Why did The Flaming Lips make a 24-hour-long song?
The Flaming Lips have been ignoring convention and writing their own rulebook rather than following tradition. Whether this is zorbing across the crowd during their concerts, using Nick Cave’s blood to make vinyl or Wayne Coyne’s bizarre Instagram, The Flaming Lips don’t follow the rules.
Perhaps the finest example of The Flaming Lips beating to the sound of their own drum came when they released a 24-hour song, ‘7 Skies H3’. The track appeared as the lone creation on the EP 24 Hour Song Skull, released in 2011. However, the release was limited to 13 copies, and if fans wanted to purchase a copy, it would have cost them an eye-watering $5,000.
The EP was so ludicrously expensive because it was released on Halloween and exclusively on flash drives encased in genuine human skulls. However, if that was out of fans’ price range, or they were uncomfortable with the packaging aspect of 24 Hour Song Skull, it was also made available for free by The Flaming Lips online.
With almost every other band on the planet, a release this bizarre would have been interpreted as a prank. However, with The Flaming Lips, 24 Hour Song Skull was incredibly on-brand, and Coyne was proud of his band’s strange, imaginative release.
“Yeah, right! It’s pretty cool, isn’t it? The great thing is, whether conventional or not, there should be no restrictions on where your ideas can go,” Coyne told Music Radar. “If you want to do something that’s different, you should be able to see it through. That doesn’t always mean that what you do will be successful – or even interesting – but the important thing is to explore and see where an idea takes you.”
The forever unique Coyne also explained why The Flaming Lips decided to make such an unorthodox EP: “When we were doing the six-hour song, we said, ‘OK, so now we’ll do a 24-hour song.’ At one point, we thought about a song that could last for a whole month! [laughs] It’s insane, but that’s fine – a form of insanity is all right if it means not holding back on the art. A 24-hour song is pretty insane.”
He continued: “Luckily, there are some restrictions. There’s nothing right now that can carry something more than 24 hours. We talked to the people at iTunes about carrying a 24-hour song, and they were like, ‘No! You’re insane. We can’t do that.’ I think the longest piece of music they have is 90 minutes.”
If it wasn’t for technological restraint, who knows how long The Flaming Lips would have made ‘7 Skies H3’. Although the band don’t set their own boundaries, ultimately, certain barriers are impossible to circumvent.
