Western Esotericism [music video]

Wayne Coyne has clearly been getting a lot of guff for the music video for his experimental collaboration with cerebral soul queen Erykah Badu, an appropriately psychedelic and unexpectedly Sigur Rós-esque cover of an Ewan MacColl song made famous by Roberta Flack, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’ inexplicably renamed ‘Western Esotericism’. “To all the haters who think Erykah Badu has lost her mind,” he tweeted, “She has NOT!!! The Flaming Lips take full responsibility for the making of and the content of the controversial video!!! We are very sorry if it has offended some of Erykah Badu’s more conservative audience! The video was intended for mature audiences and is NOT an Erykah Badu statement. It is a Flaming Lips video!!!” Top marks if you guessed that Erykah spends the video naked in an empty bath while a body double, (her sister Nayrok) douses herself in glitter and (hopefully fake) blood and semen. I’m guessing that the curly-headed alt. rocker isn’t familiar with Badu’s video for incredible 2010 single ‘Window Seat’, which climaxes with the singer stripping off at the site of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and feigning getting shot in the head. After that, I don’t suppose Badu has too many conservative fans. The outspoken singer wasted no time in tweeting Coyne her disappointment about the video’s reductive shock tactics, telling him, rather brilliantly to kiss her “Glittery ASS”. Atta girl, Erykah.