Rose McGowan recently made headlines for speaking out about Hollywood sexism, revealing in the process that she’s been considering a career change. So along with directing a short film called Dawn, McGowan’s now branching out into music with the release of her first single, “RM486,” and its NSFW music video:
McGowan appears as five different characters over the course of the video, each of which reveals an aspect of her public, private, and artistic persona. According to Rolling Stone, she starts as “Alien,”a bright white, hairless creature that represents McGowan in “her purest, most natural form.” “Dark Beauty” is a nod to her goth phase, “Green Hair Hollywood” is a commentary on the glamour of the spotlight, “Needles” represents her defensive side, and “Red Glitter Bomb” represents her aggressive one. Finally McGowan appears as a vaguely Lady Gaga-esque “Art.”
The song itself is moody, eerie, and oddly catchy, with music written and produced by Punishment and lyrics by McGowan. The video was made in collaboration with the art collective Who You Are, which has a behind-the-scenes featurette on its site. “I think it’s important for bodies to be represented in a non-sexual manner,” McGowan told Nowness, “especially women’s bodies.” She also explained that she became interested in a music career after she realized she “hated acting” because “it was mostly a male voice coming out of my mouth for 15 years.”
McGowan has previously recorded songs for the soundtracks of projects she’s worked on, including Stranger Hearts, Charmed, and Grindhouse, but this is her first official single. McGowan did tell Nowness, however, that she’s secretly released songs under different names before, which she calls “pranking the public.”
“RM486” is available on iTunes, while those secret songs are still waiting to be found.