Chrissie Hynde on Too Much Sex Appeal in Pop

I saw The Pretenders In September of 1980 and loved every second of that show. Then again they were real musicians. I don't even care about the crap or whatever its supposed to be out there today.

 

While singing: ...I just...suck it....suck it.......... SUUUUUCK IIIIIIIIIT!

No,i think i don't remember.

 

In promoting virginity, this kind of music is desperately needed today.

 

He could have used a violin bow like everyone else.

 

I always wanted to reincarnated as a floor monitor.[/QUOTE]
Any singer knows that when you get that close to a monitor with a live microphone you get ear-splitting feedback.
So- not really singing. And as 'hot' as that may look, it's totally unnecessary.

 

I agree with your sentiment here.
However, image replaced music as the main priority in the mid-80s. MTV.

 

I'm reminded of the anti-drug public service commercial that was on TV a while back, in which a parent stumbles across his son rolling a joint, and asks him "Where did you learn that, son?" And the son looks up and replies "I learned it from you, Dad!"

Despite earlier controversies over Elvis the Pelvis, the tipping point that brought blatant sexuality into the mainstream of pop music was the sexual and musical revolution of the 60s: Jagger, Morrison, Hendrix, Plant, Bowie and all of the other suspects mentioned above brought an aggressive sexuality into popular music that hadn't existed before, and paved the way for every pop starlet today to do her porn star thing, or whatever derogatory term we want to apply to them, while making excuses for our heroes, who, in three years, took pop from "I Want To Hold Your Hand" to "Let's Spend The Night Together" … and from that point to "Father … I want to kill you / Mother … I want to **** you," "You're only fifteen years old, but I don't want your I.D.," "Gonna give you every inch of my love," "Squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg," "She never lost her head, even when she was giving head," Bowie giving his guitarist a simulated blow-job on stage, "Black girls just want to get ****-ed all night," and so on and so forth. You reap what you sow.

 

said the shape shifter

 

Also....bananas and pineapples!

 

No, this is where a really good monitor mixer earns his or her pay by carefully monitoring everything the singer is doing on stage, and pulling her mic down in that particular monitor channel.

 

I love every bit of music that I have heard from chrissie hynde and I have purchased almost every record she has made and attended three shows.

However, her recent statements are too obviously true, like saying the sky is blue. Of course popular music has become even more sexualized. Wow, revelation.

And by the way Chrissie, like many of your peers like Bono and Bruce, shut the hell up and sing. I don't care what you think

Thank you

 

Hynde isn't speaking about great artists who never confined themselves to over-sexualized parodies. She is speaking about Myley Cyrus, who is a parody act. Jagger, Plant, and Bowie didn't rely upon only ridiculously sexual performances to make successful forty year careers.

 

I've not been able to find it on YouTube, but very early in the career of the Pretenders, Chrissie was interviewed doing her laundry. One of the thing she pulled out of the dryer was a pair of tassled go-go dancer bikini bottoms. Embarrassed, she mumbled "...I had this job..."

I get the impression that she's a bit like Bette Midler - an entertainer with a history of ribald humor who has grown up and now finds "all that" a bit embarrassing.

 

And, like most of us, perhaps a bit more of a crank/reactionary in her dotage than she was during her youth.

 

Likewise, girls listening to Myley aren't doing so because twerked with what's his name Thicke.

 

My parents were rarely in the car with me when I drove as a teen, and they weren't with me when I got off work at midnight when I was a cook in high school, they weren't with me at Van Halen concerts, they didn't know what I was watching or listening to when they weren't around and so on and so forth. But they knew I wasn't getting loaded and driving, or I wasn't street racing on some deserted street, or gang banging girls with my buddies, or any other number of things. How? Because they had instilled in me their values, they had educated me to the risks of such behavior and they made clear the consequences of such actions.

In other words, they taught me right from wrong. They took the time to tell me why certain things were not ok, they taught me their values, and they expected me to heed them. And when I did not, they punished me, swiftly and not always fairly.

So if parents don't want kids corrupted by, say, media they find objectionable, they should take the time to inoculate them and lay down some ground rules. No, you're not gonna keep some kid from seeing a video of, say, Miley shaking her ass in someone's face and pantomiming masturbation with a foam finger. But I would certainly hope they'd know such things are possible, and say, for example, "That is degrading to women, and to Miley, and here's why. That is not something to be emulated, and here's why. I don't approve of that, and here's why. And I would prefer that you not watch it, but because I know you may inevitably see it, let me explain why I think it is not good for you to see. And if I should find you ignoring my wishes, this is what will happen...."

 

Oh yes. Squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg is not at all vapid.

All that aside, it's still a double-standard, regardless of what you think of the quality of the music in question.

 

Of course, we can thank Robert Johnson for that one.

 

Madonna's popularity is the result of a lot of people liking her music. No one stays a huge star for 30+ years due to "marketing".

No, she doesn't have the world's greatest voice, but how many of the mega-stars boast amazing voices? Is Jagger a technically great singer? Springsteen? Daltrey?

Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey had amazing voices - but they mostly made weak music, IMO. No one ever claimed Madonna had a terrific voice - least of all Madonna herself. But who cares? It's the whole package, not just technical chops...

Because of the impact of MTV in the 80s, I think comparisons between 80s stars and those from the 70s becomes apples/oranges. It assumes that if MTV had been around in the 1970s, musicians of its era wouldn't have behaved in a way to manipulate it. Of course they would've - and I'd have to suspect they'd use lots 'n' lots of sex.

I don't think it's fair to minimize an artist's achievement because he/she used the tools available at the time...

 

Herein lies the common thread among those who bemoan the state of female performers: it's fine for them to be really, really sexual - if I like them. Then they're real artists!

If I don't like 'em, then they're just using sex to hide their lack of talent...

 

"The right thinking world"? Seriously? A desire to watch Jeff Lynne play music is now a prerequisite for mental health?

 

Yeah, but that was REAL DAMNED MUSIC, so it was all okay!

The hypocrisy flies fast and furious in this thread from those who seek to condemn one form of expression while they defend another - even though that other was seen as super-dee-duper tawdry in its day...

 

not minding looking at them and wanting nothing to do with their music aren't mutually exclusive. but I don't know who's alleging that an attractive female singer is a "real artist" because she's attractive - that just seems like dopey talk.

 

That's the first real porn in this thread!

 

it's only "hypocrisy" if you fly with the childish notion that nothing changes. if you're blessed with a working brain, you can see things aren't exactly the same in 2014 as they were when Elvis was gyrating.