No One Knows - Reception

Reception

The critical response to "No One Knows" was generally positive. In The Guardian review of Songs for the Deaf, Dave Simpson said "No One Knows has killer riffs to spare". Playlouder were similarly enthused, calling the song "soulful, like the last gasp of the hero in an old western". Eric Carr of Pitchfork Media called it an "easy groove" and "four-to-the-floor slime of the highest quality".

"No One Knows" was awarded the number one position on Australian national radio station Triple J's annual Hottest 100 2002, with four other Queens of the Stone Age tracks also charting. The March 2005 edition of Q magazine placed it at number 70 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks, saying of the song, "Possibly the only full-on, legs akimbo guitar great to be based around a rhythm that goes oompah-oompah, here Josh Homme joined the ranks of the immortal." In September 2006, it was placed at number 13 on NME's list of the 50 Greatest Tracks Of The Decade. Rolling Stone placed "No One Knows" at number 97 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time, saying of the track, "QOTSA guitarist and overall mastermind Josh Homme found the sweet spot between hooky hard rock and the pulverizing metal he'd grown up playing." The song was listed at number eleven on the 2002 Pazz & Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau. "No One Knows" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2003 Grammys and was the band's first, but they lost the award to Foo Fighters for "All My Life". In 2011, NME placed it at number 18 on its list, "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".