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The Soft Bulletin

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Oldham, James (May 6, 1999). "The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin". NME. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000 . Retrieved June 30, 2009. One of those albums is The Soft Bulletin, which completes its second decade today. (It was released on 5/17/99 in the UK before coming out in the US the following month.) Hailed as a masterpiece upon arrival, the album is still arguably the Lips’ finest creative output, though with a discography as vast and varied as theirs you’ll never have complete consensus on that. What cannot be disputed is that The Soft Bulletin is the most pivotal release in the band’s career, the one where they cemented their status as legends and established the archetype they’ve been tweaking ever since. 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 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? 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.

Only now. I don’t think we would have liked that in the beginning. I don’t think we could have made the album if we thought that was going to happen. We’re not those young, innocent guys getting ready to make that transition that ‘The Soft Bulletin’ was about.” But you see it for what it is now? 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. 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. 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?’” 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]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? In 2006, Robert Dimery chose The Soft Bulletin and its follow-up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots as part of his book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. [25] Pitchfork ranked the album 3rd on the Top 100 albums of the 1990s list, [26] and awarded it a rare score of 10.0. AllMusic's Jason Ankeny gave it a highly enthusiastic review, concluding that "there's no telling where The Lips will go from here, but it's almost beside the point– not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade". [3] According to Acclaimed Music, The Soft Bulletin is the most acclaimed album of 1999, as well as the 110th most acclaimed all time. [27]

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin - Pitchfork Classic". YouTube. February 27, 2013. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 . Retrieved April 4, 2021. 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] The Flaming Lips performing The Soft Bulletin + Dinosaur Jr perform Bug + Deerhoof perform Milk Man - All Tomorrow's Parties". Atpfestival.com . Retrieved March 10, 2012. Terich, Jeff (July 2, 2015). "10 Essential Neo-Psychedelia Albums". Treble . Retrieved November 6, 2021. Yeah, I do. It’s something that I wanted when I was growing up. I never got to see Pink Floyd or The Beatles, but in my dreams I would have loved to have seen The Beatles play ‘The White Album’. Who wouldn’t, you know? I think we’re very capable of that stuff now. The guys in the group with the technology and all of the shit we have available to us now, it really is great to sing these songs with the arrangements and those kind of sounds.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?

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