Miley Cyrus Surprise-Drops Flaming Lips Collaboration Album: Listen!
In a synergistic move timed with her hosting of Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus has just surprise-dropped a new album, co-produced by her buddies the Flaming Lips — ironic, considering that up until this week, the Lips probably hadn’t been seen or heard on MTV since “She Don’t Use Jelly” was in heavy rotation on 120 Minutes.
The album, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, also features Big Sean and Ariel Pink, and is available only for streaming on Cyrus’s website; an insider who heard it last week described it to Yahoo Music as sounding like “Miley fronting Portishead,” so suffice to say it’s not exactly the most MTV-friendly thing Miley’s ever done.
But another source stressed to Billboard that this not an “official” release: “It’s amazing, it’s incredible, it just needs to be understood that it’s not a typical, straightforward Miley record — we don’t want there to be confusion in the marketplace.”
When Cyrus started hanging out with Oklahoma eccentrics the Flaming Lips — singing with them onstage at the Staples Center and the Billboard Music Awards, getting matching tattoos with frontman/shaman Wayne Coyne, and covering “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” on the Lips’ 2014 track-by-track Sgt. Pepper tribute, With a Little Help From My Fwends — fans of both artists were understandably shocked, or even outraged. But while the bond between the 22-year-old former Disney princess Cyrus and 54-year-old psychedelic rock wizard Coyne may be surprising, the two just might be musical soulmates.
Coyne even told Yahoo Music last year that believes their fwendship could lure some of Miley’s “Smilers” to the Lips’ wild and wacky world.
“These 14-year-old girls who only know who Miley Cyrus is will probably listen to [Cyrus’s collaborations with the Lips] and hear music that’s really pretty bizarre,” he said. “And they won’t know it’s bizarre, because they’re young and their minds are open to everything. To me that’s a very thrilling area, ‘cause they’re going to be infected with all this stuff that they may have never, ever heard before.”
Wayne also claimed that most Lips fans are actually Miley supporters — secret Smilers, if you will. “I can see why people might go, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ but most of the very cool Flaming Lips fans secretly already love her, 'cause she’s so crazy. That’s how we feel about her. We already loved her, and now that we know her, it’s like, 'Oh my God, she’s crazier than we even knew.’ I talk to people all the time that are like, 'I love both you guys.’ I think that world is already here.”
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