The Flaming Lips

Oklahoma City

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983. Wayne Coyne played guitar, his brother Mark sang, Michael Ivins played bass and Dave Kotska drums. After Mark left, Wayne took over the singing, and the band made Hear It Is (1986) at Southern Studios in London for Pink Dust Records. With the producer Dave Fridmann they recorded In a Priest Driven Ambulance (1990) at the State University of New York in Fredonia, for $5 an hour on a $10,000 budget. Jonathan Donahue of Mercury Rev had joined in 1989. Warner Bros. signed them in 1990, after a label representative saw a show at which the band nearly burned down the venue with pyrotechnics.

Warner Bros. and Zaireeka

The major-label debut, Hit to Death in the Future Head, was held back for nearly a year while a sample from the film Brazil was cleared. Ronald Jones and Steven Drozd joined, and Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993) brought She Don't Use Jelly, whose video was shown on Beavis and Butt-head. The band appeared on Late Show with David Letterman and opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Candlebox. Clouds Taste Metallic followed in 1995.

Then came Zaireeka (1997), four CDs meant to be played at once on four players. It grew out of parking lot experiments, in which up to 40 volunteers played cassettes in their car stereos at the same moment. Songs that did not work in that format, among them Race for the Prize, were kept for the next record.

The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi

The Soft Bulletin (1999) was recorded at Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York, with Fridmann and Scott Booker producing alongside the band. It paired catchy melodies with electronic beats and synthesizers, and the band layered and detuned MIDI keyboards in place of a live orchestra. NME named it its album of the year, and Pitchfork gave it 10.0 and placed it third on its list of the best albums of the 1990s. Coyne said that if asked what instrument he played, he would answer the recording studio. To play it live the band toured as a three-piece with pre-recorded parts, and devised the Headphone Concert, in which a low-powered FM transmitter sent the show to free headphone receivers. Race for the Prize and Waitin' for a Superman were its singles.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) went further toward electronics, with acoustic guitars and rhythms influenced by hip hop. It opens with Fight Test and includes Do You Realize??. It reached 13 in the UK and 50 on the Billboard 200, and its closing instrumental won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. That summer the band toured with Cake and Modest Mouse, and it also opened for Beck and backed him on his Sea Change tour.

Since

Later albums include At War with the Mystics (2006), the double album Embryonic (2009), which reached 8 on the Billboard 200, The Terror (2013), Oczy Mlody (2017), King's Mouth (2019) and American Head (2020). In December 2009 they released a track-for-track cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Henry Rollins and Peaches. Their film Christmas on Mars premiered at the Sasquatch! Music Festival on 25 May 2008, and on 30 August 2015 they released Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, a 23-track album made with Miley Cyrus, free online. In June 2012 the band played eight concerts in 24 hours for a Guinness World Record. Yoshimi became a stage musical, premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in November 2012. Ivins left the band in 2021, and Drozd, co-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from 1991, stopped performing with it after 2024. Coyne is the only remaining founding member. The band has won three Grammy Awards and was on Q magazine's list of 50 bands to see before you die in 2002. From 2023 to 2025 the band toured Yoshimi in full, including dates in Australia in February 2025.