“A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” by The Flaming Lips

"A Spoonful Weighs a Ton" comes from The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips' ninth album, which Warner Bros. put out in Britain on May 17, 1999, a few weeks ahead of its American release. Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins wrote it, and the band produced, recorded and mixed it with Dave Fridmann, with Scott Booker also credited as producer and Peter Mokran adding extra production and mixing.

It belongs to the record where the Lips traded the guitar-heavy racket of old, and the four-stereo experiment of Zaireeka, for real melodies and weightier words, conjuring a huge, symphonic sound not from an orchestra but from detuned, stacked MIDI keyboards. Critics loved the turn, and a few went so far as to call the album the Pet Sounds of the 1990s.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.