The Flaming Lips are known for their lush, multi-layered arrangements, spacey lyrics and bizarre song titles. They are also acclaimed for their elaborate live shows, which typically feature animal suits, puppets, streamers, video projections and complex stage light configurations.
In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die". In 2006, Oklahoma City named a street Flaming Lips Alley in their honor.
The group recorded several albums and EPs for Restless Records in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they scored a #9 hit on the Billboard Alternative charts (and #55 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart) in 1994 with "She Don't Use Jelly". Although it would be their only hit single, the band has maintained critical respect and, to a lesser extent, commercial viability with sonically majestic albums such as 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic, 1999's The Soft Bulletin, 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and 2006's At War with the Mystics. The Flaming Lips' 12th studio album, Embryonic, was released in October of 2009. A complete cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon was released in May 2010. The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, their collaborative album which features artists like Ke$ha, Bon Iver, Nick Cave and Erykah Badu, was released on Record Store Day, April 2012.
Their next studio album, tentatively titled The Terror, will be released in January 2013.
Their song "Do You Realize??" is the official State Rock Song of Oklahoma.
www.flaminglips.com
Butterfly
The Flaming Lips Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You will see how many times it tries
If you've ever really seen the sun set
You will see how long it takes to die.
You can see the butterfly has landed
Landed on your prison plates, you're out
You can feel its trouble making a teardrop
You can see the universe beginning
Making all the sun and the sky
You can see the universe is ending
Making love darker than the night
The first verse of The Flaming Lips's song Butterfly discusses the cycle of life and death using the metaphor of the sun rising and setting. The lines "If you've ever really seen the sun rise/You will see how many times it tries" implies that the sun has to work hard to rise every day. Similarly, in "If you've ever really seen the sun set/You will see how long it takes to die," the sunset is seen as a metaphor for death, and how it takes a long time to come to its end. Overall, the first verse is a reflection on the futile, yet beautiful nature of human existence and how it's as constant as the sunrise and sunset.
In the second verse, the lyrics shift to a more specific depiction of the butterfly. Metaphorically, the butterfly is used to portray the restlessness that one feels in a restrictive environment or a 'prison.' Lines like "You can feel its trouble making a teardrop/You will see how long it takes to fly" depict the butterfly's struggle to be free, which reflects the same sentiments felt by the person in the 'prison plates.' The final two lines of the song - "You can see the universe is beginning/Making love darker than the night" - return to the theme of life and death. The universe's beginning is reminiscent of the sun's constant rise, and the idea of making love darker than the night alludes to the fact that the world is just as fickle as the cycle of night and day.
Line by Line Meaning
If you've ever really seen the sun rise
If you've ever truly witnessed the dawn
You will see how many times it tries
You'll observe how many attempts the sun makes to rise
If you've ever really seen the sun set
If you've ever truly witnessed a sunset
You will see how long it takes to die.
You'll become familiar with the extended time it takes for the sun to fall below the horizon
You can see the butterfly has landed
It's apparent that a butterfly has touched down
Landed on your prison plates, you're out
It's perched on your restrictive housing and you're now free
You can feel its trouble making a teardrop
You can sense the butterfly's problems causing a drop of liquid
You will see how long it takes to fly
It will take it some time to take off again
You can see the universe beginning
You can observe the start of everything
Making all the sun and the sky
Creating both the sun and the sky
You can see the universe is ending
You can perceive the universe's conclusion
Making love darker than the night
Causing love to be darker than the night
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Written by: KLIPH SCURLOCK, MICHAEL IVINS, STEVEN DROZD, WAYNE COYNE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind