The Flaming Lips will split royalties for the song "Fight Test" with Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) according to the terms of an agreement between the two artists' publishing companies. The settlement stems from the similarity between the Lips' new single and Stevens' 1970 song "Father and Son."

Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne acknowledged the likeness between the two songs in an interview last year before the song's release. "I know ["Father and Son"] and when I came up with 'Fight Test,' I knew there would a little bit of comparison to that," Coyne told Rolling Stone. "Parts of it are radically different than what I intended in the beginning, which I thought sounded a lot like the Cat Stevens song, but I didn't give it that much thought. We did the song quite quickly once we came up with the arrangement. It?s not a reference necessarily to the ideas of [?Father and Son?], but, yeah, definitely a reference to the cadence, the melody, and stuff like that. I think it's such a great arrangement of chords and melody that you just hope to express something, even though it's in a similar vein."

Flaming Lips management declined comment on the settlement.

COLIN DEVENISH
(June 27, 2003)