Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ WireImag
Rihanna (Riri) and her lover get close — and grow apart — in oceanfront clip.
The video for Rihanna’s “California King Bed” is as sexy as its title suggests. The sixth single off Rih-Rih’s latest album, Loud, features the scarlet-haired Bajan beauty lying between the sheets with a shirtless lover.
In late February, the pop princess took to Twitter to poll her fans, asking them to choose her next single. “QUESTION EXISTING: I’m shootin a new vid in a cpl wks, I just need u to tell me, which song should I shoot? What is my next single?” she tweeted before firing off, “Its hard to go from s+m to SKIN! Don’t want to be 2 swiney.”
“California King Bed” was announced as Rihanna’s next single a few days later.
Rihanna teased fans last week when she tweeted a photo from the shoot, and she dropped the video Monday (May 9).
Filmed in Cali and directed by Anthony Mandler, the video opens with the star laid out in a grass field, wearing a white bandeau and matching shorts, before moving into an open-air bedroom. Though the clip starts with Rihanna’s head resting on the chest of her shirtless leading man, distance grows between the two.
Ripe with rich hues and scenes of an oceanfront sunset, Mandler flips the cam from color to a black-and-white lens midway through the clip, during the song’s third refrain. The director quickly switches back to color as Rihanna returns to lie in the grass field in which she started.
