The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Critic Score
Based on 10 reviews
1999 Ratings: #4 / 164
User Score
1999 Rank: #17All Time: #466
Liked by 318 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Pitchfork

Hardly party music, but remember Dark Side of the Moon? Pass the bong. This is some good shit

100
Tiny Mix Tapes

The Soft Bulletin is absolutely stunning. Zaireeka was a massive breakthrough for them, but Soft Bulletin is the true gem in their catalog.

100
AllMusic

There's no telling where the Lips will go from here, but it's almost beside the point -- not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade.

100
Entertainment Weekly

Frontman Wayne Coyne is a natural fabulist, weaving trippy tall tales within the folds of tricky, heartbreakingly frail arrangements.

90
NME

'The Soft Bulletin' is a joyous, celestial celebration of sound. Rhythmic and piano-laden, it's heavenly in both its conception and execution.

90
SPIN

The Soft Bulletin may be the most extraordinary rock record you'll hear all year.

80
Q Magazine

The Soft Bulletin echoes the oft-mimiced Smiley Smile by The Beach Boys, with its psychedelic wobbliness, songs-within-songs and airy termperament.

60
Rolling Stone
Their music isn't, how you say, universally accessible, and the weirdness gets same-y, but no one else has posited a parallel universe in which the Sixties and the Nineties exist simultaneously, allowing for a peculiarly convincing brand of monolithic robotic swirl.
luna128
87

if this was radiohead or pink floyd every single one of you fuckers would be giving this a 100

BradTasteMusic
95

The Soft Bulletin is The Beatles elevated and updated, with some of the strangest vocals and lyrics possible. It really works. Like REALLY works. The production is very fitting for the journey it provides. The vocals are whiney and almost childlike. The lyrics are so straightforward and blunt, yet feel so out of place.

Hard to explain. A masterpiece in my eyes and the bands crowning achievement up to this point.

TJ_King
76

Edit: Screw it this is also better than Radiohead

This is better than anything the Beatles and Pink Floyd put out

I will fight you and I will win.

You know why?

Cuz its a fact not an opinion.

The tracklist for this album is trash though (like there's no "Slow Motion" in the tracklist and it ends with a "Mokran Mix" instead of "Sleeping On the Roof smh)

CheerCthere
88

Race for the Prize (Remix)- 9
A Spoonful Weighs a Ton- 9
The Spark That Bled- 9
The Spiderbite Song- 9
Buggin' (Remix)- 8
What Is the Light?- 9
The Observer- 8
Waitin' for a Superman- 9
Suddenly Everything Has Changed- 9
The Gash- 8
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate- 9
Sleeping On the Roof- 9
Race for the Prize- 10
Waitin' for a Superman (Remix)- 9

denkirena
90

yeaaaaaaah it's great

mnartriam
90

That’s a big ass shadow

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Year End Lists

#1/NME
#2/Pitchfork
#7/Paste
#7/SPIN
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