In a recent interview with The Telegraph, legendary singer Bette Midler weighed in on the gratuitous amount of sex that goes into modern pop music, but singled out one pop superstar in particular: Ariana Grande.
"It's terrible!" Midler laments about the overt sexuality of modern pop. "It's always surprising to see someone like Ariana Grande with that silly high voice, a very wholesome voice, slithering around on a couch, looking ridiculous. I mean, it's silly beyond belief and I don't know who's telling her to do it. I wish they'd stop."
Before she takes her criticism of Grande too far, however, Midler backs off just a bit. "But it's not my business," she says, "I'm not her mother. Or her manager. Maybe they tell them that's what you've got to do. Sex sells. Sex has always sold."
When asked if sex sells more now than it did in the past, Midler suggests, "whatever strictures there were have fallen apart."
"I mean, apparently people really like to pretend they're having sex," she continues. "They really like to slap each other's butts."
Though Midler offers plenty of criticisms of modern female pop stars, she does offer one bit of advice to them: "Trust your talent. You don't have to make a whore out of yourself to get ahead. You really don't."
Midler's most recent album It's the Girls! was released on Nov. 4, and is her 14th studio album, her first since her 2006 Christmas album Cool Yule. The album is a tribute to classic girl groups, featuring covers of songs by The Ronettes, The Supremes, and TLC.
"The music was very optimistic and upbeat," she says of the girl groups she's covering. "The ballads were sometimes sad but you knew things were going to turn out in the end."
You can check out Bette Midler's version of TLC's "Waterfalls" right here:
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