We thought, “well, we’re going to make this record and if it’s the last record we make and the world doesn’t need any more Flaming Lips' records we would know that we did the thing that we wanted to do.”

You’ve got these anniversary shows coming up. Do you feel as if you might do this for ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ or your other album? And then two decades later, late 2018, and now I’m closing out my 40s, and my father died after a long illness. I felt hollow and confused, confronting the reality of him being gone while also thankful that his suffering was over. And then a day or two later, without thinking about it, I listened to “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” and thought about his body at the end, slowing down until it stopped as he left this world. And the music helped again. The Soft Bulletin is the ninth album by The Flaming Lips, released by Warner Bros. Records on May 17, 1999 in the UK, Europe and Australia, and on June 22, 1999 in the United States.Pattison, Louis (June 25, 2011). "The beatnik and the 'Bulletin: The Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin sleeve". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved October 16, 2019. Liberated by their indulgences on ‘Zaireeka’ and with newfound view on mortality, they emerged with 1999’s bittersweet ‘The Soft Bulletin’ – a symphony of strings, machines and synthetic sunshine. The single ‘Waitin’ For A Superman’ is Coyne coming to terms with the fact that a miracle to save his father was not forthcoming, ‘The Spiderbite Song’ is child-like lullaby of love from Coyne to his bandmates in the wake of their recent near-misses, ‘Feeling Yourself Disintegrate’ admits that “ life without death is just impossible” but worth it for love all the same, and ‘Race For The Prize’ is the glorious set-opener telling of two scientists willing to sacrifice everything to save the world. At the very least, they’d saved themselves.

It speaks to a certain sensitive person. I don’t think it speaks to a Foo Fighters’ kind of audience.” – Wayne Coyne The band were dealing with a lot of loss and demons at the time. 20 years later, what would you say the resounding message is of ‘The Soft Bulletin’? If you live, you love and you absolutely throw yourself into it then what if it dies? What choice do we have?” – Wayne Coyne You can still hear echoes of ‘The Soft Bulletin’ in a lot of today’s big psych bands. Do you often notice your influence in other artists? Masley, Ed (December 31, 1999). "The Best of 1999/Pop CDs". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on March 9, 2012 . Retrieved November 6, 2021. There wasn’t a fear of failure, we just had to be sure that we wanted to make it.” – Wayne Coyne So the live shows just became more instinctual? Part of the thing with The Flaming Lips and the strings, the horns, the timpani – there’s a certain authentic drama about it. Though we were using the most modern synthesizers and digital junk that you could get at the time, we were trying to make it sound like it wasn’t a band any more. We wanted it be more of an emotional sound than a band. I think those things we did on ‘Zaireeka’ freed us from being a band.” Did that just happen or did you have a very ‘anti-band’ attitude?We were throwing confetti around, I’d pour blood on my head, and we knew that if you’d come see us we could entertain you. I didn’t know if we were gonna look like any other band you’d seen before but we were going to try and entertain you and see how it goes. Who’d have ever thought that would work? There’s no marketing and there’s no plan.” The Soft Bulletin was lauded by critics and fans alike and topped numerous "Best of 1999" lists. The album is now considered by many to be the Flaming Lips's masterpiece. [24] The Soft Bulletin is considered by some to be partially responsible for establishing the latter-day identity of the Flaming Lips, and as its following expanded over the years after its release, paving the way to their being among the most well-respected groups of the 2000s.

Since late 2010, the album has been sporadically performed live in its entirety over the years, and on May 26, 2016, an orchestra was used to embellish sounds of the album while the band played their main instruments for the album at the concert. [28] The album was considered to mark a change in the course for the band, with more traditional catchy melodies, accessible-sounding music (their previous album Zaireeka was a quadruple album of experimental sounds meant to be played on four separate stereo systems simultaneously), and more serious and thoughtful lyrics. [8]

To celebrate the album on its 20th anniversary, we caught up with Wayne Coyne to talk over the seismic impact that the record had on his life and thousands of others. As it gets closer, I think we probably will. I don’t know if it has the same emotional power as ‘The Soft Bulletin’, but we’ve played ‘Do You Realize??’ and some of those songs every night since they came out so those songs are always with us. Some it is weird stuff that we’ve never played. But I think so. We like it where we’re not doing ‘the big overview’ of The Flaming Lips’ festival set and it feels different from last night.” For ‘The Soft Bulletin’ shows, will you be reimagining the songs? It speaks to a certain sensitive person. I don’t think it speaks to a Foo Fighters’ kind of audience. When Steven, Dave Friddmann [producer] and I we were making it we were grappling in our minds with the idea that the world is a happy and beautiful place. You know; you’re optimistic and all of this is work for you in your young life. The longer you keep going forward into this beautiful place you start to realise that it’s not really a beautiful place. Bits of it are full of unfair and horrible things. It’s a shift of going from this innocent person saying ‘Anything is possible, everything is beautiful – bring it on. I love life so much’, then having to say ‘Well if you love life so much, what if some of it dies? What are you going to do now?’” It was also a culmination of sorts. Its brilliance might have caught people off guard, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. The band had been inching away from the revved-up psych-pop formulation that yielded surprise hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” ever since the commercial failure of 1995’s Clouds Taste Metallic (which may be the real best Flaming Lips album depending on your mood). After guitarist Ronald Jones departed, Coyne and drummer Steven Drozd cooked up a series of stunts called the Parking Lot Experiments, ambitious compositions comprising dozens of cassettes designed to be played simultaneously through car stereos in a parking garage. This led to 1997’s Zaireeka, an album released on four discs designed to be played all at once. You couldn’t listen to it unless you had four CD players and at least one friend on hand — or made very creative use of your own appendages — but if you did manage to hear Zaireeka, you got an inkling of the Lips who’d emerge on The Soft Bulletin two years later.

The record is saying, ‘You’ve got to love life as much as you can, and if something tears some of that away from you then that’s ‘The Soft Bulletin’. It’s ‘Oh no’. If you live, you love and you absolutely throw yourself into it then what if it dies? What choice do we have? Do we live half a life because we don’t want to get hurt so much? Do we love half a love because if might lose it?” So the bad is ultimately worth it for the good? The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin - Pitchfork Classic". YouTube. February 27, 2013. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 . Retrieved April 4, 2021. That’s a real thing. We used the words ‘soft’ and bullet’ and ‘in’. It’s like part of you is being executed by something that doesn’t hurt you like a real bullet. It’s a soft bullet. ‘The Soft Bulletin’ is giving you this gentle message. That’s why I say it’s for sensitive people. I think for a lot of people it doesn’t matter that much. Your mind can be filled with other things, but if you’re an innocent person and your mind has that deep connection to love, beauty and family, then you have a lot to lose. You may lose yourself. You may be so devastated by your love for it that you don’t want to live. Somewhere in there ‘The Soft Bulletin’ was just saying, ‘I know, I know what you mean’. That’s enough. There’s a Daniel Johnston song that goes ‘To understand and be understood’. There’s something in there that let’s you go to the next day.” Oldham, James (May 6, 1999). "The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin". NME. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000 . Retrieved June 30, 2009. There’s probably a perception of The Flaming Lips that is probably like The Grateful Dead or Phish or a jam band or something. You know, that we take a song that you know that’s 20 minutes’ long and it becomes a 30-minute jam session. But we really don’t do that. I like it when Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davies does that but I don’t like it in particular for us. With a record like ‘The Soft Bulletin’, that’s not what the music is. We’re always very careful to do the music as well and as familiar as it can be. I know just by talking to people in the audience that they have some very powerful connections to these songs. I’m always aware of that with songs from ‘The Soft Bulletin’.”Waiting for Superman” takes a similar idea and stretches it wider. The one thing we’ve always thought would save us is gone, and all we’re left with is each other. It’s a terrifying realization at first, but then it becomes hopeful. The force that binds us together — love — is, The Soft Bulletin argues, the most powerful we could ever know. Those who experience it can do things beyond their imagination, like, say, lifting the sun into the sky. Twenty-year anniversaries are the best album anniversaries — long enough to say the album truly comes from another world, but not so long ago that this particular world is entirely unfamiliar. By some measures, 20 years is the length of a generation, enough time to reflect on those around you who were born and grew up and grew old and those who might not be around anymore. Cohen, Jonathan (August 3, 2002). "Flaming Lips' New Warner Set Reminds Us To Live For The Now". Billboard. Vol.114, no.31. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p.11 . Retrieved November 6, 2021.