When we first watched this new music video featuring 14-year-old Nell Smith fronting The Flaming Lips, we were blown away.
This amazingly talented teenager could just be a future sensation in the making.
The way Smith commands this spectacular cover of Nick Cave‘s “Ship Song” is so impressive and powerful for ‘a kid’ that it’s a rare thing to experience. But here she is.
Smith’s vocals are deeply touching and beyond her years as far as maturity. It’s no wonder that the band wanted to record with her.
Additionally, to take on such a classic track is ballsy enough for any vocalist. So, there’s that too. It’s such a fresh and personal take on Cave’s classic from the perspective of a young teen girl and thanks to the impeccable recording and production skills of the Lips.
How’d Smith and The Lips Meet?
Growing up in Canada, Smith regularly attended Lips’ concerts always wearing a parrot costume.
Three years ago, the story goes, Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne noticed Smith (then 11 years old) at a show in Calgary and sang a David Bowie cover to her and Smith sang right along with Coyne.
Through her father, Coyne and Smith maintained a long-distance friendship. Coyne encouraged her to learn the guitar and write her own songs.
A Cache of Cave Covers
Not long afterward, Smith and the Lips joined forces specifically to record a batch of Cave covers.
The result is the new album, Where the Viaduct Looms, set to drop November 26.
On his way to record with the band in Oklahoma in 2019, Coyne encouraged Smith to record vocal tracks of Cave songs and email them to him. The intrepid young singer did just that. Coyne and the band produced the final tracks resulting in nine altogether.
Earlier this year, Smith and the band released their first music video – a theatrical cover of Cave’s “Girl in Amber” with director Alex Hanson.
“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” – Wayne Coyne
On his website, Coyne wrote: “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 said. “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.”
A Promising Future
As this new video/song proves, Smith is talented, knows it, and is determined to grow as an artist. It would not surprise us one bit if she were to start getting inquiries from A&Rs and label execs.
Hopefully, however, Smith will not sign any deal, and/or her parents won’t consent, in any form. Firstly, she’s only 13. Secondly, staying in school, of course, is priority one. Nevertheless, a recording or video here and there could be just the right formula, especially now that hundreds of thousands (eventually) – millions? – will see this video.
Even if no such numbers are achieved, the facts remain: a talented Flaming Lips teenage fan records an album of Cave covers with the actual Flaming Lips as the backing band.
Of course, leave it up to Coyne and the other Lips to be original, daring, and different, and more importantly, are good and have fun, well into their middle years.