The Flaming Lips Walk (Really Fast) Onto Broadway

We broke the news that Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has been collaborating with Tony-Award winning director/producer Des McAnuff to turn the band's 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into a Broadway musical. Now there are reports that the project has an official and unlikely scribe: "West Wing" and "Studio 60" creator Aaron Sorkin. (Apparently McAnuff, who will be overseeing the show, recommended Sorkin for the job after directing the TV potentate's play, "The Farnsworth Invention.")

Coyne told our Andy Greene that there's still some creative work to be done to turn the conceptual album into a fleshed-out narrative. "We'll have to write some connecting songs. They'll be one song about love or death or something and you connect it with another song about love or death and in the middle you tell a more precise story-line moment. Those are the things we'll probably be writing." Coyne & Co. are apparently just as excited to see the end result as we are: "Most songwriters and performers love nothing more than knowing, 'What the fuck are we singing about?'"

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Song Stories

“Weird”

Hanson | 1997

Accomplished tunesmith Desmond Child co-wrote "Weird" with the three brothers that make up Hanson. Credited for dozens of cuts, including songs by Kiss, Cher, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, Child told Rolling Stone that "Weird" holds a special place in his heart, "because it's about being different--and I grew up poor, I grew up being Latin, I grew up being gay, and now I'm fat!" The song was included on Hanson's 1997 album Middle of Nowhere, which sold more than ten million units.

More Song Stories entries »

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