Sky Ferreira – Red Lips
2012 · Directed by Terry Richardson
33K Likes
Best comments
1.“Well, I certainly didn't come here for a makeup tutorial.”
More comments
- 2.“I wonder what Toby the tarantula is up to these days.”
- 3.“I was 14 or 15 when this was released, and I remember feeling so badass. 'When I'm older, I'm going to be just like this girl.' And yet here I am in my mid-twenties, completely unbadass, in my penguin dressing gown and matching slippers, sipping hot chocolate – but not too hot, because I have sensitive teeth.”
The story
Red Lips came to Sky Ferreira as a hand-me-down from a rock star. Greg Kurstin wrote and produced it, Garbage's Shirley Manson added to the writing, and Manson offered it to Ferreira. The two of them worried her label wanted to sell her as the next Britney Spears, and this fuzzy, grunge-leaning pop-rock track was partly a way to head that off. Ferreira even swapped out the British slang so it sounded right coming from an American. Critics heard Garbage, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Nirvana in it.
The video is about as stripped down as they come. Photographer Terry Richardson filmed Ferreira in her underwear, smearing red lipstick well past her lips and across her face, while a tarantula named Toby crawls over her body. The YouTube description bills Toby as co-star. Fair. He earned it.
It premiered on Richardson's YouTube channel in June 2012, the single followed in July, and the song landed on her Ghost EP that October. It never charted. Most of the talk around the clip was about Ferreira's increasingly provocative image rather than the song, which is a shame, because the song is the part that bites.
