Talking with Wayne Coyne is always a reminder that The Flaming Lips don’t really make albums so much as they release fully formed ideas that just happen to include songs. By the time King’s Mouth: Music and Songs arrived, it had already lived several lives: an immersive art installation first shown around 2014, a visual narrative told through paintings and collage, a children’s book, and eventually a record narrated by Mick Jones. Calling it a “concept album” almost undersells the thing.
“That’s exactly why it started to appeal to us,” Coyne said. “To make an actual narrative to the record.” Normally, he explained, The Flaming Lips carry a private mythology behind their albums — the band knows the story, but the listener doesn’t need to. King’s Mouth flipped that idea inside out. The story already existed. The songs were written to serve it.
Because the original installation had been in place for years, Coyne said it felt like they were scoring someone else’s work — even though it was their own. “It felt long ago enough that it was already established,” he said. “We were just making songs to go with a story that was already there.” That distance helped them stay focused. No second-guessing. No detours.
When Mick Jones agreed to narrate, everything locked in. Coyne talked about Jones’ voice not as exposition, but as texture. “His voice is just another great-sounding instrument,” he said. Yes, it tells a story — but it can also be taken abstractly, almost emotionally, the same way you’d respond to a melody without lyrics.
That idea — don’t overthink how people receive music — kept coming up. Coyne compared it to food. You don’t analyze why you love it first. You just love it. “You like it, and then later you find reasons why,” he said. Music works the same way. He pointed to Yellow Submarine as a formative example: clearly a story, but not something he ever felt the need to intellectually map out. The song just worked.
That philosophy extends to how songs live in the world once they’re released. Coyne lit up talking about usefulness — a word critics rarely apply to music, but one he embraces fully. “Happy Birthday is one of the greatest songs ever written,” he said. “And one of the most useful.” Weddings, births, funerals — songs that show up at life’s big moments aren’t diminished by that role. They’re elevated by it.
That sense of music as a companion to life dovetailed unexpectedly with Coyne becoming a father for the first time just as King’s Mouth was being finished. While the timeline was mostly coincidence, the overlap sharpened his perspective. From the start, the project had been designed to be family-friendly — something parents wouldn’t feel weird about sharing with kids. “We wanted families to come to the installation and everybody could like it,” he said. No hidden curse words. No bait-and-switch adult themes. Just wonder.
Still, Coyne didn’t shy away from the darker edges of imagination. Songs like “Mother Universe” touch on childbirth and death — ideas that inevitably surface when you’re thinking about creation in any form. Music, he said, allows you to face those thoughts without being crushed by them. “Songs can confront unspeakable things,” he explained, “with beauty and love.”
That balance between light and shadow also fed into how listeners interpreted songs like “Giant Baby.” Coyne understood why some people heard political subtext, but he was clear it wasn’t intentional. “If people want to tie that into it, of course they can,” he said. “But I would never write a song secretly about someone like that.” Titles, to Coyne, are sometimes just absurd pairings of words — sparks, not statements.
And as always with The Flaming Lips, King’s Mouth wasn’t a conclusion. Coyne rattled off future plans: orchestral recordings, collaborative albums, another Flaming Lips record already taking shape. “We’re always recording,” he said. “Always writing songs. Always making things up.”
Listening to him, it’s clear why none of this ever feels calculated. Coyne isn’t chasing relevance or reacting to the moment. He’s following curiosity — letting projects grow across years, formats, and phases of life, trusting that the music knows what it’s doing.
Or as he put it: don’t get in the way. The songs will take care of themselves.
Listen to the interview above and then check out these earlier interviews:
