100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #4 Queens of The Stone Age – You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire

Released: 2002

Queens of The Stone Age and former Kyuss frontman Josh Homme had a pretty good fix on how the name of his band should translate itself into their attitude to its music: “Rock should be heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls. That way everyone’s happy and it’s more of a party.” If the Kings of The Stone Age sounded too inherently macho, the real power of the outfit he founded wasn’t truly captured until their third album, 2002’s Songs for The Deaf.

After splitting up in 1995 Kyuss’ former members had spread through the West Coast post-grunge scene like spores, and that living network meant Homme was able to call on the services of Dave Grohl as a drummer. A loosely conceptual soundtrack to a journey between LA and Joshua Tree with the tracks inerspersed by spoof radio slots, Songs for The Deaf took the band overground, shifting close to a million copies off the back of MTV-friendly singles Go With The Flow and No-One Knows.

But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. The opening track – preceded with a DJ monologue from the fictional KLON radio – You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire was a reworked version of a tune originally released as part of Homme’s side project The Desert Sessions. An all out assault from the get-go featuring Nick Oliveri’s screamed vocals and the fuzz of a thousand pedals, it’s sonic punch to the throat had listeners on notice that boy or girl, there was a darkness underneath the sugar not minded to take prisoners. Kings or Queens, it was all working out just as it had been intended.