Eddie Cibrian was behind the camera for his wife's 'spaceship' music video.
LeAnn Rimes stripped down literally and emotionally for her latest music video. ET's Denny Directo spoke with the 40-year-old singer about baring all for the music video of her track, "spaceship," which was directed by her husband, Eddie Cibrian.
The music video features a makeup-free Rimes nude and wrapped in a blanket, up until the closing shot when she drops the fabric and walks away from the camera completely sans cover.
"Nothing new to be seen here," Rimes tells ET of the shooting the moment in front of her husband of more than a decade. "... Especially on this record, everything feels exposed. I think it was purposeful. I think that it's that raw and that stripped down. It's like, why take the viewer or myself out of the moment of a feeling of being one with everything around me? It was a purposeful thought process behind that."
While the couple wasn't sure if they'd use the totally nude footage in the music video, which is out now, they ultimately opted to do just that. "[People have] seen my butt in a bikini a million times," Rimes quips of the decision.
As for the music video as a whole, Cibrian tells ET that he filmed the entirety of the "impromptu" footage on an iPhone, when he and Rimes visited the Alabama Hills in California.
"We stopped there, and the light was setting and the wind was picking up a little bit and I just felt inspired. I said, 'Take your clothes off. Put this blanket on. Let's shoot something. I just want to shoot something,'" he recalls. "We just started to shoot."
"Sometimes moments happen and you can't recreate them ever again. This was one of the times where everything kind of came together beautifully," Cibrian, 49, adds. "It told the story that I thought we should tell for this song visually. It's beautiful, it's raw, it's everything."
Rimes notes that having her "amazing" husband behind the camera allowed her to get emotional in a way that would've been challenging on a traditional music video set.
"Emotionally, I was able to go to the place that you see in the video because it was him," she says. "... He basically just took an iPhone and stayed out of my way. That's what it was. He just kind of worked around me. I felt like I was almost out by myself in the middle of this desert. He knows me so well that he kind of can follow what's happening on my inner world to be able to capture it."
Rimes added that she "can't watch this video without crying, because it captured something that I don't think has ever been captured on film for me, which is this real, deep, inner world."
Cibrian agrees, telling ET, "I get lost in it every time... Obviously, I think that is because of the performance that she gave, that she just had to be so vulnerable and just be out there."
The incredibly pared-down set also felt right due to the meaning of the song.
"Usually when you shoot a music video, there's a ton of crew around, there's thousands and thousands of dollars that goes into something, there's always hair and makeup and styling. It just felt so nice to [not have that] because I feel like that's the essence of the song," Rimes says. "It's just so real and raw. It felt so nice to just be able to capture that and literally, [in a] combined time of, like, 25 minutes."
The collaboration turned out so well that Rimes reveals that she's "constantly looking at songs on this record and talking to him about ideas," all of which Cibrian says he's open to.
"I enjoy the creative process. I really enjoy telling the story. For this, I felt like it didn't need to be slick. It just needed to emotionally capture something that she was feeling at the time," Cibrian says. "I'm driven always through the eye of capturing a feeling and an emotion. [If] something [else] calls to me and it's the same kind of thing, then I'm all for it."
"spaceship" is the opening song on Rimes' latest album, god's work, which was released earlier this month.
"With an album title of god's work, I found it really interesting to open the record with a song like this, where you're basically having it out with God," she says. "I think we've all been there at some point, wondering why we're here. We wrote this right in the middle of COVID, and I think all of us were questioning like, 'Why is this happening? Why are we here? What is the bigger purpose?'"
"For me, the song really is about that connection with with a higher purpose and a higher being and feeling all of the emotions, feeling the rage, feeling the the loneliness of being a human being in this world, feeling alone and small," Rimes adds. "There's a lot of grief in the song, I think that we all went through as a collective together, but, at the same time, in all the hopelessness... anger drives us back into the land of the living. For me, there's so much hope in those emotions. There's life again."
The track is a good example of how the album is "very personal" to Rimes.
"I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. [With] the music I'm putting out in the world, it does seem like I kind of cut myself wide open for everyone to, like, love or judge or whatever it may be," she says. "... My intention is to connect with people. To see people really gravitating towards this record and sharing their stories, sharing moments where they're listening to music... it's just so cool to see how people are incorporating it into their lives."
That connection, Rimes believes, is due to the fact that she was able to tap into the "collective experience" of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We were all... locked down in these past three years, so I think that really informed what I wrote about," she says. "I feel like it really does capture a very connected, shared experience that that we all had together."
The result is one that Cibrian thinks is "amazing," telling ET, "I think that is what really differentiates artists [when] we actually feel something is when they can be so vulnerable and kind of let you into their world."
Cibrian's love and support is something that Rimes is beyond grateful for.
"He's [been] on the ride with me these last three years of creating this record. He gets to see it from the inception of everything to birthing it out into the world," she says. "He gets to ride the emotional roller coaster. It's always amazing to have him support what I'm doing. He's such a huge supporter."
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