Rose McGowan has teamed up with Spun director Jonas Åkerlund for her first music video, “RM486” — a surrealist fashion show of sorts, in which each outlandish disguise is representative of her own metamorphosing sense of self within Hollywood. The song also happens to be her musical debut — at least, under her real name.
The Charmed/Nip/Tuck actor turned director turned songwriter spoke with Nowness about the shifts in her career, noting how she’s actually released music in the past, under pseudonyms. But she decided to take it more seriously when she realized she “hated acting,” and always had. “Imagine, its predominantly men whose scripts get done so it was mostly a male voice coming out of my mouth for fifteen years,” she said.
The video traces a variety of identities: McGowan cracks out from beneath a sediment of white muck, appearing as a beguiling, alien Hollywood hatchling. This gives way to an over-adorned starlet identity, and ultimately transitions into assorted representations of beauty-norm defiance. “I believe in civil disruption. I also think it’s important for bodies to be represented in a non-sexual manner, especially women’s bodies,” McGowan said in the interview. To that end, the video contains some nudity, which McGowan emphasizes is crucial to eradicating a cultural tendency towards body shaming.
There’s no news yet whether, with this release, we should be anticipating a full album, or a series of other videos. But given that McGowan ended her interview by saying, “You realise when you’re well known that you have won the public election: you are in office of a sort, and what you say does matter,” we can only assume that she’ll continue to make the absolute most of this role.
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