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Do You Realize??

The first single from Yoshimi, built on the line that everyone you know someday will die.
The Flaming Lips, from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

Written by
Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, Michael Ivins, Dave Fridmann
Released
2002
Album
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Released as the first single from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots on 19 August 2002, it reached 32 on the UK singles chart. Coyne said in 2023 that Drozd liked the line about everyone you know someday dying, and that the spoken count-in of 1, 2, 3, 4 works like the laughter at the end of Within You Without You on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He also said people had told the band they played the song in hard moments, and that what the band made is not what it has become. The Guardian's review said such lyrics are sung so serenely that the heart swells.

The video was shot on Fremont Street in Las Vegas and shows Coyne walking the street with people dressed as bunnies and pigs, four dancers and a live elephant. No other band members appear. Rolling Stone ranked the song 31 on its list of the 100 best songs of the 2000s. In March 2009 it won an online vote for Oklahoma's official rock song, with nearly 51 percent of 21,000 votes. It was used in the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in July 2022 and later in the film. It is the band's most popular live song and has rarely been left out of a set since 2002.

Covers and versions

More songs by The Flaming Lips

Race for the Prize, Waitin' for a Superman, She Don't Use Jelly, Fight Test

Sources

  1. Do You Realize??, Wikipedia
  2. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Guardian (2002-07-12)