Cast your mind back to last September when Lady Gaga released the song Do What U Want. The lyrics were all about her defiant stance against a press system that is happy to take apart the way she looks and her weight: ‘You print some shit that makes me wanna scream/ So do what you want, what you want with my body’. So far, so righteous. And catchy.
Weirdly, there was never a video to accompany the song though. And today we found out why. Apparently, one was filmed, by Terry Richardson no less, and featured R Kelly – but the final cut was canned after someone on Lady Gaga’s team thought it looked like ‘literally an ad for rape.’ Sounds sensible.
The thing is as good as the song was, it was always a little weird when R Kelly’s verse kicked in. The song’s meaning suddenly seemd to change to something a lot more sexual, not only because it’s bloody R Kelly singing, but because of the lyrics. ‘I could be the drink in your cup/I could be the green in your blunt/Your pusher man, yeah, I got what you want.’
Oh, don't even get us started on that sexually charged appearance they did together on Saturday Night Live – just as previous allegations made against R Kelly were coincidentally put in the spotlight at around the same time.
The allegations, which included him urinating into a 14-year-old girl’s mouth and asking her to call him ‘daddy’, weren’t just hearsay, but substantiated, because in the 1990s, he paid settlement costs to several girls who made the claims against him in court. The Village Voice published a long piece about it which did the rounds on the internet until everything R Kelly touched had a tinge of creepy to it.
Though the backlash appeared to make Gaga initially defer from her keenness on R Kelly – re-recording the song with Christina Aguilera instead of him and singing it live with her one-time rival on The Voice – it seems she still set about making a video for the song with the R&B singer.
And who did she get to film the video? None other than photographer Terry Richardson, who, other than making music videos for Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé, has a whole slew of sexual harassment allegations against him. Though no charges have been made against him, there’s a petition calling for brands to stop hiring him, and some brands have sworn they’ll no longer work with him.
The Do What U Want video never came out and Gaga wrote on her website in January: ‘It is late because… I was given a week to plan and execute it. Those who have betrayed me gravely mismanaged my time and health.’
So, that’s the background. Today it’s been revealed by the New York Post that the video was scrapped because, well, it was creepy as fuck. A source told Page Six** that one of the storylines in the video referenced her hip surgery. Gaga asks R Kelly: ‘Will I ever be able to walk again?’ to which the singer replies: ‘Yes, if you let me do whatever I want with your body. I’m putting you under, and when you wake up, you’re going to be pregnant.’
Representatives for all parties – Gaga, Richardson and Kelly – have refused to comment or just didn’t get back to Page Six. But we’re saying, definitely for the best it never saw light.
In lieu of the final video, just enjoy this one. It seems a lot safer this way.
Lady Gaga & Christina Aguilera – Do What U Want from Digital Method on Vimeo.
*Edit: Earlier today, TMZ released a 30-second clip of said video which they found, well God knows where – in R Kelly's private collection shudder? In Lady Gaga’s mind palace? Anyway, the clip’s below and is as uncomfortable/weird as you might imagine. *
*True to form, R Kelly takes the opportunity to grab Gaga’s boob, Gaga takes the opportunity to hump the floor, and Terry Richardson takes the opportunity to film the whole thing. *
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.