The Flaming Lips have shared a new track, “You n Me Sellin’ Weed,” from their upcoming album American Head. The music video was filmed during quarantine in Oklahoma and mainly features close-up shots of Wayne Coyne in the backseat of a car.
The song tells the story of a working-class couple — one working in a slaughterhouse, the other as a drug dealer — who, despite struggling to make ends meet, are making the best of what they have and hoping for better times in the future. “We’re the king and queen/Dope dealing celebrities in our dreams,” Coyne sings. “Dreaming that one day we’ll get out of this scene/To the magic trees.”
American Head, the Flaming Lips’ 21st album, will be released on September 11th via Warner Records. The band previously released the singles “Dinosaurs on the Mountain,” “Flowers of Neptune 6” and “My Religion Is You.” In a statement, Coyne said that the album was the first in which the band turned the focus to their country of origin, instead of more surreal subjects.
“For the first time in our musical life, we began to think of ourselves as ‘an American band’… telling ourselves that it would be our identity for our next creative adventure. … We started to think of classic American bands like the Grateful Dead and Parliament-Funkadelic and how maybe we could embrace this new vibe,” he wrote.
