The Flaming Lips announce new album ‘The Teardrop Throbs,’ set for January 22 release

Oklahoma psychedelic rock veterans prepare their first studio album in six years with a new record label

By Woody / The Observer

At 5:39 p.m. local time in the United Kingdom, Monday, October 26, fans gathered from around the world, tuned their ears, and heard the first notes of the new song “God Will Control The Werewolves” from the band’s upcoming new album during Steve Lamacq’s BBC Radio 6music show broadcasting live from London.

Mere minutes later, the announcement came that the band’s new album, “The Teardrop Throbs” – the Flaming Lips’ 17th official studio album – will arrive January 22nd 2027, through Third Man Records, marking the band’s debut with the label founded by Jack White. The album arrives along with an ambitious series of two-night residencies from Los Angeles to London.

Monday’s new song is the second from the upcoming album, joining “Every Teardrop Cried,” a song the band took with them on their 2026 world tour.

The forthcoming record marks the Oklahoma band’s first studio album since 2020’s American Head, ending a six-year gap between full-length releases. Pre-orders for the album, along with its release date, physical formats, and track listing are now available through the official Third Man Records store.

According to the label’s announcement, the album will feature the lush arrangements, detailed production and adventurous songwriting that have defined the band’s enduring psychedelic sound. Frontman Wayne Coyne takes a direct, emotional approach on songs including “Every Teardrop Cried,” and “The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves” leans into a melancholy atmosphere.

The 13-track album also includes the intriguingly titled “God Will Control the Werewolves,” “Instructions on How to Draw an Eyeball or How to Deal With a Loved One Who Is Addicted to Drugs,” and “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part 2,” a new entry in the band’s catalog that recalls its 2002 song “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell.”

Other titles include “Throb,” “Titan,” “Hooray,” “You See You In Me,” “You’ve Got Brain Damage,” “At the End of the Day,” “A Sunset Far Away” and “Now I Understand.”

Six years removed from ‘American Head’

Released in September 2020, American Head explored American youth, nostalgia, loss and mortality through the band’s characteristically dream-like lens. It followed a period in which The Flaming Lips continued to revisit their catalog while maintaining an active live presence, including performances built around the group’s most celebrated albums.

The new record’s title and song names suggest that the band’s taste for surreal imagery and emotional contrasts remains in tact. The combination of “Every Teardrop Cried,” “The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves” and “God Will Control the Werewolves” points toward a collection that could move between intimate reflection and the offbeat imagination that has long distinguished the group.

That balance between heartfelt songwriting and sonic experimentation has been a defining feature of The Flaming Lips since their formation in 1983. Their career has encompassed noisy underground rock, ambitious psychedelic pop, orchestral studio experiments and some of the most visually extravagant live performances in modern alternative music.

Release details

For Flaming Lips fans, the January album release represents more than the end of a six-year wait for new studio material. It is also the beginning of a new musical era for a band whose identity has repeatedly evolved while retaining its fascination with the strange, the beautiful and the emotionally overwhelming. The full album will reveal how the band have translated its legacy into the next chapter of the Flaming Lips’ story.

“The Teardrop Throbs” track list

• Throb
• God Will Control the Werewolves
• Titan
• Every Teardrop Cried
• Hooray
• Instructions on How to Draw an Eyeball or How to Deal With a Loved One Who Is Addicted to Drugs
• You See You in Me
• You’ve Got Brain Damage
• At the End of the Day
• The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves (Ceasefire in the City of the Singing Flame)
• Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part Two
• A Sunset Far Away
• Now I Understand

First dates of the 2027 world tour

Although the announcement on October 26th confirmed the band will be on the road in 2027, the entirety of next year’s tour is yet to come. So far, there have just been five two-night residencies announced. Tickets for these shows are already on sale.

• January 22-23: Brooklyn Bowl: Nashville, TN
• January 26-27: Irving Plaza: New York, NY
• February 23-24: The Bellwether: Los Angeles, CA
• February 27-28: Metro: Chicago, IL
• April 2-3: o2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire: London, UK

The residencies will be a completely different show than those fans have experienced since the American Head, and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots anniversary, tours. According to an Instagram video announcement by Wayne, each show will feature two different sets, with night one comprised of The Teardrop Throbs played in full in the show’s first set, followed by “Flaming Lips songs from 1986-1999” in the second set.

On night two, the first set will again feature The Teardrop Throbs album, but its presentation will be different from the first night. The second set of the second night will be “Flaming Lips songs from 2002-2020“.

These residencies will give fans young and old something to celebrate as the band looks to pull from a catalog that now spans 40 years. With these performances ranging from January through early April, there is a possibility that there will be more dates announced next year, including some festival appearances.

The band updated its website and is encouraging fans to drop their emails in to receive news and information about shows and ticket sales.

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The Flaming Lips find beauty, fear and cosmic wonder in ‘The Teardrop Throbs’

According to the album’s press kit, The Flaming Lips return with their first new album in more than six years, pairing moonlit werewolves, childhood fears, fractured realities, and reflections on love and loss in a new chapter for the psychedelic pioneers.

For more than four decades, the Oklahoma-bred band has turned the strange, the beautiful, the frightening and the seemingly impossible into a psychedelic universe all of its own. Now the group is opening another door into that universe.

The announcement on October 26th, arrives alongside the release of the album’s first single, “God Will Control the Werewolves,” a song born from a night-time game of hide-and-seek, a full moon and a father’s attempt to reassure his children that the monsters of their imaginations will be kept at bay.

That combination of the ordinary and the extraordinary is quintessential Flaming Lips. A family outing can become a supernatural adventure. A passing thought about death can grow into a meditation on love. An unfinished instrumental tune can transform into a song about frogs, melting stars, and the end of the world.

The current line-up features Coyne on vocals, guitar and synthesizers, Derek Brown on guitar, synthesizers and vocals, Matthew Kirksey on drums and vocal, Tommy McKenzie on bass and synthesizers and AJ Slaughter on guitar and synthesizers.

Across “The Teardrop Throbs”, seemingly disconnected ideas form a collection that moves between personal reflection and elaborate flights of imagination. The album’s 13 tracks include a reworking of a song from the band’s own catalog, a meditation on addiction and the fear of permanent damage, an imagined city emerging from war, and an instrumental finale that Coyne describes as a cosmic drama with a happy resolution.

For Coyne, the record’s emotional starting point was not necessarily a studio experiment or a grand musical concept. It was a moment in a grocery store parking lot.

A father’s imagination takes a darker turn

In his account of the album’s creation, Coyne describes sitting in the car outside Trader Joe’s supermarket while his young son, Rex, slept in the back seat. Looking into the rear-view mirror, he found himself contemplating the child’s beauty and vulnerability, along with the terrifying thought of what would happen if illness or an accident took him away.

Coyne imagined that these are the kinds of thoughts parents experience daily, even when nothing is wrong. The mind wanders towards the worst possibilities precisely because the people we love mean so much.

Then he noticed a sign in the shopping center. At first glance, he thought it read “Children’s Death Foundation”. The words immediately sent his imagination toward his mother, who, as a teenager, had assisted nuns at her Catholic junior high school in supporting families grieving the loss of a child. Coyne pictured cold nights, strangers trying to console one another and families struggling to remain in tact after an unimaginable tragedy.

When he looked again, he realized the sign actually said “Children’s Health Foundation.” The mistake was over, but the emotional impact had already taken hold. Coyne recalls other moments when his mind had similarly transformed ordinary words into something darker, including seeing “funnel cakes” as “funeral cakes” at a state fair.

The imagined sign had brought mortality into sharp focus. Even after he recognized the error, the scene involving his mother and the grieving families remained with him. The experience led him back to a simple realization: nothing in his life would ever be more important than his two young sons, Bloom and Rex.

That awareness became one of the emotional undercurrents of “The Teardrop Throbs”. Coyne acknowledges that the things occupying a songwriter’s mind inevitably find their way into the music, whether intentionally or not. In this case, thoughts about family, death, fear and the fragility of life helped shape a record that can be unsettling one moment and unexpectedly tender the next.

The album’s opening track, “Throb” grew out of that same period of reflection. Coyne had long admired the music in the 1955 film “The Night of the Hunter,” particularly the song “Pretty Fly,” sung by a young girl as she and her brother float down a river after escaping a dangerous preacher. The film’s combination of childhood vulnerability and nightmare imagery offered a fitting starting point for the new album.

Coyne asked the band’s new slide guitarist, A.J. Slaughter, to recreate the song note for note. Slaughter, who Coyne describes as capable of playing virtually everything, including drums, delivered an arrangement with an extended beginning and ending that Coyne did not recognize from the original. Rather than discard the unfamiliar passages, the band began building around them, adding guitars and drum machines to create a longer piece. Coyne even re-wrote the lyrics of “Pretty Fly” around the idea of a dreary hospital.

Eventually, much of that material fell away, leaving the short instrumental fragment that became “Throb”.

The result serves as the album’s opening statement: a small, unsettling piece of music connected to a much larger emotional landscape. Coyne sees the film itself as a nightmare about children in peril, making its musical traces particularly appropriate for a record shaped by a parent’s awareness of how much there is to lose.

Moonlight, werewolves and a father’s promise

If “Throb” establishes the album’s darker atmosphere, “God Will Control the Werewolves” brings Coyne’s family directly into its imaginative center.

The song began with Bloom and Rex playing hide-and-seek with their father in a park as the evening grew dark. A recent stay at an ocean-view Airbnb had left the family fascinated by the moon’s cycles. During that visit, a full moon coincided with an extraordinary change in the surrounding cove: the water had receded far enough to expose a broad stretch of seabed, where the family encountered unfamiliar sea creatures attached to the rocks.

The experience had made the moon feel less like a distant object in the sky and more like an active participant in the world around them.

When another full moon appeared during the game of hide-and-seek, the boys’ imaginations turned toward werewolves. Having watched several werewolf movies, they understood the familiar mythology: the creatures emerge when the moon is full.

Bloom asked his father whether the werewolves might get them while he and Rex were hiding. Coyne offered a reassuring answer: He told his son God would control the werewolves for a little while, allowing the game to continue. That moment became the seed of the album’s first single.

The song’s title sounds like the beginning of a horror story, but its origin is an affectionate exchange between a father and his child. It transforms a familiar childhood fear into something playful, with the promise of protection holding the darkness at a manageable distance.

Musically, Coyne imagined the track as a version of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon,” except with Syd Barrett still in the band. The reference suggests a psychedelic world that combines the expansive atmosphere of classic progressive rock with a more unpredictable, child-like sensibility.

It is an apt description of The Flaming Lips’ approach: grand musical ideas are welcome, but they remain subject to sudden turns, strange images and the logic of dreams.

The throb becomes a fever dream

The album’s third track, “Titan,” began with a piece of music created by bassist Tommy McKenzie on his home ProTools system. Coyne initially remembers it being called “Matrix”. The instrumental had a menacing quality but also a restless, hyperactive energy, making it a natural counterpoint to the slower, darker “God Will Control the Werewolves”.

The band added Mellotron flutes and an awkward chord change in the middle, then left the track alone for a while. Its next transformation came during one of Coyne’s walks to Tim Hortons coffee house from Dave Fridmann’s studio. The nearly two-mile walk gave him time to listen to the piece in his head, and as he considered its possibilities, a text arrived from Perry Farrell, former Jane’s Addiction frontman. Farrell had sent a short poem about being like a frog, leaping from one idea of life to another, jumping lightly without disturbing the lily pads.

Coyne was delighted by the image. It reminded him of Farrell’s intense vocal performances and suggested a new direction for the music: a high-energy voice delivering urgent advice, with the song racing through images of erupting suns, hunting titans and melting stars. Matt Kirksey’s high soprano singing and improvisation helped open a melodic territory that Coyne felt The Flaming Lips had not explored in quite the same way before.

The track illustrates how the album’s pieces evolved through a series of unexpected encounters. A bassist’s home recording, a walk to a coffee shop and a poet’s message could all become part of the same creative process. The music was not necessarily mapped out in advance – its identity emerged as the band discovered what each fragment might become. That willingness to follow an idea wherever it leads remains essential to The Flaming Lips’ musical identity.

Every teardrop carries a memory

The album’s most intimate moments return to the emotional territory that first opened up in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.

“Every Teardrop Cried” began with a single line: “Every drop of rain that falls is you”.

Coyne initially intended the words to serve as a brief interlude between songs. But the image carried more weight than a transitional passage could contain.

In explaining the song, Coyne connects the lyric to the death of a child, adding that the death of Nell Smith roughly a year earlier was a profound influence on the song. The song emerged from the idea of continuing to encounter someone who is gone in the beautiful things that remain in the world: A raindrop, a familiar sound or the act of crying can become a reminder of a person who is no longer physically present. The line gradually expanded into a song about that experience, with the middle verse drawing connections between memory, sight, sound and tears.

Coyne says the words seemed to arrive almost simultaneously with the singing, as though he were discovering a song that had already existed for years. That feeling of discovery is significant. While the album includes elaborate musical constructions and surreal narratives, some of its most affecting moments appear to come from following a feeling before trying to explain it.

“Every Teardrop Cried” offers a counterpoint to the more fantastical material surrounding it. Its emotional logic is direct: love does not necessarily end when a person dies. Instead, the world can become filled with reminders of the person who is missing.

The song also provides another connection to the album’s title. Tears are both physical expressions of grief and reminders of the depth of human attachment. In Coyne’s account, even the smallest natural image can become a vessel for an overwhelming emotion.

From a stolen presidential brain to the power of a simple mantra

Not every song on “The Teardrop Throbs” began with such heavy subject matter. “Hooray” originally belonged to a larger piece connected to “At the End of the Day”. As the music developed, the combined composition became too expansive, and the band eventually separated it into two songs. The original story was a science-fiction spy adventure involving a blonde secret-agent character who steals the president’s brain and flees from futuristic Russian assassins.

Coyne’s wife, Katy, heard the song from another room and found its music sweet and full of longing. When she realized the lyrics involved the president’s brain, however, she warned that listeners might interpret the song as a reference to Donald Trump. The song was too beautiful, she felt, to risk that association. So Coyne changed the lyrics.

The anecdote captures one of the album’s recurring tensions: the distance between the images a songwriter invents and the meanings listeners may attach to them. Even an absurd science-fiction premise can become entangled with contemporary politics, sometimes in ways that distract from the feeling the music is meant to convey.

Another song, “Instructions on How to Draw an Eyeball or How to Deal With a Loved One Who Is Addicted to Drugs” takes a more stripped-down approach. Coyne describes it as a simple song that he largely made up while singing into the microphone. Its central sentiment — “I don’t know why but I just keep on trying again and again” — functions as a mantra, a phrase repeated in the hope that it will become true.

The song’s title brings together two seemingly unrelated subjects: drawing an eye and attempting to help someone struggling with addiction. Both suggest the difficulty of understanding what is happening in front of us. An eyeball can be rendered through careful observation, but the inner life of another person is much harder to grasp.

The song’s repeated determination to keep trying becomes an acknowledgment that love does not always provide answers. Sometimes the only available response is to continue making the effort, even when the outcome remains uncertain.

Finding the moment when a song should end

The Flaming Lips have long approached recording as a form of experimentation, but Coyne’s description of “You See You in Me” reveals how difficult it can be to recognize when an experiment has reached its natural conclusion. This song began with guitar rhythms that resembled bursts of sound effects. As the band worked on it, those rhythms and lyrics developed into a musical narrative, with the song itself imitating the events it described. The effect amused the musicians. The arrangement seemed to tell its story through its structure, creating the feeling of a machine-gun sequence of events in which one incident followed another.

The original recording continued for several minutes beyond the version that eventually made the album. Slaughter’s slide guitar grew increasingly crunchy, while a distorted string patch played by Derek Brown became more extreme. The band struggled to decide where the track should stop. Eventually, after some time had passed, the group returned to the song with Fridmann and shortened it without much difficulty. The final version also gained an unexpected closing message: “the flames reach higher.”

For Coyne, the experience illustrates a familiar challenge in the recording studio. Sometimes the excitement of making a song is greater than the excitement of listening to it afterward. The process of creating the music can generate an energy that is difficult to preserve once the work is finished. By cutting the track down, the band kept that energy alive rather than allowing the song to exhaust itself as it continued to build.

Coyne admits that he sometimes worries about the mechanics of recording — the division of music into drum parts, bass parts, strings and other individual components — taking away some of the magic that made the song exciting in the first place.

But he also recognizes that editing can protect that magic. “You See You in Me” ultimately survived because the band found a way to preserve its enthusiasm without allowing the arrangement to overwhelm it.

The fear of a damaged mind

One of the album’s more unsettling titles, “You’ve Got Brain Damage,” emerged from an instrumental composition by AJ Slaughter. Coyne had heard a simple, droning chord progression on Slaughter’s Bandcamp album and asked whether he could turn it into a song. The two worked on the music at Slaughter’s house, using his home recording setup, while Coyne added vocals.

The lyrics grew out of a late-night period of reflection about drugs, alcohol and the damage people can do to themselves. Coyne thought about people he had known who had struggled with substance use, including those who seemed beyond anyone’s ability to help. He also turned the questions inward, wondering whether he might have caused damage to himself without recognizing it.

The thoughts grew increasingly surreal. Coyne imagined the possibility that his entire life might be one extended hallucination, perhaps the result of being given a powerful dose of LSD as a child. In that scenario, the world he knew could be a fantasy unfolding while his actual body lay forgotten in a medical bed.

It is the kind of disturbing possibility that the Flaming Lips have often transformed into psychedelic fiction, taking a recognizable human anxiety and extending it until it becomes almost cosmic in scale.

Beneath the absurdity, however, is a serious concern about the limits of self-awareness. What if a person has changed in ways they can no longer recognize? What if the damage is already done? And what if the mind responsible for asking those questions is itself incapable of providing a reliable answer? The song’s dark humor does not resolve those fears. Instead, it gives them a musical form, allowing Coyne to explore the unsettling territory between ordinary worry and an elaborate nightmare.

Autumn shadows and the city after war

“At the End of the Day” began as a song with lyrics and melody, written while Coyne played guitar and sang in his kitchen. Katy contributed the phrase that became its title. Coyne developed it into a reflection on the melancholy of autumn evenings, when the lengthening shadows seem to bring a comforting sadness. The trees are dying, the sun is dying, and the listener is reminded of the inevitability of personal mortality.

The song initially took shape around Coyne’s narration, but as the band added instrumentation, it became clear that the music was more powerful without his spoken explanation. The group stripped away the narration, leaving the instrumental passage to communicate the feeling on its own. Coyne says he still imagines returning to the song someday. That unfinished quality is part of the album’s character. Not every idea needs to arrive at a definitive conclusion, and not every piece of music must explain exactly what it means.

The following track, “The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves (Ceasefire in the City of the Singing Flame)” moves from private melancholy into a fictional landscape. Coyne imagines standing on a city street as new life emerges after a war. The trees begin to grow leaves again, the violence subsides, and flowers replace the screams that had filled the city.

At the center of the scene is the Holy Virgin, which in Coyne’s story is not simply a religious figure but an underground radio station broadcasting a poem about freedom on an endless loop. The imagery blends spiritual symbolism, political liberation and the renewal of the natural world. After destruction, the city begins to breathe again. The return of leaves becomes evidence that life can reassert itself even after a period of terrible violence.

The Flaming Lips have frequently blurred the boundaries between the personal and the planetary, and this imagined ceasefire extends that approach. The same impulse that leads Coyne to contemplate the fragility of his children’s lives can also lead him to picture an entire city recovering from war.

Returning to an old song without repeating it

The album then turns toward familiar territory with “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part Two,” a new interpretation connected to the Flaming Lips’ original song from their 2002 album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.”

Coyne has long enjoyed the opportunity to revisit songs from earlier records, not simply by repeating the original arrangements but by finding new ways to approach their underlying ideas. Here, the subject is ego death and the struggle to understand status, power and the ways those forces might be transformed into something useful.

Coyne again invokes the idea of Syd Barrett remaining in Pink Floyd, imagining a different version of the band’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Instead of singing about money, as Pink Floyd did on its celebrated 1973 album, this imagined Barrett-led version would tell a strange story about a queen killing a king, taking his crown and melting it down to make a sword. The image is both absurd and pointed. Power is not treated as something inherently valuable or permanent. The crown can be dismantled and turned into something else, suggesting that the symbols people fight over may be less important than what they choose to do with them.

The track’s extended ending gradually dissolves into “A Sunset Far Away,” a song Coyne describes as being about a beautiful but turbulent situation that may be better left in the distance. Rather than ending with bitterness, the song retains a sense of optimism. Its central image lingers on a sun sinking lower and lower, observed by a voice that seems to come from somewhere beyond the immediate scene.

The transition from one song to the next reinforces the album’s dream-like structure. Individual pieces do not always end so much as drift into another state of mind, connecting images and emotions that might otherwise seem unrelated.

An ending that finds its own resolution

“The Teardrop Throbs” closes with “Now I Understand,” an instrumental piece that began as the orchestration behind the ending of another song. Coyne and the band eventually discarded that earlier song’s structure, vocals, drums and guitars, leaving the orchestration to stand on its own. Presented in this form, the music becomes what Coyne describes as a cosmic drama that appears to reach a happy resolution.

It is a fitting final movement for an album that begins with the vulnerability of children, moves through fears of death and mental damage, and repeatedly returns to questions of love, power and the possibility of renewal.

The ending does not necessarily answer every question raised along the way. Instead, it offers a sense of resolution through sound alone, allowing the music to communicate something that might be difficult to express in words.

Coyne is careful not to insist that listeners interpret the songs in the same way he does. In his accompanying notes, he emphasizes that every composition contains countless influences and decisions, and that he doesn’t believe songs have fixed meanings. He doesn’t want them to.

For Coyne, music should be allowed to affect a listener’s mood and feelings regardless of the circumstances in which it was written or the methods used to record it. His explanations are offered as points of entry rather than definitive interpretations.

That distinction is important for a band whose work has always thrived on ambiguity. The Flaming Lips can build a song around a real experience and then transform it into something fantastical, leaving listeners free to discover their own connections.

A new chapter with Third Man Records

The release of “The Teardrop Throbs” also marks a new chapter in The Flaming Lips’ recording career. The album was produced by the Flaming Lips, Taylor Johnson, Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker, with additional production by Jon Fridmann and Mike Fridmann.

For a band that has built a career around giant balloons, confetti-filled performances, elaborate visual spectacles and songs that can turn the universe into a playground, “The Teardrop Throbs” appears to begin somewhere much smaller: a father looking into the backseat of his car and contemplating how much he loves the children sleeping there.

From that moment, the imagination takes over. A misread sign becomes a vision of grief. A full moon brings werewolves into a game of hide-and-seek. A melody becomes a warning about addiction, a city rises from the ruins of war, and an old song returns in a new form.

The Flaming Lips have spent more than 40 years turning such leaps of imagination into music. On “The Teardrop Throbs,” the journey begins with the fear of losing what matters most and ends with a sound that seems to suggest understanding is possible, even if it never arrives in the form we expect.

Sometimes, in The Flaming Lips’ universe, the answer is not an explanation at all. It is simply the music that remains after the questions have been asked.

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Wayne Coyne and Derek Brown join Miley Cyrus for two Los Angeles concerts, reuniting two unconventional musical forces

The Flaming Lips frontman appeared alongside Cyrus at the Hollywood Bowl on TWO nights, performing songs that celebrated their decade-long creative partnership and shared love of psychedelic experimentation

By The Observer

LOS ANGELES — Wayne Coyne and Derek Brown brought the unmistakable spirit of The Flaming Lips to Miley Cyrus’ return to the concert stage, joining the pop superstar for both of her Hollywood Bowl performances on October 16th and 18th.

Coyne and Brown shared the stage with Cyrus during both concerts, performing The Flaming Lips’ beloved anthem “Do You Realize??” and “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” a song from Cyrus’ 2015 experimental album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.

The two-night appearance highlighted a musical relationship that has connected the psychedelic rock veterans with one of pop music’s most adventurous artists for more than a decade. Rather than a one-night guest appearance, Coyne’s participation in both shows made the reunion a recurring highlight of Cyrus’ return to the stage.

A partnership built on experimentation

Coyne and Cyrus first attracted widespread attention through their work together on Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. Released in 2015, the album departed from the polished mainstream pop sound associated with much of Cyrus’ earlier career, embracing psychedelic arrangements, unconventional production and the experimental sensibilities that have defined The Flaming Lips’ music for decades. The Flaming Lips played a major role in shaping the album’s sound, helping create a project that blurred the boundaries between pop, alternative rock and psychedelia.

“Karen Don’t Be Sad” provided a direct connection to that collaborative history at the Hollywood Bowl, while “Do You Realize??” brought one of The Flaming Lips’ most recognizable songs into Cyrus’ live performances.

Originally released on the band’s 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, “Do You Realize??” reflections on mortality, love and the fleeting nature of life have made it a defining moment at Flaming Lips concerts around the world.

The song’s appearance alongside Cyrus was particularly fitting for a reunion rooted in a shared willingness to approach music without conventional boundaries.

A memorable return to the stage

Cyrus’ Hollywood Bowl concerts marked a major live-performance moment for the singer, bringing together her established hits, newer material and special guests for two nights in Los Angeles.

Coyne’s presence offered a reminder of a less conventional chapter in Cyrus’ career, when she explored psychedelic music and collaborated with artists outside the mainstream pop world.

For The Flaming Lips, the performances also represented another opportunity to introduce the band’s music to a different audience. Over the course of its career, the group has developed a reputation for combining ambitious arrangements, surreal visual spectacle and emotionally resonant songwriting.

Coyne has long championed the idea that music can create a shared experience among strangers, transforming a concert into something more communal than a straightforward performance. “Do You Realize??” embodies that philosophy, encouraging listeners to recognize the extraordinary value of ordinary moments and the people around them.

Performing the song with Cyrus on both nights gave that message a new setting while revisiting the musical connection the two artists established years earlier.

Two nights, one enduring musical connection

The repeated collaboration demonstrated that the relationship between Coyne and Cyrus extends beyond a single guest appearance or nostalgic reunion. Their work together has been built around creative curiosity, psychedelic exploration and a willingness to challenge expectations.

For fans of The Flaming Lips, seeing Coyne appear at the Hollywood Bowl offered a reminder of the band’s influence beyond the alternative rock scene. For Cyrus’ audience, the performances revisited an experimental period that remains an important part of her musical evolution. The Hollywood Bowl shows celebrated more than Cyrus’ return to live performance: They also brought renewed attention to a musical partnership that continues to connect two artists whose careers have taken very different paths but repeatedly intersected in unexpected ways.

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Observations From Wayne’s Book Signing Session in L.A.

By Kampy / The Observer

LOS ANGELES — In mid-October, you may have seen posts on social media promoting that Wayne would be signing copies of his new childrens’ book –“I Am An Eye I Don’t Know Why”– here in my hometown of Los Angeles on October 17 … but I did not. I try to limit my exposure to social media (especially leading up to Election Day) and could easily have missed that Wayne was in town until after the fact.

Luckily, my buddy and fellow Lips fan Chris texted me from Utah to ask if I was attending, and if so– could I have Wayne sign a book for him too? Of course! I searched up the deets and learned he’d be signing at The Last Bookstore between 3–5 p.m. that Saturday, and attendees were required to pre-order a copy of the book, but could bring a few additional items for Wayne to sign too.

I immediately started thinking of my inventory of Lips-related paraphernalia… what was already signed, and what wasn’t? What would I want to get signed? And how many “additional items” could I get away with bringing? I’m not a serious collector, but I do have a LOT of Lips shit… what would the people waiting in line behind me think if I had a metric shit ton of Lips merch with me and they had to wait an eternity for Wayne to sign all of it? Did I really want to be “that” guy?

Because… I already had a pretty good idea of what to expect at a Wayne Coyne signing session. I’d been to a handful of such sessions in the past, and knew that Wayne is typically very generous with his time and attention when interacting with fans. He patiently listens to their stories, and shares his own, and… it can take a while! At the record release party for “Embryonic” in 2009, Wayne, Steven, Michael and Kliph kept signing for fans until the staff of the Ricardo Montalban Theatre kicked everyone out so they could go home for the night. So the band set up a table outside on the sidewalk next to Vine St, and kept signing until the very last fan was tended to… around 2 a.m.!



Then the solution dawned on me: I could show up late and make sure I was the LAST person in line – eliminating any anxiety over making others wait while I talk Wayne’s ear off and have him sign a bajillion things. Perfect.



Getting there late was the easy part. I hopped on the subway in North Hollywood for what I thought would be an easy ride down the B line to Pershing Square. But a power outage at the 7th Street station meant the train could only go as far as Macarthur Park. From there I had to figure out what bus could get me the last two miles. That delayed me another 20 minutes or so, but it didn’t matter… when I got to The Last Bookstore, the line to see Wayne still snaked through the lower level of the building, and didn’t seem to be moving at all. I found the back of the line and settled in for a long wait.


Despite the line moving about as quickly as a glacier, vibes were high. Like the crowds at Lips shows, the people in line were an eclectic and diverse mix of humans of all ages, including a few families there with their kids. I was chatting with the guy in front of me much of the time, and getting a kick out of watching regular customers come through the entrance and pause as they tried to figure out why so many people were standing in a long line.



If you’re unfamiliar with “The Last Bookstore,” it’s a magical place. Located in the bottom floors of the historic Spring Arts building, in a space that was a huge bank 100 years ago, it’s an massive independent new & used bookstore that also sells vinyl records, has a labyrinth of densely packed rows of bookshelves covering 2 levels, with lots of rooms and nooks and crannies that you could spend all day exploring. There are several art pieces and sculptures made of books that appear unexpectedly in quiet corners, and the vibe is less like a Barnes & Noble, and more like Meow Wolf, crossed with Amoeba Records, crossed with a Harry Potter movie. It’s one of downtown L.A.’s popular tourist destinations, and it was quite busy on this Saturday.

Maybe because I was the last person in line, several of the regular customers approached me to ask who we were standing in line to meet.  “Who’s the author?” many asked.

“Wayne Coyne.” I’d say. “He’s signing copies of his childrens’ book, but he’s more known for being the lead singer of The Flaming Lips.”
Some knew who he was, others had no clue, and a few were like, “Flaming Lips… that sounds familiar… what song did they do?”

“Umm, they did a LOT of songs, but the one you might be trying to remember is “Do You Realize??” … and then I’d sing a bit of the chorus (badly) while scanning their facial expression for a sign of recognition. This scene repeated often enough that it became kind of a joke between me and the guy in front of me. “Here comes another one, get ready to sing again!”

Occasionally, Wayne would grab a microphone and apologize to everyone still in line for taking so long with each person (“I like to talk!”) and would add that if anyone was needing to leave soon, they could cut to the front of the line. I did not see Katy or the kids there, but lead Lips roadie Zack was there, and so was Derek … although he left before I had a chance to speak with him.

By the time I finally made it to Wayne’s table with my tote bag full of records and poster tubes, it was around 6:45 p.m… nearly two hours beyond the scheduled 3–5 pm window for the book signing. I’ve chatted with Wayne a few times over the past 20 years, but not quite often enough for him to remember me, until I remind him that I’m friends with the Woodys, Amy, Alan, etc.

“Oh, you know I officiated Alan & Kelli’s wedding recently!” he exclaimed. We chatted about mutual friends as Wayne patiently signed all my stuff– books for myself and Chris, several vinyl records, a couple posters. He told me he was getting ready to head over to the Hollywood Bowl to sing a couple songs with Miley Cyrus at her show. I was trying not to geek out on him too much, or talk his ear off… but, I couldn’t help myself. This was my first time chatting with him after American Head was released, so I had to tell him it was my all-time favorite album. I had to thank him for introducing me to the music of Particle Kid and Nell Smith, who are now among my favorites too. Eventually I caught myself rambling on and realized Wayne, Zack & crew were getting anxious to get over to the Bowl for Miley’s thing.

I’m guessing that nearly four straight hours of talking with fans and posing for photos was exhausting, but Wayne never let it show, and made time for everyone, including me. That’s why we love him!

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The Flaming Lips turn Manhattan into a celebration of love, noise, and possibility

At the Soho House Festival, the Oklahoma City originals delivered a compact but wildly ambitious set that ranged from Yoshimi to Black Sabbath — and reminded New York why the Flaming Lips remain one of rock’s great live experiences

By The Observer

NEW YORK — There are easier ways to spend an October afternoon in Manhattan than watching The Flaming Lips turn a rooftop overlooking the East River into a temporary universe of psychedelic rock. But easy has never really been The Flaming Lips’ thing.

On Saturday, October 3rd, the Oklahoma City band brought its strange, colorful and relentlessly optimistic brand of rock ‘n’ roll to The Rooftop at Pier 17 as part of the inaugural U.S. Soho House Festival. The festival, headlined by Alanis Morissette, also featured MGMT, Questlove and friends, Santigold, Justine Skye and Hamilton Leithauser.

The Lips arrived with a setlist that looked almost like a miniature history of the band. There were songs from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. There was The Soft Bulletin-era grandeur. There was the anarchic guitar blast of “Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung“. There was “She Don’t Use Jelly,” “The Golden Path,” and there was Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” And, of course, there was “Do You Realize??”

The result was a set that didn’t attempt to explain what The Flaming Lips are in 2026. It simply demonstrated it.

On Tour In The Year 2026: show 25: Saturday October 3
SoHo House Festival: Pier 17, New York City

The Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
The Golden Path
She Don’t Use Jelly
Every Tear Drop Cried
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
War Pigs

Do You Realize??

The show opened with “The Stars Are So Big… I Am So Small… Do I Stand a Chance?”, immediately establishing the cosmic tone.

Then “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1″ and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2“ effectively dropped the audience into one of the most recognizable worlds in The Flaming Lips’ catalog.

From there, the band moved into “Turn It On,” “Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung,” “The Golden Path,” “Jelly” and “Every Teardrop Cried.”

The middle of the set was particularly revealing. Rather than leaning exclusively on the band’s biggest commercial songs, the Lips pulled from different corners of their history. “Pompeii” brought the noise. “The Golden Path” connected the band to its long-running relationship with electronic and psychedelic music. “Every Teardrop Cried” provided a newer emotional counterpoint.

If there was one song on the Manhattan setlist that could make someone stop and look twice, it was “War Pigs.” For the past 18 months or so, The Flaming Lips have incorporated the Black Sabbath classic into their live rotation – in part to pay tribute to the passing of Ozzy Osbourne and possibly in part to protest some of the injustices of the world. “War Pigs” has become one of those covers that fits their theatrical approach surprisingly well. The song also works as a bridge between the Lips‘ psychedelic tendencies and their heavier side. It is loud, ominous and apocalyptic. The Flaming Lips have always been fascinated by that territory. When Derek Brown delivers the signature guitar riff, it’s clean and crisp and it cuts through the night like a knife, as Wayne Coyne laments through the lyrics that the United States is still a nation at war, seemingly with itself — now more than ever.

But where Black Sabbath can make the apocalypse sound terrifying, the Lips have a habit of making the apocalypse feel strangely communal — something to dance through together. That contrast is part of their magic.

And finally, the song that has become perhaps the band’s most enduring statement of communal optimism: “Do You Realize??“

“Do You Realize??“

Ending the set with “Do You Realize??” was an emotional masterstroke. Few bands have a song so universally associated with their identity that simply seeing its title on a setlist immediately tells you what kind of emotional destination the show is heading towards. For The Flaming Lips, the song has become far more than a hit – it is a ritual. And in New York, surrounded by one of the world’s great skylines, its questions about mortality, love and the temporary nature of existence carried an especially appropriate weight. The band has spent more than two decades turning the song into a communal experience. On October 3, it was another opportunity to do exactly that.

From the New York state of online

One of the most interesting aspects of the New York show was the conversation surrounding it online. Before the concert, a Reddit discussion about the event quickly became tangled in The Flaming Lips‘ current lineup and the departure of longtime multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. There was certainly skepticism. But there was also an important counterpoint from a fan who had already seen the band four times since Drozd’s departure.

Their assessment was simple: “they’re sounding great live.” That comment received eight upvotes in the discussion, while another fan specifically said they were talking about The Flaming Lips concert, rather than wanting the conversation to become another debate about Drozd. That distinction matters. Because, while the departure of a long-time member is an important part of the band’s story, the New York discussion also demonstrated that a significant portion of the audience is ready to judge the current Flaming Lips on what happens onstage now. And there are reasons for those fans to remain enthusiastic, even when there is an understandable tendency to view The Flaming Lips in terms of what they have lost.

Drozd’s departure from touring is significant. He was a core songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in the band for decades. Recent coverage surrounding the band’s forthcoming 20th-anniversary edition of At War With the Mystics has also placed renewed attention on that history.

Meanwhile, the band is preparing a new album set for release in January. That means the band is currently living in two timelines – one looking back towards 2006, the other standing on a Manhattan rooftop in 2026, looking past the skyline towards 2027, ready to deliver to the world new musical messages for one simple reason: People still want to hear it.

It Overtakes Me (Single Version)
I’m Afraid of Dying…Aren’t You??
Free Radicals (The Bird and the Bee Mix) and
Time Travel…YES!! (with Steven Michael Burns)

So there I was, standing in a beautiful sea of humanity watching Rush perform Vital Signs in Denver, when it hit me. Yeah, these guys are epic in so many ways, but, this ain’t a Flaming Lips show…

Now this isn’t a dig at Rush in any way. I can remember their posters as a kid, and there was a Rush pinball machine at the nearby K-Mart where I grew up that I would pump quarters into on the daily. But the heart wants what the heart wants. I just want to put out into the universe a sincere thank you for the extra ticket, and the one last time to hear Rush live.

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You might have seen a new byline in this month’s issue. We have been blessed to have Scott “Kampy” Kampmeyer, a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, which is a big fuggin deal, and longtime Lips fan going way back, joining The Observer team. Kampy reached out and wanted to write about the music, and the fans who love it. And, I am pleased to announce that we have brainstormed some new things coming in 2027. We will still be using this WordPress site. But we will looking into making some upgrades to the presentation.

And why not? The band isn’t slowing down anytime soon so why should we. This new approach, paired with our storytelling from the road, will connect the music and the fans in a new way. Will it be better? We will see, but the whole idea is to document what we discover and present it to lips community each month. We will need to do some testing before we roll anything new out. And any feedback is appreciated.

This space will always be open to everyone. And all are welcome here.

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If you are a fan of music newsletters since you are reading one right now, then I suggest the The Red Hand Files, Nick Cave’s newsletter. It is so well done and each issue pulls me in. Cave addresses everything from love to addiction, art, and his music. So far there hasn’t been an subject he avoids. If you have time and bandwidth, go check it out.

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Hey did any of you see the new Butthole Surfers documentary? I thought it was one of the best films about music I have ever seen. Why? Because there was so much about the feelings that music can create. It was very emotional and felt so authentic.

Music is a hard medium to document. For me it’s about the feeling of the music. Those are the stories I love to tell, and my goal with The Observer is to tell those stories.

I hope one day there will be another documentary about the Lips produced that can capture what the Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt did. I bumped into Teresa Taylor once at a show in the early 2000s. Back then, I knew her as Teresa Nervosa, this small woman with a huge smile and a thunderous sound on the drums. She was as punk as punk gets. It was great that the documentary included her before her death in 2023.