and creates a near-impenetrable wall that gets in the way of rationality. There's nothing wrong with that either. Despite what we might sometimes say to ourselves and others, we're not really looking out for what is scientifically the best product or experience, but rather the effect that they have on us, and that can be perfectly irrational.

The second part of this though is one that I don't think often gets considered. It's something akin to the anthropic principle where our ability to perceive the wonder of the universe is built on the foundation that we're even able to do that. The universe supports life and it's a miracle, but if you changed the parameters around a little, it'd perhaps support a different kind of life, or something entirely different altogether, we just wouldn't know it because we wouldn't be part of it. The way I apply this is the way that often times, that supposedly magic appeal that existed to be a towering force was the very thing that put us onto it in the first place. If you swap things around, it's entirely possible that you just never tune into it in the first place. Rather than consider all the examples where your favourite came first, and wondering if it's rational, I find myself pondering all the potential missed opportunities. Anything that I have no affinity for because they missed on the first attempt and I couldn't convince myself in the future that it was worth buying into.

Music is a little bit different than other properties because you're more likely to still come across and acknowledge these stories as they're happening, and as they've happened in the past. A few times before this, I've mentioned how strongly I feel about artists' output around 2007 when I first heard of them, but I can also be rational. The nature of things like the Hottest 100 is that they set the record, and can be a barometer of significance. No matter what I feel about them, the consensus may have been set before I even entered the conversation.

Queens of the Stone Age are the most interesting example for me because I certainly had not heard of them before 2007. I would later learn that they weren't just an established band, but one with a very notable triple j history as they managed to score 5 entries in 2002 including the #1 song "No One Knows". That's a strong contender as one of the most beloved winning songs in the poll, and I'll admit that even in a year that is just wall to wall rock music, it's surprising to see a band that weren't really scoring crossover success take the title with such a potent entry, as if the song was just too good to be denied. That whole album, "Songs For The Deaf" is a landmark release and will likely always be the quintessential QOTSA album for probably the same reason I outlined before, it just has an unshakeable grip on a certain age group who were there for it when it happened. For me though, we go five years and two albums later to 2007. The band haven't fallen off but have settled into their niche to an extent (ironically, they'd finally score a #1 album with their next one in 2013). All I know is that there's a bit of hype for their return and that's in the form of the song "Sick, Sick, Sick". I catch it a lot because it's on the radio and does well on the jtv Saturday chart with its unnerving music video that depicts the band members being cooked and eaten one-by-one. I hear the song's blocky opening guitar riff and I just see an oven timer. Still, the song is immense. Enormous guitar riffs that are tuned to a filthy tone that makes it sound like the toughest thing on the radio at the time. There's also a guest spot from Julian Casablancas on the song but I didn't pick up on it for a long time because he's not credited and I didn't really know who he was, and because Josh lip syncs his vocals in the music video, so I just assumed it was him. It's very obvious now.

I still love "Sick, Sick, Sick". I voted for it in the Hottest 100 that year, and I think it's still my favourite QOTSA song. Regardless of this, it only just snuck onto the list at #89. The band's Hottest 100 polling entries span 5 albums, and 2007's "Era Vulgaris" is the one that fared the worst out of all of them. I don't know if that's a symptom of the album's general reputation which isn't beloved, though a strong single would be expected to overcome that anyway. The conclusion I draw is that the song just isn't very important to that many people. Why would it anyway? To arrive in the world of QOTSA in 2007 is a very specific and uncommon experience, one that only comes about through my rapid shift from following nothing in music two years prior to suddenly following it much closer than the average person. This doesn't justify on its own that they would just so happen to put out my favourite song in that very moment, but if we operate on the idea that any other release would just find me disinterested in the band and not feel any affinity, it begins to make more sense. Either that, or I just greatly admired the juxtaposition in the gritty video where Troy just looks cool as hell in his dapper suit.

This sort of introduction can have flow on effects. I suspect my feelings about QOTSA are shaped by my first impression of the band, and I perceive everything through the lens of how closely it runs to that. Possibly I disregard the band's softer songs as exceptions, but another person might take them as a (perhaps tenuous) rule. So we go forward to 2013 and the band have a very successful album in "...Like Clockwork", enough so that we get a good spread of representation on this list. If you ask me at the time, I'll find that the quintessential inclusion was the album's lead single "My God Is the Sun". As far as the album goes, it's the one that comes closest to matching that "Sick, Sick, Sick" feeling. I don't think it's actually the heaviest song on the album ("Kalopsia" has too much weight to it), but it matches the frenetic pace. As a bonus, Josh brings back his ominous sigh on the song's pre-chorus. This also brings me back to 2007 because I'm stuck thinking about The Getaway Plan's "Streetlight", and how a similar moment seems to signal the song's eventual darker turn. "My God Is the Sun" doesn't really reach that conclusion in the same sense but there is a spooky outro. It also ended up fully matching the "Sick, Sick, Sick" cosplay because it too would barely sneak into the Hottest 100. The big plot twist in all of this is that it's no longer my favourite single from this album, and so there's still more to tap into with this album.