The Flaming Lips and Miley Cyrus Cover the Beatles’ During 2014 Billboard Music Awards
A performance from a Michael Jackson hologram was definitely the strangest spectacle of the 2014 Billboard Music Awards on May 18, but seeing the Flaming Lips and Miley Cyrus cover the Beatles classic 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' came in a close second.
As we previously reported, their performance was recorded last week, during a Cyrus show at the Phones4u Arena in Manchester, U.K., and it serves as part of the spectacle surrounding the Lips' upcoming 'Sgt. Pepper's' tribute record. It's one of the more attention-getting collaborations we're likely to witness in 2014, but for Cyrus, it's also part of the healing process following a broken engagement and the death of her dog, Floyd.
"Floyd and I always listened to the Flaming Lips," Cyrus told Rolling Stone. "So now when I listen to that music, I totally feel the presence of him still being there, you know? ... They taught me to sing into the sadness, and that's helped me a lot on tour. Because I would've felt like I can't keep smiling, and I can't, like, go dance on this gold car, and act like I'm happy when I'm f---ing not."
Flaming Lips frontman described Cyrus as "just a freak" and proclaimed "I love her to death" in the same article, but was a little less emotional when discussing his own reasons for wanting to put together a Beatles tribute record. "People are like, 'Why do you do Beatles songs?'" shrugged Coyne. "I'm like, 'Because people love them.'"