The Flaming Lips have released a new single, “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad”, off their forthcoming album American Head, due out September 11th. The song joins previously-released American Head singles “Will You Return / When You Come Down“, “Flowers of Neptune 6“, “My Religion Is You“, “You N’ Me Sellin’ Weed“, and “Dinosaurs on the Mountain”.
On American Head, the psych-pop mainstays have a stated approach of deciphering what it means to be an “American band.” Frontman Wayne Coyne said with the album’s announcement that The Flaming Lips had previously just considered themselves as being from Earth, rather than any particular country, and this record will see them getting in touch with their patriotic roots.
In “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad”, The Flaming Lips appear to have actually written a folk song. Given the American Head aesthetic, as well as the fact that Coyne specifically mentioned the Grateful Dead when discussing American bands, the track is not too surprising and even sounds like the band’s closest attempt to a Workingman’s Dead song. That is until you find out that the song is actually autobiographical about when Coyne was robbed at gunpoint while working at a Long John Silvers as a teenager.
“Well, until then, I could probably say I didn’t realize I was really alive… I never really thought about it,” Coyne said. “We were living such an insane, healthy, wonderful, happy life — my brothers and all of our friends just running around doing the craziest sh*t ever. But then I’m laying on the floor thinking: ‘This is how I’m going to die.’”
The event changed the course of Coyne’s life as this was the moment that he decided to break with his family’s middle-class background and become a musician.
“After this robbery, for a little while, I just thought, ‘It doesn’t matter. They don’t care. They want me to do music,’” he said. “So, I think it helped me in that way — to not feel like I had abandoned these things that my father had worked for. So, I have to say, I think it was probably the greatest gift a young person could have — to suddenly get a new perspective on what’s important in your life.”
Watch the music video for “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad” by The Flaming Lips.
The Flaming Lips – “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad” (Official Music Video)
[Video: flaminglips]
[H/T Rolling Stone]
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