Do You Need To Take It All Off To Have A Professional Singing Career?
A friend of mine, herself a talented singer and quite an intelligent accomplished woman, asked the question: why do singers today need to look and act like porno stars and feel compelled to sell their sexuality? She posed this question on a popular social media site. The responses, primarily from musicians and singers, all acknowledged the plain and simple truth: Sex sells.
Why do women and young girls feel they have to overtly sell their sexuality? Isn’t being a talented performing and recording artist enough? Apparently not. You also have to simulate sex acts on stage and screen, too. I guess the kids won't get it, if it's not plainly spelled out.
When one looks to female vocalists who became household names without taking off their clothes, the list is long. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, and Nancy Wilson, to name a few. If you look past the era of popular jazz singers to the era of rock and roll, soul, and R & B, even Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, never got butt naked.
Who was sexier than Tina Turner? She OOZED sexuality, without looking like she emerged straight out of a porn video. Peggy Lee's Fever is sexy as hell. These singers got the point across without having to spell it out. Shirley Horn's "Do it Again" is hotter than any Rihanna video could ever be.
Sexuality and music are an exciting combination that will always pique our interest. But it's innuendo that titillates us. Like a well crafted melody, current popular music has forsaken subtlety and innuendo. Both are a lost art. Watch Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not say to Humphrey Bogart “you just put your lips together and blow” and you have the crux, the very essence of what is missing in today’s music, and by extension, popular culture at large.
Beyonce, Miley, Rihanna, Katy Perry, etc. can’t possibly stack up to the chanteuses of the past, scoring a negative 5 on the "sex-o-meter". They’re downright boring. Yawn! What do they leave to the imagination? Not. A. Thing. They leave us with nowhere to go. No build up, no anticipation, no climax. And without imagination to connect the dots, there is nothing left to hold our interest.
Why were mystery, nuance, and innuendo replaced? How do we get “subtle” back in fashion?
It’s time for "innuendo" to take back the night.
