Female pop stars complain about sexualisation as 'convenient scapegoat'

Pop stars such as Charlotte Church who complain about the sexualisation of female singers are using the issue as a “convenient scapegoat” to excuse their own failures, a record company executive has said.

Chris Wright, founder of the Chrysalis Group which owns Chrysalis records, said criticism of the industry actually reflected “her own personal career frustrations rather than the reality of the situation”.

He added a “lot of artists” will “blame the business for anything that happens”, making their own failures “someone else’s fault”.

Church has recently spoken out about the damaging sexualisation of young women in the music industry, claiming they are routinely “coerced into sexually demonstrative behaviour in order to hold on to their careers".

Wright has now claimed: “The truth is it’s very often the artist themselves who are particularly to blame for these problems.”

The record company executive, who has now written an autobiography entitled One Way or Another, added other artists, such as Debbie Harry, had made the transition from child star to adult singer successfully.

“A lot of artists, male or female, young or old, will blame the business for anything that happens that they think in retrospect might have been wrong for them,” he said.

“If things go great, a lot of artistes think it’s down to them as people; if things go wrong it’s someone else’s fault and the music business is a convenient scapegoat. So you’ve got to take comments like hers [Church] with a pinch of salt.”

Last month, 27-year-old Church, speaking at the annual BBC 6 Music’s annual John Peel Lecture, accused the music business of being "a male dominated industry with a juvenile perspective on gender and sexuality".

Her comments received widespread coverage in the wake of controversial live performances by singers including Miley Cyrus.

Wright, whose label signed acts including Spandau Ballet, Blondie and Billy Idol, has now argued that stars often develop their image themselves.

“You’ve got people like Charlotte who’ve had an often wholesome image as a young teenager and when they get to their late teens and early 20s they very often rebel against that image,” said Wright.

“And it doesn’t just happen with singers – the same thing has happened to an extent with Miley Cyrus and Jennifer Capriati, the tennis player who got into all sorts of trouble.

“And the truth is it’s very often the artist themselves who are particularly to blame for these problems.”

He added that for all the alleged music business pressures placed on female singers, “an artiste like Adele has never needed to be sexed up – and she’s sold 25 million albums”.

"It's not unusual for young stars to go off the rails," he said.