For their latest LP, the collaborative compilation Flaming Lips & Heady Fwends, the forthcoming Falls Festival headliners employed the services of everyone from Ke$ha, Nick Cave and Tame Impala to feature on their psychelicious rock.
Featured among the mix was R&B queen Erykah Badu offering her ghostly tremor to a spooked take on the Ewan McCall/ Roberta Flack tune ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face’; but The Flaming Lips invoked her ire when frontman Wayne Coyne directed a very-NSFW video for the Heady Fwends cut.
The trouble began when Coyne posted saucy pictures of Badu take from the set of the video shoot. Nnaked as the day she was born, save for some blood-red paint and a bathtub full of glitter, to his Twitter feed.
The steamy video also featured Badu’s younger sister Nayrok, in a psychedelic kaleidoscope of disturbing imagery; with blood, lumpy milk, glitter and slow, lascivious shots of Badu and her kin in the nude; prompting the soul singer to slam Coyne in a very long-winded, acerbic open letter.
In a career full of bizarre highlights, it was a moment that certainly ranked as one of the more controversial
Pitchfork reports that in light of the Badu controversy, Coyne has re-shot a new version of the tune and accompanying NSFW video with a suitable replacement.
Namely, Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer, who’s never been shy about getting her kit off ‘expressing herself’ in the past via her own Twitter feed or at various gigs and public events.
The re-filmed version (which you can view above) seems to have learned the lessons from the creepy, psychedelic tone of the original. Gone are the milk, glitter and blood-letting and instead we get full-frontal shots of Palmer writhing in the bath while the Flaming Lips remain clothed.
Nevertheless, Palmer must have taken a liking to Coyne’s vision, having since roped him in to direct an upcoming video for the singer’s tune “Do It With a Rock Star”; which looks to be equally controversial, if the Flaming Lips frontman’s tweets from the set are anything to go by.
