Josh Homme has explained his reasons behind working with Mark Ronson on Queens Of The Stone Age‘s new album.

Earlier today (June 15), Homme’s band unveiled their new single ‘The Way You Used To Do’ from long-awaited new album ‘Villains’. The Ronson-produced record will be released on August 25.

Speaking to Zane Lowe for Apple’s Beats 1 radio, Homme explained how he connected with Ronson while the pair both worked with Lady Gaga last year. Homme played guitar on ‘Perfect Illusion’, the lead single from Gaga’s most recent album ‘Joanne’.


“I’d met him a couple of late nights before that,” Homme explained. “Within an hour of working with him on this Lady Gaga stuff, the references – that glossary you use to talk about stuff and what was important to him, I realised there’s this grand overlap. Of interest and fascination and elation in making music.”

Homme then went on to explain how Ronson’s smash-hit single with Bruno Mars, ‘Uptown Funk’, influenced his decision: “I think one of the reasons was to act like a talisman as a reminder of listening to ‘Uptown Funk’. It’s very tight and vacuous. It sounds fucking great,” Homme said.

“I knew I wanted to make something that sounded very tight, and with the air sucked out of it and very clear. So he was just a great reminder just as an opening and then his desires are so beat-centric. And so are mine that we had this tremendous amount of overlap. And then that sort of giggling over the gold – the excitement of creating something, he has that.”

The singer added: “During the making of this, I kept calling this – we’re going to crescendo camp, where things take over for a second. Because it was like why can’t something take over the mix? And bury it? And when the tablecloth is pulled, you reveal this next thing. And he was very into that idea… So you get these philosophies that you start working on and they sort of take over.”

Watch the first part of Homme’s Beats 1 interview below.


Mark Ronson, meanwhile, has said of working with QOTSA: “Queens are and have always been my favourite rock n roll band ever since I walked into Tower on Sunset and bought ‘Rated R’ in the summer of 2000, so it was incredibly surreal to be welcomed into their secret, pirate clan—or the ‘jacuzzi’ as Josh likes to call it.”

“I also knew that my super fandom alone would not keep me in the jacuzzi. There were moments during the making of the album in which i was aware I was watching my musical heroes craft something that was sure to become one of my favourite moments on any Queens album. And to have some part in that felt like being in a dream–a very heavy, dark, wonderful dream.”

Josh Homme has also discussed the meaning of new single ‘The Way You Used To Do’ in interview with NME. Check back at NME.com soon for more of our interview with Homme.

The tracklist for ‘Villains’ is:

01. Feet Don’t Fail Me

02. The Way You Used To Do

03. Domesticated Animals

04. Fortress

05. Head Like A Haunted House

06. Un-Reborn Again

07. Hideaway

08. The Evil Has Landed

09. Villains Of Circumstance

Meanwhile, Queens Of The Stone Age’s upcoming UK tour dates are below. Tickets will be on sale from 9am on June 21 and will be available here.

November 19 – Manchester Arena

November 21 – The O2, London

November 23 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh

November 24 – 3Arena, Dublin