Superstar songstress Rihanna debuted the powerful music video for "Russian Roulette" on ABC's 20/20 Friday. The song serves as the lead single from her fourth studio album "Rated R" will drops November 23.The video for the ballad is far from light-hearted, and directed by Anthony Mandler, who has worked with the singer numerous times. "I think that with this song and the meaning of this song and how loaded it all is, no pun intended, how much imagery and perhaps symbolism that is loaded in this song, the only way to do it was to do something that was visually challenging," he tells MTV News.
"Russian Roulette" is dark, creepy and sometimes bloody. Jesse Williams, a familiar face from the new season "Grey's Anatomy," is the lead man in the music video as Jesse revealed in an interview with E! in late November. The video features Rihanna in a series of distressing situation, including what appears to be a gas chamber, a game of 'Russian Roulette,' a vehicular assault, an underwater shooting and a torture chamber. It involves gun play and underwater scenes in which Rihanna is pierced by bullets, her blood clouding as her body contorts. There are her shadowy tormentors, who keep her locked away and subject her to all sorts of torture including gassing her with red smoke and setting a cat on her. There are scenes of her twisting and pawing in a padded cell. At one point, she is mowed down by a speeding car. Through all of this however, she survives and her partner is killed in the 'Russian Roulette' game.
Bajan R&B singer's "Russian Roulette" portrays some seemingly real emotion as the songstress bounces back-and-forth between writhing around a padded cell, and has received positive reviews for her vocal performance and choice of lyrics. MTV News stated "it retains the same sort of attitude and atmosphere that has made Rihanna such a definitive artist." Entertainment Weekly said that Rihanna took some risks with this track and they "absolutely pay off." UK website Digital Spy stating that: "'Russian Roulette' is a haunting, tensely atmospheric pop ballad with lyrics as dark as daytime radio gets. It becomes clear that 'Russian Roulette' is a masterful return effort: brave, brilliantly-realised and bizarre enough to distance Rihanna from the pop-R&B pack. Factor in her most confident vocal yet and only her third songwriting credit on a single and the conclusion is inescapable." The 21-year-old Barbados beauty has confirmed that she will perform the song on 'The X Factor' on November 29, and will also perform the song on the American Music Awards of 2009 on coming Sunday on ABC.
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