Belinda Carlisle‘s lips aren’t sealed when it comes the criticizing the current crop of female performers.
The Go-Go’s frontwoman and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer did an interview with The iPaper in which she decried the fact that today’s pop stars are trying too hard to be sexual onstage. “These days, young women in the music industry are just so sexualized. Like, what happened? I don’t get it,” she’s quoted as saying.
When it’s pointed out to Carlisle that many women believe that taking control of their own sexuality is empowering, she responds, “It’s not empowering. It’s embarrassing. Yes, you will get attention, but not the right kind, and down the line you are going to look back and say, ‘Wish I hadn’t done that.’”
“I mean, Dua Lipa? It’s shocking!” she adds. “She’s so talented. She doesn’t need to do that.”
Carlisle goes on to say that after she went solo, a “big manager” told her that she should “show your t*** and sing some [songs about sex].” Carlisle’s reaction? “I said simply, “No, I don’t do that.”
She also notes that she and the rest of the Go-Go’s weren’t subject to the sexual abuse that many women in the music industry in the ’80s were. “No man ever messed with a Go-Go. We were like a five-headed monster,” she claims.
Carlisle will release a new album, Once Upon a Time in California, due Aug. 29. It’s a collection of cover versions of songs she loved growing up, like The Youngbloods‘ “Get Together,” Three Dog Night‘s “One” and The Hollies‘ “The Air That I Breathe.”
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