Songfacts®:

• In a fateful encounter during Lollapalooza 1996, the paths of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Australian punk rocker Brody Dalle crossed. He was there performing as touring guitarist with Screaming Trees, while she was present to see her then-boyfriend Tim Armstrong's band Rancid. Seven years later, in 2003, their lives intersected once more, a moment of rekindling following Dalle's separation from Armstrong. Love blossomed, and on December 3, 2005, Homme and Dalle sealed their bond in matrimony.
  
  As the pages turned, their story took an arduous twist. In November 2019, Dalle initiated a legal separation from Homme, eventually filing for divorce a month later. The reasons cited centered on Homme's battle with alcoholism and substance abuse. Seeking solace and recovery, Homme embraced rehabilitation, but the aftermath saw accusations of domestic violence exchanged between the former partners, leading to mutual restraining orders in the ensuing months.
  
  "Emotion Sickness" is the lead single from In Times New Roman..., Queens of the Stone Age's first album since Homme's marriage breakdown.
• "Emotion Sickness" is the album's most direct song about Homme's split with Dalle. "I was feeling so raw and the music is the actual sound of it," he told UK newspaper The Sun. "The song sounds unfinished and it should be. There's a fragile and delicate sentiment that should smash into the music and shove it away. All these elements shouldn't gently baton pass, they should kick and push and smash into each other. So even before the words are there, you're dealing with some sort of brutality."
• Queens of the Sone Age's 2017 song "The Way You Used to Do" tells the story of how Homme first met Brody Dalle.
  
  Is love mental disease or lucky fever dream?
  Fine with either
  
  On "Emotion Sickness" he reflects how he fell out of love with her.
  
  A dose of emotion sickness
  I just can't shake
  Then my fever broke
• Queens of the Stone Age's label, Matador Records, chose this as the lead single from In Times New Roman... "It's a strange single. I don't pick those, because I don't care, but I was surprised because it's such a Frankenstein's monster of a song," Homme commented to NME. "The verse parts are all so grounded, and then the chorus is like taking a hang-glider and running off this cliff. We've never done a Crosby, Stills and Nash three-part harmony before."
• In Times New Roman… follows a difficult period in Homme's life that included a cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery. He also lost several close pals, including actor Rio Hackford, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, and Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, who all died in the space of two months in 2022.
  
  "I just don't want to be the last person holding on to what isn't mine with the heartache loss of things," Homme told The Sun. "And, in the case of the loss side I'd lost 11 people in a year. These were people close to me who had all died. These people are gone but I still love them. So, writing took all this weight off my shoulders and allowed me to just write about what's real and not worry about it. The feelings were honest and raw. That's why this album sounds brutal."
• Queens of the Stone Age produced In Times New Roman... with mixing handled by Mark Rankin. They recorded it at Josh Homme's Pink Duck Studios in Burbank, California, as well as at Rick Rubin's Shangri-La studio in Malibu, California. The band received additional production for this song from engineer Justin Smith. Longtime collaborator Boneface designed the artwork and double LP gatefold packaging.
• Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders lends background vocals to "Emotion Sickness." Homme and Helders are friends and have collaborated on several previous projects together, including the Iggy Pop album Post Pop Depression and the Arctic Monkeys record Humbug. Beyond the studio's hallowed walls, they've been spotted hanging out at various events.