‘I just love it’: Nick Cave reacts to The Flaming Lips surprise cover album
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10.09.2021

‘I just love it’: Nick Cave reacts to The Flaming Lips surprise cover album

Nick Cave Flaming Lips
Words by Lucas Radbourne

Nick Cave has admitted he loves The Flaming Lips' surprise cover album with the vocals of 13-year-old mega-fan Nell Smith.

The Flaming Lips and their 13-year-old fan Nell Smith teaming up to do a Nick Cave cover album is the sort of truth-stranger-than-fiction stuff that you couldn’t make up.

It took Nick Cave by surprise, with the Australian legend alerted to the project by readers of his Q+A website, The Red Hand Files.

What you need to know

  • The Flaming Lips have teamed up with 13-year-old Nell Smith
  • They’re recording a cover-album of Nick Cave songs
  • Cave himself has given the cover of ‘Girl in Amber’ rave reviews

Stay up to date with what’s happening in Melbourne here.

“I didn’t know about this project, so thank you for alerting me to it,” Cave wrote.

“I have a whole lot of time for The Flaming Lips — really like a lot of their stuff, have been an admirer since watching them play most evenings on the Lollapalooza Festival tour in ’94, maybe even sang with them there, and wrote a song for one of their records.”

The Flaming Lips and Nell Smith will record an entire forthcoming album of Cave tributes, with the first single ‘Girl in Amber’ securing a solid nod of approval from Cave. Smith admitted she’d never heard of Nick Cave before they begun.

“This version of Girl in Amber is just lovely, I was going to say Nell Smith inhabits the song, but that’s wrong, rather she vacates the song, in a way that I could never do,” he continued.

“I always found it difficult to step away from this particular song and sing it with its necessary remove, just got so twisted up in the words, I guess. Nell shows a remarkable understanding of the song, a sense of dispassion that is both beautiful and chilling.

“I just love it. I’m a fan.”

Visit The Red Hand Files to ask Nick Cave a question.