Debunked! The Theory of a Psychedelic Music Comeback

The rise of Tame Impala has sparked excitement about the resurfacing of psychedelic music. But while psychedelic music is certainly apparent in popular music today, it has long been this way since its emergence in the 1960s.

Written by Katie Karp
Illustrated by Jesse Hu Jenkinson

On Valentine’s Day, Tame Impala finally released his long-anticipated fourth studio album, The Slow Rush. Tame’s multi-instrumentalist mastermind Kevin Parker pleased fans with continued experimentation of new technologies, maintaining his psychedelic style. In addition to the sound, psychedelia is also present in Tame Impala’s visual effects, from his music videos’ explorations of different dimensions of shape and color to his live concerts’ use of laser beams and colored lights that change with the music. Tame Impala’s rise has brought forth renewed interest in psychedelia, and a sentiment that Parker brought the style back, but the style never really went away. Popular rock bands have consistently demonstrated experimental sounds and visions since the genre first emerged in the 1960s. 

Photo courtesy of Pitchfork

Psychedelic music emerged with the rise of hippie culture during the late 1960s. LSD became a popular drug to achieve a state of “higher consciousness.” People used it to see and understand things that may be invisible to the naked, sober eye. Rock musicians at the time experimented with new sounds and visuals that were designed to either demonstrate an understanding of the experience on LSD or enhance experiences while under the influence of the drug.

The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” are two of the most influential early psychedelic songs, both offering listeners a psychedelic experience of their own. In creating “Good Vibrations,” The Beach Boys spent hours in the record studio splicing together the sounds of different obscure instruments, including the Jewish harp and sleigh bells, in a way that did not fit into any standard forms of music. 

Though The Beatles insisted “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was purely about John Lennon’s son Julian and were unaware that the title stood for LSD, the song remains a psychedelic classic.  Like The Beach Boys, The Beatles also experimented with different sounds and instruments, such as the organ and tanpura. Additionally, the lyrics push the listener to envision themselves in an unfamiliar, distorted, colorful world “with tangerine trees and marmalade skies,” never mind the chorus that consists of them repeating “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” — a heightened experience if there ever was one.

Through the 1980s, The Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd continued to explore psychedelic music. The Grateful Dead’s use of improvisation in their music became a new trend in psychedelic music. Improvisation had been used by bands before, particularly in early jazz band performances, but The Grateful Dead was the first to use it as a way to evoke psychedelia. The band’s ability to create a unique atmosphere at each performance made them central to the San Francisco music scene of the late ‘60s.

Image courtesy of Pitchfork

Pink Floyd also emerged as a notorious psychedelic band through their use of improvisation, which often led to new chord progressions and unconventional ways of playing instruments. However, Pink Floyd’s legacy primarily lies in their studio albums. The band follows this similar experimental approach in their studio albums, yet they are recognized as rock albums rather than psychedelic rock albums. Floyd’s 1975 album, Wish You Were Here, is nearly 45 minutes long, but only includes five lengthy songs that demonstrate their heavy reliance on experimentation with combining chords as well as new technologies.

Though most of the well-recognized early psychedelic groups stopped making music by the 1990s, popular groups that emerged in the 1980s carried on the legacy of feeding one’s head. Radiohead experimented with sounds and visuals into the turn of the century, with the 2000 release of Kid A, an album with more synthetic sounds than guitar melodies. 

The Flaming Lips became popular in the ‘90s and also experimented with new technologies to produce unfamiliar sounds. In “Waiting for a Superman,” they experiment with harmonies and noises that emulate a futuristic, robotic feeling, which is a theme they tackle in many of their songs. Their psychedelic music clearly follows The Beatles’ approach through their imaginative storytelling. Moving past Lucy, or “the girl with kaleidoscope eyes,'' that The Beatles sing about, The Flaming Lips sing about “Yoshimi,” the “black-belt in karate,” in their album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The band experiments with different technologies to produce noises to tell the story. In 2014, the Lips even released With A Little Help From My Fwends, their modern take on The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

Image courtesy of The Flaming Lips

Psychedelic music has clearly persisted in popular music since its inception. The false notion that the genre has resurfaced is really just a result of Tame Impala introducing the genre to a wider audience. Between the popularity of music festivals and a generation gap today that mirrors the climate of the ‘60s, Tame Impala creates and performs music in an atmosphere most similar to the psychedelic scene of the late ‘60s.