By guest blogger Mike Brown
Whilst I am still young enough not to blush when Lady Gaga, Beyonce or any number of female pop stars, appears on MTV wearing very little, and also not even the slightest bit prudish, I felt I had to applaud when I read recently that Mike Stock, of legendary pop producers, Stock, Aitken and Waterman criticized modern music for being too sexually driven.
I am a red blooded young male and I’d be lying through my teeth if I said for one minute that I didn’t enjoy a bit of female flesh. Anyone who wishes to call me a chauvinist or accuse me of objectification is quite welcome to do so. However, there has to be a point when it should stop being broadcast on MTV, and start being sold in back alley stores with blacked out windows and blank DVD covers.
In some respects, Mike Stock makes a very valid point, though I’m not sure I agree with all the parts of his diatribe. He went on to suggest that the music is corrupting the young people of the modern age. He even went a step further, bringing computer games such as Grand Theft Auto into the equation, though what this has to do with chart music is quite unfathomable.
Whereas he is concerned with the hearts and minds of the voracious, music-loving youth, I am more concerned with what this over-sexualization says about music as a whole.
Mike Stock, along with the rest of the television viewing public, watched the gradual dispersion of the “watershed” for explicit videos on MTV (the time at night when it was deemed acceptable to broadcast the more risque material) until it became little more than a token gesture; a faded memory of times long since gone.
He perceives this as an insidious corrupting influence on children, and with the UK having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe, there may be some element of truth in his argument.
My major concern with the “over-sexualizing” of music, is that the music stops speaking for itself. I consider myself something of a musical purist. I don’t much care for frontmen, egos or anything like that, preferring instead to listen to the music, the lyrics, the harmonies, the rhythm. If anyone wishes to call me a music snob, they are quite welcome to do so.
It’s not the images themselves that offend me, because I heartily believe that the parents of the children who are watching the videos should be explaining to them about the context of the music video. If children are raised in a loving way, with full knowledge of the world that they have entered and are soon to do all their learning in, then Britney Spears wearing diamonds over her nipples isn’t going to corrupt anything.
In a way, if sex is covered up and treated as something filthy, degrading and something to be ashamed of, it’s likely to encourage more children to engage, and if they aren’t getting their answers from their parents, they certainly won’t get them from Miley Cyrus. And whilst I’m not suggesting that children should be exposed to hardcore pornography gratuitously disguised as a music video.
What I find sad, more than anything, is that music has stopped being music. One of the first articles I ever wrote for Radio crème Brulee, was about Lady Gaga and I’m going to use this as an example. She’s a beautiful girl, with an amazing voice, and an obvious talent, but she has created this image of the pouting sex-maniac and sold a significant tally of albums. Would Britney Spears be anywhere without that kinky school uniform from her first video? Would Rihanna be the mega star she is now, if she hadn’t burst onto our screens wearing tight leather and giving cheeky winks to the camera?
The answer sadly is “no”, and for me the worrying thing is that genuine talent is being completely overshadowed by a mass of shimmering flesh and spandex. It seems to have been an overwhelming theme for my articles, but it’d just be nice to have the music speak for itself for a change. To have more bands in the charts who aren’t afraid to play live music and appear in videos with their clothes on, writing songs about love, passion, pain, grief, fun, life and music rather than sex sex and more sex!
There is still space for sex in the music industry. The modern musical offerings are often inextricably linked, but regardless there is still space for dancing women, six-packed men, sun tanned hotties on beaches and muscular, sweating, hair free studs, but frankly it’s reached saturation and stopped being interesting some time ago.
Great article! I have to admit I agree that sex significantly improves the chances of being able to sell a “product” (i.e. an artist) based on music. There was a time when “sex” was just the finishing touch of a marketing effort. Music was the foundation. Sex was the accessory. Sadly, today it seems to be the other way around.
lol!! I really had to laugh when you said lady gaga is a beautiful girl!!! she looks seriously odd her nose is funny and she looks like a hooker like, all the time! but hey, men today are easily pleased! back in the 70s and 80s men used to go for a bit of class. Trash rules the show in these modern times!
Each to their own I suppose. I tend to go for the crooked nose hookers actually 😉
I blame Madonna the untalented-she was the first to push herself far beyond her massive limitations as a musical talent into the pointless attention-seeking sexually over-obsessed offensive embarrassment that those of us who refuse to succumb to the devil got from the start. Talent was in abudance in the 80s and she shot it down. She should have appeared (always supposing her existence, such as it is, was ever wanted) in the decades that followed as they were all about marketing trash to the gullible and easily pleased. Now worse than ever.
Kim Wilde was and has always been the best kind of all-round female singer ever. With a massive repertoire of varied, impressive, adventurous, memorable, and always tuneful and cleverly constructed hook-filled winners in her back catalogue and still makes them now, not that we’d know it considering the way the record industry treats decent women from the 80s. Her brilliance and genuine staying power is only matched by her natural modesty AND-and this is SO important-the completely baffling way she is held in genuinely nasty underappreciation by the majority. To all those music ‘critics’ out there (why do you have a job?), all you artists who think you’re so much better, and all the idiot youth who couldn’t look past a certain date for anything; even those record buyers at the time who switched alliances, and all those DJs who wouldn’t play certain people as management and fashion dictated, you’re all guilty and should be shunned like you shun her. God, all you have to do is open your ears and listen. They understood that in Europe where she remains in high esteem and is considered musical royalty. It should be like that everywhere. Madonna and Kylie Minogue indeed, to say nothing of the silly little harpies around now! I repeat-oh dear!
The whole music market is BAD.. from bottom to top.. only female singers are in trend, because it’s all about sex.. there is sexism where female is above male..