Bat For Lashes talks naked album cover for ‘The Haunted Man’ – video

Singer says artwork was reaction to 'being bored of how women are projected in the media'

Bat For Lashes‘ Natasha Khan has opened up about the striking artwork for her new album ‘The Haunted Man’, revealing that she chose to pose nude as she was “bored” of the media’s representation of women.

The singer, who releases her third studio album on October 12, says she wanted to use the image to show that female artists don’t have to be pigeonholed as sex objects. Watch the video below.

“The album cover came because I saw some photographs by Ryan McGinley which were of people with animals around their necks,” she revealed, “and there was this particular one of a naked woman with a wolf around her neck, which I found really captivating and thought was iconic. The minute I saw it I thought, ‘I’ve got to do that for this album, but I want a man. I want a man around my neck.'”

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She went on to add: “And the choice to do it naked without any make up, with no photo shopping, with no retouching and just trying to keep it as raw and natural as possible: it mainly came about from getting really bored of how women are projected in the media.

“It’s generally acceptable if it’s really sexual and provocative, and they look perfect and it’s all boobs and lip gloss and retouching. And I felt a bit wistful for those album covers like John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono], or Patti Smith, where bodies were allowed to be really natural and represent more than just this one-dimensional kind of sexual provocation.”

She concluded:

I got into the idea of not shaving my legs and being a bit raw and wild about it, and celebrating that side of women, and all the complex things you can be except for just being sexy.

Speaking about the making of the album and its sound, meanwhile, Khan said: “I noticed that the demos I was doing, I’d put the vocals really loud, and stripped the reverb away, and it was just beats and basslines and vocals and not much else.”

Khan spent spent 18 months working on the album, which is the follow-up to her second LP ‘Two Suns’, and recently announced a full UK tour for October. She will play a total of 12 shows across the UK in late October and early November.

Bat For Lashes will play:

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Inverness Ironworks (October 18)
Edinburgh Picture House (19)
O2 ABC Glasgow (21)
Manchester Cathedral (22)
Leeds Metropolitan University (25)
Norwich UEA (26)
O2 Academy Leicester (28)
London HMV Forum (29)
Birmingham HMV Institute (November 1)
Bristol Anson Rooms (2)
Portsmouth Pyramids Centre (3)
Brighton Dome (4)

To check the availability of Bat For Lashes tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/TICKETS now, or call 0871 230 1094.

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