Watching the Planets

Album: Embryonic (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song features Yeah Yeah Yeahs vocalist Karen O. The band's frontman Wayne Coyne told the Swiss music site Die Klangschau: "For the Karen O tracks, I just called her up in her hotel room and we just did it right over the telephone. It's pretty absurd."
  • Coyne (from press notes): "Tribal conquering dirge. Karen O kicks in singing with me and Steven (Drozd, multi-instrumentalist). A final revelation that celebrates the power of nature and implies that the only laws worth obeying are the laws one makes for oneself. Experience is the only teacher."
  • Coyne spoke further about the Karen O collaboration in a 2017 interview with Consequence Of Sound. He said: "She was in a hotel room, and I sent her the song. I think by then you could go on your computer and record your own material. And she really liked the song. I could tell because she was already adding cool things to it, then just made up crazy little noises, which we just absolutely loved. She didn't know that I was gonna use it, but I went ahead and started to make a couple of other songs with all the other noises [see "I Can Be a Frog"]. I think she was kind of embarrassed about it first, but I urged her to allow us to do it. Her being on that record I think was really another special sound and a special moment."

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