Songfacts®:

• In the world of music, the "fade" is the end of a song that gradually fades out, as many do. In this song, the singer is "in the fade," meaning he's winding something down. It could relate to a relationship that's in the end stages, or to something he's giving up, like an addiction. With the repeated line "You live till you die," it's rather sullen but can also be seen as pragmatic, a call to live life to the fullest while we can, which sometimes means moving on from what comforts us but isn't healthy or sustainable.
• Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees sang lead on this track and wrote it with Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. In 1996, Homme toured with Screaming Trees as a guitarist, and he and Lanegan stayed in touch. When Homme needed help on this song, he called in Lanegan, who took some time off from recording his solo album Field Songs to work on it with QOTSA at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles. Lanegan delivered, and ended up doing backing vocals on two other songs from the album as well: "Auto Pilot" and "I Think I Lost My Headache."
• In a Songfacts interview with Nick Oliveri, who was Josh Homme's main collaborator in the band at the time, he explained how it came together.
  
  "We had another version called 'Universal Subconscious,'" he said. "It sounds more Nirvana-esque, real heavy. It kind of follows that thing with the bass and the guitar. But we got to a point where that song wasn't going to make it, so we did a 'bass day' and I came up with a bassline for it. We kept the drum take that we had from heavy version, I threw the bass thing down, and Josh did some great swells and stuff.
  
  He said, 'Well, maybe we can have Mark come in.' And I was like, 'Wow. That would be unreal.' Because Mark was working on Field Songs at the time. I had met him, but only in passing. He came in and was super-cool. I was stoked to meet him and it was great having him because he really made the song something else.
  
  But they were trying to write lyrics for it and they were stuck on some things. They went to get some lunch – him and Josh – and I wrote some stuff while they were gone. I had some things, but Mark really made the song what it is. It's definitely a Mark song, for sure. He really took it to the next level."
• On the Rated R album, "In The Fade" goes into a reprise of the first track on the album, "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer." This lends credence to the interpretation that the song is about drug withdrawal, as "Feel Good" is literally all about drugs.
• Josh Homme composed music for a German movie called Aus dem Nichts that has the English title In The Fade after this song. The song itself is not used in the movie though; "The Bronze" is the only Queens Of The Stone Age song that is.