Singing about unicorns and rainbows was fair game on Oczy Mlody, The Flaming Lips’ 14th studio record. "Previous to this record, we would have never on purpose sang a song like 'There Should Be Unicorns,'" says Wayne Coyne to Myspace about the dreamy song.
At age 56, Wayne Coyne isn’t so worried about what young people want to hear anymore. "For once [I felt] like I’m so out of touch with young people that maybe I’m singing about something that we all care about," says the frontman. While staying true to The Flaming Lips iconic sound, Oczy Mlody lets loose and dives further into the fantastical depths of psychedelia. Dive into Coyne’s world and learn about five influences that made Oczy Mlody possible.
Working with Miley Cyrus
Coyne calls Cyrus "one main guiding influence" for the album. Oczy Mlody came after a couple years of working with the singer: from their 2014 interpretation of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band called With a Little Help from My Fwends to her 2015 release Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. On this record, she assisted most prominently on "Sunrise (Eyes of the Young)" and "We a Famly."
"[Miley Cyrus and I] both need these collaborators in our musical life,” says Coyne. "Otherwise, our music would just be horribly simple and be too much about us. So I think I want to work with her so I get this other coloring and this other flavor in my creative life… Being around someone who’s so energetic and optimistic and dynamic and creative and all that, it’s a boost. It’s just another angel of encouragement."
The Legacy of Syd Barrett
It’s certainly not a stretch to call The Flaming Lips descendants of Pink Floyd, and Coyne agrees — especially when Syd Barrett fronted the psychedelic icons in the mid-'60s. Coyne and his band initially dove into Barrett’s work, both with Pink Floyd and his solo projects, after many people compared the mysterious musician to the Lips.
"We really found that we absolutely loved him. We loved how fragile he was and the way his lyrics and his life and all these things just became one,” says Coyne. "We felt the same way about him dying as we did when David Bowie died. Like, gosh, here’s another… you would have loved to been able to have talked to him."
Fantastical Elements
The Flaming Lips decided not to care about songs being too "jokey" or too "1960s" on the album. "It’s kind of fantastical, but it’s emotional enough that the fantastical is more coloring to the emotion than it being just this ridiculous dream or something. I think that’s part of our desire to push our evolution somewhere else," says Coyne. "We decided that that could work and suddenly we could be singing about unicorns, castles and wizards and things. We hadn’t really done that much before."
Producer Dave Fridmann
Their longtime producer convinced The Flaming Lips to simplify and let their vocals shine through on Oczy Mlody. "A lot of times our productions will turn into 200 and 300 layers of stuff because we’re trying to push this emotional story through all this stuff," says Coyne.
"He would say, if you sing it this way, all the emotion you’d ever want will be there just in the way you sing it. I think that was different than what we’d done in the past because we always felt like our singing wasn’t very good and we would have to put all these things around it so you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t good. I think he started to give us the confidence to be like you’re singing is unique which in this day and age is the hardest thing in the world."
Robert Beatty’s Album Artwork
Coyne came across Robert Beatty’s kaleidoscopic artwork while randomly browsing Instagram. "I thought it was somebody else’s album cover at first… And then once I contacted him, he’s like ‘dude, that’s just this little drawing that I was working on. I didn’t even finish it.’"
He eventually convinced Beatty to use the artwork as the cover for Oczy Mlody. "When it was not somebody’s album, I thought 'well, maybe that could be our album?' And our album could sound like this and look like this. All those things, when you’re making something, every little nuance colors it for you. I mean that’s what being an artist is – all these things are having an effect on your sensitivity."
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