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“How beautiful it was… to feel this live again”
The Flaming Lips hacen vibrar a la multitud en la Ciudad de México
By The Observer
Is there anything more beautiful in this world than new music?
It’s the final result of human creation, arriving like rain on dry ground, waking parts of the soul that had gone quiet. New music blooms like stars exploding in slow motion, beautiful, chaotic, impossible to hold. It arrives as a transmission from some brighter, stranger dimension, where noise turns to wonder and melody becomes light. A new song can feel like discovering a hidden planet inside your own heart, alive with colors you’ve never seen and emotions you didn’t know could sing. It is mystery made audible, the sound of the universe reinventing itself in real time.
For the first time in a decade, The Flaming Lips returned to Mexico City, bringing with them a profound sense of joy. They performed on April 18, capping off 48 hours of exploring one of the greatest cities on Earth; absorbing its food and culture, in a place anyone could call home. They also brought with them the opening notes to a new chapter in the band’s journey.
Ever since the band confirmed a new album would indeed become reality, fans have been patiently waiting and wondering, trading rumor for speculation about what this new era of the Lips would look and sound like.
At the El Pabellón Oeste in Mexico City, freaks there knew they were witnessing something special as the band unveiled for the first time a new song that seemed to carry the band’s signature feel.
(Photograph by Heather Crane)
The Lips have made releasing new music in unconventional ways a tradition. What better time than when visiting one of the best cities in the world for art and with a receptive crowd to debut “Every Teardrop Cried”, representing a poignant new chapter for The Flaming Lips – less a conventional “new single” debut and more a live unveiling wrapped in atmosphere. The song has been described as melancholic but luminous, carrying that classic Lips balance of wonder, heartbreak and transcendence.
Videos posted online show “Every Teardrop Cried” unfolding like a cosmic elegy – slow-building and emotionally raw. Floating synthesizers drift beneath Wayne Coyne’s fragile, pleading vocal, while the melody rises from sorrow into something almost ecstatic. The song seems to transform grief into wonder, each verse feeling intimate and wounded before opening into a soaring, communal chorus. It draws you in, its words command attention as a profound message flows.
Live in Mexico City, surrounded by psychedelic visuals and the crowd’s emotional response, it reportedly felt less like a new song premiere and more like a spiritual event; sad, beautiful, and strangely hopeful. It carries echoes of The Soft Bulletin’s meditations on mortality, but with the weathered tenderness of a band still searching for joy among the ruins.
The Flaming Lips: Saturday, April 18:
Pabellón Oeste del Palacio de los Deportes at Pabellones del Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico City, MexicoIt Overtakes Me
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2
Turn It On
The Golden Path
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
True Love With Find You In The End
Every Teardrop Cried *+
Five Stop Mother Superior Rain
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize??
ENCORE:
War Pigs
Race For The Prize
* Live Debut
+ First Known Performance
VIDEO: Mexcio City Performance
One local fan posted on Facebook: “Qué hermoso, Otra vez sentir esto en vivo”, which translates to “how beautiful it was, to feel this live again”.
Others said “Awesome concert… every song had a different vibe” and “I’ve seen them, and it’s always incredible energy”.
Another local fan simply had one word to describe the show: “mágico”.
The band has wasted little time this year, floating back and forth between Tarbox Road Studios, rehearsing and making preparations for another tour around the world. The Lips have just four domestic shows reamaing this spring before a months-long campaign overseas.
There have been rumors of new music being sprinkled throughout sets around the world this year as the band works towards a release date of their new album sometime within a year. The band’s official annoucement of the new album could come following the completion of the summer tour in September or October.
Anyone attending a future show and would like to send in pictures or show notes or art and essays insprired by the music, send your work, along with any special handling instructions to: editorobserver1@gmail.com
from the archives: May
May 17 1999
The Soft Bulletin
Studio Album
(UK release)
May 29 2020
Flowers of Neptune 6
Single
29 years ago
Live at First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN (May 4 1996)
The Abandoned Hospital Ship
Unconsciously Screamin’
Take Meta Mars
Moth In The Incubator
Put The Waterbug In The Policeman’s Ear
Lightning Strikes The Postman
Bad Days
She Don’t Use Jelly
Chewin’ The Apple Of Your Eye
When You Smile
Psychiatric Explorations Of The Fetus With Needles
Placebo Headwound
What A Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong cover)
12 years ago
Live at Les Nuits Botanique in Brussels, Belgium (May 24 2014)
Video: thesatellitehead
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize??
Watching The Planets
In The Morning Of The Magicians
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1
Look…The Sun Is Rising
The W.A.N.D.
Race For The Prize
Try to Explain
Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast
Silver Trembling Hands
A Spoonful Weighs A Ton
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Beatles cover)
13 years ago
Live at BottleRock in Napa, CA (May 10 2013)
intro
Look… The Sun Is Rising
The Terror
The W.A.N.D.
Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast
Silver Trembling Hands
Try To Explain
One More Robot
Sympathy 3000-21
Heroes (David Bowie cover)
Turning Violent
Butterfly, How Long It Takes to Die
All We Have Is Now
Do You Realize??
Always There… In Our Hearts
Race For The Prize
From Chaos to Cosmos: How The Flaming Lips Built The Soft Bulletin Into a Fragile Masterpiece
By The Observer
When The Flaming Lips released The Soft Bulletin on May 17 1999, it didn’t feel like just another record, it felt like a turning point, not only for the band but for alternative music at large.
Up to that point, the Lips had built a reputation on chaos; noisy experiments, warped humor and a kind of beautiful unpredictability that defined albums like Clouds Taste Metallic. But The Soft Bulletin arrived like a strange, glowing object from another world – fragile, orchestral, and emotionally direct in a way no one quite expected.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a larger project exploring the history of The Soft Bulletin for this album’s next milestone anniversary. As this project moves forward, anyone with thoughts, insights, words, art, pictures or essays inspired by The Soft Bulletin, should feel welcome to reach out.
By the late 1990s, The Flaming Lips were in a fragile state. Long-time guitarist Ronald Jones had left after Clouds Taste Metallic and drummer Steven Drozd was battling a severe heroin addiction that made consistent, live studio recording a challenge. Instead of collapsing under this pressure, the band adapted. What emerged was a completely different creative process, one that abandoned the idea of a “band playing together in a room” in favor of meticulous, piece-by-piece construction.
At the center of this transformation was producer Dave Fridmann, who helped the group turn their limitations into a new sonic identity. Recording sessions took place primarily at Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York, but they didn’t look anything like traditional sessions. Rather than capturing full takes, the band built songs layer by layer, often starting with programmed drum loops or heavily edited fragments of Drozd’s playing.
Drozd, despite his struggles, became the secret engine of the album. He contributed not just drums, but keyboards, guitar parts, and arrangements. According to previous interviews with the band, because he couldn’t reliably perform entire drum takes, Drozd’s parts were often recorded in small bursts, then digitally stitched together. These fragments were sometimes looped, sometimes manipulated, sometimes completely transformed. What could have sounded mechanical instead became something strangely human, slightly off-kilter rhythms that give the album its floating, dreamlike feel.
THE STORY BEHIND the cover
The album artwork for The Soft Bulletin is a striking, slightly surreal image rooted in 1960s psychedelic culture.
What it actually is:
The cover is based on a real photograph taken by photographer Lawrence Schiller.The original photo is titled “The Acid Test: Neal Cassady.”
What you’re seeing:
It depicts Neal Cassady dancing with his own shadow.The scene comes from one of the “Acid Tests,” psychedelic happenings organized in the 1960s by the Merry Pranksters.
How it looks on the album:
The Flaming Lips modified and stylized the original photograph.The result is a washed-out, dreamlike image, a figure mid-motion, slightly blurred, almost ghostly.
It has a retro, faded color palette (pinks, yellows, and soft tones), which gives it that nostalgic, otherworldly feel.
Why it fits the album:
The artwork mirrors the music:Human vulnerability + cosmic wonder
Science, emotion, and psychedelia blending together
A feeling of someone half-present, half dissolving into light
It’s not just a random trippy image, it’s a direct visual echo of the album’s themes: fragile humanity in a strange, beautiful universe.
This patchwork approach extended to nearly every element. Orchestral sounds, strings, horns, sweeping crescendos weren’t recorded with full ensembles. Instead, they were painstakingly assembled using Mellotrons, synthesizers, and layered samples. The result is that distinctive Soft Bulletin texture: it feels symphonic, but also surreal, like an orchestra heard through memory or imagination rather than reality.
Vocals were treated with similar care. Wayne Coyne’s voice had always carried a trembling vulnerability. Here, that vulnerability becomes the album’s emotional backbone. Coyne doesn’t sing like a traditional frontman – he sounds like someone trying to hold himself together while staring down the enormity of existence. That sense of awe – of life, death, love, and confusion – permeates every track.
Coyne recorded his parts in an unusually intimate way, often singing quietly and close to the microphone. Rather than polishing his voice into something pristine, Fridmann leaned into its fragility, compressing it heavily so that every breath, crack, and tremble sat right at the front of the mix. This is why the vocals feel almost exposed, as if Coyne is speaking directly into your ear while the universe swirls around him.
Technically, the album pushed the limits of late-90s recording. Digital ProTools editing was still relatively new, and The Soft Bulletin used it in ways that were unconventional at the time. Tracks were built with dozens – sometimes hundreds – of layers, requiring intense manual editing and mixing. Fridmann’s mixes are dense but deliberate; low-end frequencies are thick and distorted, high-end elements shimmer, and everything is pushed to the edge of overload without collapsing. It’s a sound that feels both enormous and claustrophobic.
There’s also a fascinating contradiction in how the album balances control and chaos. On one hand, it’s incredibly meticulous – every sound placed with precision. On the other, it embraces imperfection: clipped signals, distorted peaks, slightly out-of-time loops. These “flaws” became part of the emotional language of the record. The music feels unstable in places, which mirrors the themes of uncertainty and fragility running through the lyrics.
The opening song, “Race for the Prize” sets the tone immediately. It tells the story of two scientists locked in a desperate, noble pursuit for a cure, framed almost like a myth. The song’s swelling orchestration and pounding rhythm give it a sense of urgency, but underneath is a quiet tragedy – the idea that even our greatest efforts might end in failure. It’s science as both salvation and heartbreak, a theme that ripples throughout the album.
Another key factor was time. The album wasn’t rushed; it evolved slowly, with ideas revisited and reshaped over months. This gave the band room to experiment without the pressure of immediate results. In many ways, Fridmann’s studio itself became an instrument, one where songs weren’t just recorded, but discovered through process.
The Soft Bulletin won two awards – Best Album and Album of the Year – AT the NME (New Musical Express) Awards in the United Kingdom in 2000.
Songs on the album often went through radical evolution during recording. “Race for the Prize” is a perfect example. The song started as a relatively straightforward track but was transformed through layers of orchestration and rhythmic experimentation into something almost anthemic. Tracks like “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” push deeper into existential territory. The former balances child-like optimism with an undercurrent of dread, while the latter feels like the emotional core of the album – a slow, aching meditation on mortality and the dissolution of the self. Coyne’s lyrics don’t offer clear answers. Instead, they linger in uncertainty, capturing the strange mix of fear and wonder that comes with being alive.
One of the most striking aspects of the album is how it transforms the mundane into the cosmic. “The Spark That Bled”, for example, begins as a surreal narrative about a mechanical man unraveling, but it gradually reveals itself as a metaphor for emotional collapse and resilience. Similarly, “Waitin’ for a Superman” strips everything down to a simple, almost childlike plea for rescue, only to confront the listener with the possibility that no one is coming.
And yet, despite its heavy themes, The Soft Bulletin never feels hopeless. There’s a quiet sense of perseverance woven through it, a belief that even in the face of entropy and loss, there is beauty in trying, in caring, in continuing. That emotional duality – devastation paired with wonder – is what gives the album its lasting power.
In many ways, The Soft Bulletin redefined what The Flaming Lips could be. It marked their transition from cult oddities to visionary artists capable of crafting deeply affecting, sonically ambitious work. It also laid the groundwork for their later masterpiece, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which would further explore similar themes with a slightly more narrative focus.
Over time, The Soft Bulletin has come to be regarded as one of the most important albums of its era, not because it was flashy or trendy, but because it dared to be sincere in a landscape often dominated by irony. It asks big questions without pretending to have answers, and in doing so, it creates a space where listeners can confront those questions themselves.
Listening to it now, decades later, the album still feels immediate and alive. Its textures shimmer, its melodies ache, and its themes remain as relevant as ever. It’s a record about the fragility of existence, but also about the quiet, stubborn hope that makes that fragility worth enduring.
Confirmed dates for 2026
March 28 – Teton Village, Wyoming: Rendezvous Music Festival
April 18 – Mexico City, Mexico: Velódromo Olímpico
May 3 – El Paso, Texas: Sol Summit
May 7 – Houston, Texas: White Oak Music Hall
May 8 – Austin, Texas: Austin Psych Fest
May 30 – Denver, Colorado: Outside Days festival
June 15 – Vienna, Austria: Gasometer
June 17 – Milan, Italy: Parco Della Musica
June 18 – Bologna, Italy: Bonsai Gardens
June 20 – Prague, Czechia: At the Letňany Airport (other notables include Nick Cave, Sting, Slowdive)
June 22 – Belgrade, Serbia: Luka Beograd
June 23 – Zagreb, Croatia: Inmuic Festival (other notables include Gorillaz, Idles, Jack White)
June 25 – Athens, Greece: Release Athens Festival – SOLD OUT
July 16 – Galway, Ireland: Galway International Arts Festival (with Mercury Rev) – SOLD OUT
July 18 – Margate, England: Dreamland (co-headline with The Beta Band)
July 19 – Nottingham, England: The Nottingham Splendour Festival
July 21 – Wolverhampton, England: Civic Hall
July 23 – Halifax, England: The Piece Hall (co-headline with The Beta Band)
July 25 – London, England: Somerset House Summer Series
July 26 – Suffolk, England: Latitude Festival (other notables include David Byrne, Lewis Capaldi)
July 27 – Glasgow, Scotland: Summer Nights at The Bandstand
July 29 – Cardiff, Wales: Depot
August 22-23 – Jakarta, Indonesia: LALALA Fest
September 25 – Louisville, Kentucky: Bourbon & Beyond Festival
2026 World Fan Project
What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?
Have you ever thought “what would this world be like, how would the universe sound, or how would we connect with each other without The Flaming Lips?“
Although hard to ponder, we thought what if we posed this question to fans all over the world and documented their responses for The Observer’s first large world-wide fan project.
Whether you have written in before or not, participated in our fan interviews or not, everyone is welcome to offer their insight through words, art, essay, pictures or anything creative to fulfil a community perspective with this question:
What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?
There is no hard deadline with this project, with an estimated publish date say… later this year in late summer or fall. We’ll put out a last call sometime around then, and then work to catalog and design the responses into one massive Observer publication.
The goal is to get fans thinking, to search themselves and express their thoughts and or gratitude into one large collection.
To submit, simply contact us at editorobserver1@gmail.com.
Please attach the name you would like to use, along with your submission and any special instructions you have for your content. Please only submit content that you own and is yours to publish.
WATCH:
Tommy McKenzie on joining The Flaming Lips in 2021 & playing his first shows with the band
Michael Ivins on appearing in ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ with Scott Booker in 2005
Editor’s Message
Welcome to Issue 17
Hola, mis hermosos amigos y amigas!
I hope everyone had safe travels to and from Mexico. The thing that had me the most bummed that I missed this show wasn’t so much the music, that’s always kick-ass, but Matt’s posts on social media featuring the food. Damn, son, those tacos are what dreams are made of…!
***
People write songs about losing others because loss creates a kind of emotional pressure that needs release. When someone is gone, whether through death, distance, or change, there’s often no direct way to resolve what’s left behind. Conversations are left unfinished. Yet feelings remain active. Music becomes a place where those unresolved threads can live.
It’s hard to imagine the deep emotional feelings behind “Every Teardrop Cried“, the new song gifted to the world in Mexico City. We can only assume this song will be on the band’s upcoming new album.
Songwriting can transform something abstract into something structured. Grief is chaotic, unpredictable, and often overwhelming. A song imposes rhythm, repetition, and form. It gives the writer a sense of control over an experience that otherwise feels uncontrollable. In a way, it’s not just expression, it’s containment.
There’s also a desire to preserve. Writing a song can feel like keeping someone present, even if only in fragments — an image, a phrase, a shared moment. The act of writing becomes an act of remembering, and remembering becomes a way of resisting disappearance.
Songs about loss resonate because they’re rarely just about one person. They tap into something universal. When someone listens, they bring their own loss into the song, and it becomes shared space rather than private pain. What began as one person’s grief becomes something communal, less isolating, more human.
In that sense, people don’t just write songs to mourn. They write them to connect, to understand, and sometimes, to survive what feels unspeakable.
After listening to this new song a few times, the song never starts where I think it will.
It doesn’t begin with a chord, or a melody, or even a memory you can hold still long enough to shape. It begins with absence, the kind that hums faintly in the room when no one else is there. The kind that settles into your chest and rearranges the air.
I could imagine someone sitting with a guitar, or a blank page, or just their hands folded like they’re waiting for permission. And what comes instead is rain.
Not outside, inside.
Every drop of rain that falls is you
Every teardrop cried is all for you
You don’t write it so much as recognize it. Like something already etched behind your eyes, waiting for you to admit it’s still there.
Because that’s the problem with someone who was once everything, once laughter across a table, once a voice you didn’t have to strain to hear, once a friend who knew the shape of your silences. When they’re gone, they don’t leave cleanly. They scatter.
Into small things.
Into impossible things.
Every drop of morning dew that glistens on the leaves is you
And suddenly mornings feel crowded. Heavy with ghosts disguised as light. You catch yourself looking too long at ordinary things, as if they might answer back.
You try to write around it at first. Make it less obvious. Dress it up in metaphor, hide it behind clever lines. But grief is stubborn. It insists on plain language.
You’re in my eyes
You’re in my ears
And when I cry
You’re in my tears
It’s not only poetry, it’s inventory. A catalog of how thoroughly someone can remain after they’ve left.
You remember the way you used to talk without thinking. The ease of it. The unguarded, unremarkable magic of being known. And now every word feels like it has to cross a distance it didn’t before.
You stop, stare at the ceiling, listen to the quiet like it might correct you.
It doesn’t.
You’re everywhere
You’re in my hair
Wherever I am, I feel you there
That’s when the song shifts. Not into resolution, there isn’t any, but into acceptance of the haunting. Not something to fix. Something to carry.
A dragonfly passes your window later, or maybe just in your mind, and for a second you believe in signs. Not because you’re certain, but because certainty isn’t the point anymore.
Every time a dragonfly flies by, it’s you
You play the song through once, quietly. It feels unfinished, but honest in a way that finished things rarely are. You realize you didn’t write about losing them.
And maybe that’s all a song like this is meant to do;
not to bring them back,
and not to let them go,
but give them somewhere to keep existing
where it hurts a little less to find them.
Of course, these are the brain drippings of this editor’s mind after listening and reflection of “Every Teardrop Cried“. I’m sure down the road, the songwriters may, or may not, give us some thoughts and insights on this profound new arrangement.
***
Well, The Observer is hitting the road in the next couple days to follow the band through Texas. If you are a reader of this newsletter and want to participate in our micro-interviews, (basically 5-minute conversations about the music) hit me up. It would be great to add you to the June issue. We will also be doing our micro-interviews throughout the year, basically at any of the shows we will be asking fans questions for our larger fan project: What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?
And if you bump into us at a show, we got a new super-duper, neat-o sticker to pass around:
***
Please think about referring this newsletter to your friends, or drop the link into your groups or whatever. We all need breaks from social media, and this newsletter was designed for fans who maybe are not on social media. The mission of this newsletter is to celebrate the fans and the music of The Flaming Lips. This is a safe space for those wanting to share stories of their connections to the music and the band.
***
Parting shot:
Founded January 1 2025
All are welcome here.
This newsletter was created by fans, for fans, and is in no way affiliated with The Flaming Lips or their management.
By signing up you will only receive this monthly newsletter and no other promotions or solicitations.
The Observer operates under the same ethics and principles of traditional journalism. All information, including quotes, facts and attributions are verified before publication. All visual components are independently sourced by the contributing artist(s) and The Observer adheres to all copyright instructions and labels.
The Observer may not consider any form of advertising or sponsorship. The mission is to celebrate the music, and the lives of those who cherish it. For anyone wanting to contribute words, pictures, art and essays, please feel free to reach out.
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Thank you for being you,
– Woody
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