Marilyn Manson Hits A New Low

The video for The High End Of Low's "Running To The Edge Of The World" features Brian Warner up-close and remorsefully weepy when not beating a bloodied woman senseless. It is a painfully weak attempt at shock, sure. (As Videogum put it: "Maybe we shouldn't judge this video too harshly until we've seen it through the window of our Time Machine on the way back to late 1997, the day before Prodigy's 'Smack My Bitch Up' video first aired, when this might have seemed even slightly shocking and not just the obnoxious work of an aging asshole who's run out of ideas.") Thing is, it surfaced the day Rihanna's much-discussed 20/20 interview airs, in which she talks publicly for the first time about being beaten by Chris Brown before the Grammys. The link isn't easy to overlook. Especially with details like these from a Billboard piece posted earlier:

After confirming original reports that he'd bitten and punched her to the point she had a bloody mouth, Rihanna said that Brown had completely "blacked out. It wasn't the same person that says I love you. It was not those... eyes," she said. "He had no soul in his eyes -- just blank. He was clearly blacked out. There was no person when I looked at him. All I kept thinking all the time, 'When is it going to stop? When it is going to stop?'

So what's up, Marilyn? Bad timing? Half-digested transgression? Creative impasse? Sad old man? Desperate P.R.? Discuss.

Posted at 5:45 PM by brandon in Video
Tags: Chris Brown | Marilyn Manson | Rihanna