Josh Homme on reworking Iggy Pop collab ‘Sunday’ for Queens Of The Stone Age’s ‘Perfecth’ – and if they’ll work together again
Josh Homme has discussed his reworking of the Iggy Pop collaboration ‘Sunday’ on Queens Of The Stone Age‘s new album ‘Perfecth’, and opened up about if they would ever join forces again.
The frontman caught up with NME as part of our In Conversation series, and sat down to discuss the band’s ninth record, which arrived last Friday (October 30) via Matador.
Alongside singles ‘Where The Goth Girls At?’, ‘Insignificant Other’ and ‘Easy Street’, the album also featured a reworking of ‘Sunday’ – which originally featured on the 2016 album ‘Post Pop Depression’, a collaboration between Iggy, Pop, QOTSA bandmate Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys‘ drummer Matt Helders.
Asked why he wanted to revisit the track again for the Perfecth’, Homme explained how he “liked the song so much” when he first wrote it, that he was tempted to “keep it to myself”.
Homme added that when he got to the session the next morning, he told the punk icon: “I came up with this song last night, and I almost kept it to myself, but that’s not the point of this. I want you to know that you have everything that I have to give for ‘Post Pop Depression’.”
“The way of proving it was saying, ‘It’s not mine or yours, it’s ours. And if we ever need to, we’ll just cover it’,” he added, also sharing that the record “needed something jiggly that bubbles like ‘70s French disco”, and ‘Sunday’ “really does that thing”.
That reference to “covering” the song again, he explained, is the same “roadmap” as what happened with the Iggy Pop and David Bowie collaboration ‘China Girl’, which was released on Pop’s 1977 debut solo album ‘The Idiot’, and reworked and released by Bowie in 1983 for his ‘Let’s Dance’ album.
As for what Pop thinks of the new reworking, Homme shared: “He fucking hates it… No, we got his blessing.
“In all of rock n’ roll, Iggy is really something special and individual. I think it’s amazing that he’s the one who outlasted them all. There’s something of a roadmap there in being yourself, and how even when that is a very lonely journey, you must move forward. He’s the motherfucker.”
Asked if fans can expect another collaboration between them anytime soon, Homme replied: “My door is always open to Iggy, but these things can’t be forced. They happen when they’re supposed to happen, and that’s the way it goes.”
Check out the full interview in the video below, or read it in full here here, where Homme and Michael Schuman also talked about how their ‘Catacombs’ tour inspired them, becoming closer as a unit during the writing process, and what to expect from their upcoming live shows.
‘Perfecth’ was given a four-star review from NME and praised as their “most intimate and adventurous work yet”.
“Homme has described this era as the band’s third act, looking for some peace after a first phase of securing themselves as pioneers outside of the usual rock mold and the second of upping the ante and going to war,” it read. “Like life and love, the album is knowingly not perfect, but nothing is. You’d rather drift off a little less and be anchored down by a little more bite and brimstone, but what you’ve got is a record with open arms and an open mind to the last stretch of road ahead.”
Queens Of The Stone Age continue their 2026 live shows later this month with stops in LA, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, before they return to Mexico City in March 2027 for a huge co-headline concert with Interpol. Later in the summer, they will head out on another US tour, before coming across the pond for European dates. UK shows are expected to be announced soon.
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