Charlotte Church Slams ‘Sexist’ Music Industry, Calls It ‘Soft Porn’

Charlotte Church doesn’t have very many nice things to say about the music industry as a whole. In her opinion, executives are trying to make a dollar by exploiting female performers.

During her appearance at BBC 6 Music’s annual John Peel Lecture, the singer took a few minutes to discuss the way women are currently treated within the industry. According to Church, the business is nothing more than a “male dominated industry with a juvenile perspective on gender and sexuality.”

BBC News reports that Charlotte Church was once pressured by industry types to wear more revealing clothes. She said this mentality suggests that executives want female performers to act as “sex objects that appear child-like.” Her comments didn’t stop there.

“The culture of demeaning women in pop music is so ingrained as to become routine, from the way we are dealt with by management and labels, to the way we are presented to the public,” Church explained.

She added, “You could trace this back to Madonna. She was a template setter. By changing her image regularly, putting her sexuality in the heart of her image, videos and live performance — the statement she was making was — I am in control of me and my sexuality.”

According to the Telegraph, Charlotte Church believes that a lot of recent songs only received airplay because of how the artist looked. The singer said there are “countless examples from the last few years of songs that have been in high rotation, that have little to no artistic worth.”

Church also took issue with Rihanna’s music video for “Pour It Up.” She explained that clips like that are having an impact on women around the world.

“If there are no sanctions put upon music that is written so zealously about genitalia, or uses soft porn in its promotion online, what is to stop artists feeling that making their music and videos more sexy will undoubtedly drive up their online views and subsequently encourage more radio play,” she added.

Are you a fan of Charlotte Church? Do you agree that the music industry is exploiting female performers by making them appear as child-like sex objects?

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