Songfacts®:

• "Black Lipstick" was the first single released in advance of Powerman 5000's album The Noble Rot. Frontman Spider One told Vents Magazine that he believed the song was the first they wrote for the album and that it set the tone for the sound they were after. He said he was channeling Peter Murphy, frontman of goth rock band Bauhaus, in his vocal.
• The song is about an unexpected street encounter and hookup with a strange woman who leaves black lipstick on Spider One's sheets.
• As you laid down on the bed
  Then you started to cry
  (Then you started to cry)
  And sang Bela Lugosi's dead
  
  Bela Lugosi, was an actor best known for his parts in horror films, especially the 1931 Dracula film. Peter Murphy's band Bauhaus is known for their vampiric classic "Bela Lugosi's Dead."
• The video for the song starts in a fictional talk show named Pop Toppers. Spider One told Vents that he was inspired by watching clips of the British music show Top of the Pops, which ran from 1964 to 2006 and was particularly influential in the 1960s and '70s.
  
  The Pop Toppers barker-like host introduces Holly Holly and the Night Cloaks, a female goth band, who then start performing "Black Lipstick." It's Spider One's voice coming out of the singer's mouth, but the character lip-syncing is a woman.