Miley Cyrus Once Covered The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and It’s Awful
TL;DR:
- Miley Cyrus covered The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
- Moby worked on the awful song.
- The cover appeared on a tribute to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Miley Cyrus‘ songs sound very different from The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Despite this, she covered the classic Beatles track. Notably, Cyrus worked on the cover with a psychedelic rock band and it’s horrid.
Miley Cyrus covered The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ with The Flaming Lips and Moby
Wayne Coyne is a founding member of The Flaming Lips, a neo-psychedelic band. Cyrus collaborated with the band and EDM producer Moby on her cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” During a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Coyne discussed the origin of the collaboration.
“We rehearse in my studio, so sometimes if we’re doing something we think is kind of good, we’ll go ahead and record it at the same time,” Coyne said. “So we were playing ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ during our set, and people were liking it.”
The Flaming Lips and Miley Cyrus’ cover led to a cover version of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
Subsequently, Coyne worked with Cyrus. “And later, I had this afternoon/night in the studio with Miley Cyrus, and it was one of the things we talked about trying,” he said. “It turned out really great, and we did a little bit of the part of the other Sgt. Pepper’s song ‘A Day in the Life.’ And when people heard it, they were like, ‘This is stellar! We’ve gotta do something with this.’
“That made us think, ‘Well, are we gonna continue on and make this?'” Coyne added. “And we did ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ on the Billboard Awards with Miley, which set it a little bit more in motion.”
Ultimately, The Flaming Lips released With a Little Help From My Fwends, a track-by-track cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Cyrus’ cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” received more attention than any of the album’s other tracks, perhaps because it’s awful. The chorus is distorted to the point where it’s unlistenable. The Fab Four’s music was abrasive at times, but never to this degree.
How ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and Miley Cyrus’ cover performed on the charts in the United States
The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The track appeared on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. The album was No. 1 for 15 of its 233 weeks on the Billboard 200.
Cyrus’ cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 either. The song’s parent album, With a Little Help From My Fwends, was more popular. It reached No. 58 on the Billboard 200, staying on the chart for one week.
Cyrus’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” wasn’t a hit but it shows that the Fab Four impacted other generations of musicians.
