Songfacts®:

• Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne describes this tune as a "futuristic drug and fairy tale." It features beatboxer/comedian Reggie Watts as an upscale party planner to the stars who can fulfill their every whim. He can even provide unicorns.
• Coyne elaborated on the song's meaning in an interview with Consequence Of Sound: "There's this song that they play in the new movie about Jackie Onassis [Jackie, starring Natalie Portman]. It's called 'Camelot.' It gives you all these little nuances about the way a party is going to be. In Camelot, they can control the flowers, the weather, everything, because it's all a fantasy. And so this 'Unicorn' song that we brought Reggie Watts into is like a party planner giving his big list of all the things he wants to happen at the celebrities' billionaire party. You can control the weather, you can control the drugs, and you have unicorns. So, it's anything that you want in this fairy tale that can happen.
  
  The idea that Reggie Watts is the one that's giving you the list, I just thought it was perfect. There is the song by Gil Scott-Heron called 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.' It's a great, poetic, protest, funky song, and when I mentioned it to him, he knew exactly what I was talking about. We both were like, 'Let's say this list as if we're trying to change the world, even though if you pay attention to it, it just seems utterly stupid and absurd.' We thought, 'Well, that's where the fun starts.'"
• The song grew out of a melody from the band's multi-instrumentalist, Steven Drozd. Coyne told Diffuser: "I remember we had a melody. Steven had this really great emotional minor melody going with the cool drum vibe that we had created and again, I just thought, 'If I can start the song with just this great opening line, everything will go.' And when I start with 'There should be unicorns…,' everybody just going, 'Oh, OK… what comes next?' That's when you just get lucky and you get into a flow."