Suddenly, everything has changed. The Flaming Lips are a family-friendly band that soundtracks a day of skateboarding, museum-going, and feeding animals at the petting zoo. That’s the takeaway from the Lips’ new Hyundai commercial that’s set to broadcast during the Super Bowl on February 3. In the minute-long advertisement, Wayne Coyne and crew pop in on a family during breakfast time and follow them on an “Epic Playdate” that features a motorcycle chase, Space Invaders, and Coyne’s trademark human-sized hamster ball. Soundtracking the mania is the Lips’ misleadingly titled “Sun Blows Up Today,” a colorful bit of psychedelic pep that the Oklahoma City band wrote specifically for this Hyundai promotion.
“The Flaming Lips are very much like Hyundai,” Steve Shannon, Hyundai VP of marketing told Billboard. “They’re a little offbeat. They’ve been around a long time and they continue to reinvent themselves.” Ugh.
“Sun Blows Up Today” will appear as a bonus track on the iTunes version of the Lips’ upcoming 13th studio album The Terror, which the band calls “bleak” and “disturbing,” and we call impenetrable, shaggy, cerebral, wandering, and challenging. It’s due out April 2 via Bella Union and Warner Bros. Hyundai will also reportedly give away 100,000 free downloads of “Sun” on their website.
Head over to Billboard to watch the Flaming Lips’ Hyundai ad and check out the lyric video for “Sun Blows Up Today” below.
