Can Sex Stop You From Going Platinum?
posted in: Features • Pop
Sex sells. In movies and on TV, in video stores and strip joints, down on the corner, out in the street, everywhere it seems, but on the pop charts. And how far the raw and the oversexed have fallen. First up (or rather, down), Miley Cyrus, who may have sent her music career to an early grave, alienating much of her tween constituency by showing too much skin in the videos for her two most recent singles, “Can’t Be Tamed” and “Who Owns My Heart.” Despite the publicity generated by the 17-year-old’s controversial porn-star moves, her Can’t Be Tamed album is in danger of not going gold.
Like Cyrus, Erykah Badu got tons of press this past spring when she stripped and waltzed nude through the streets of Dallas in her “Window Seat” video. Unfortunately, the stunt didn’t help the single or her New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) album become big hits. Nor could Ciara’s explicit bumping and grinding in her “Ride” video boost the song higher thanNo. 42 on Billboard‘s Hot 100. At least it did better than Christina Aguilera’s ode to oral sex, “Woo Hoo,” which peaked at No. 79 and was the Bionic album’s last gasp. As for Kylie Minogue, surrounding herself with a cast of barely dressed extras in her recent “All the Lovers” video didn’t help her score a crossover U.S. hit.
Meanwhile, Mariah Carey, who’s been selling her ample physical attributes for years in videos and on album covers and recently had to have cat fur superimposed over her shoulders to appease censors in Saudi Arabia, doesn’t sell like she used to. Her last album, 2009’s Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, was her first not to be certified platinum. No wonder she’s playing it safe”and presumably chaste”with her next release, Merry Christmas II You, due November 2.
Pop’s exhibitionists would be wise to pay closer attention to the genre’s ruling queens. Taylor Swift, currently music’s biggest female star, must also be the most demure one since Debby Boone. Beyoncé and Rihanna are two of music’s sexiest ladies, but they’ve never used that as their primary selling point. For all the skin Lady Gaga displays in her clips, there’s nothing remotely sexy about her. And Katy Perry’s cleavage may have been too hot for Sesame Street, but in her videos, she often uses sexuality to almost-cartoonish effect. When she strikes a nude pose in a platinum wig on cotton-candy clouds in “California Gurls,” she almost seems to be saying, “I didn’t mean to turn you on, but if I did, the joke’s on you!” (Note that the occasionally soft-core “Teenage Dream” clip didn’t premiere until after the song was a hit.)
The lesson to be learned here: You don’t have to take your clothes off to sell a million. But if you must follow Ke$ha’s advice and take it off, don’t count your royalty checks before they’re in the mail. Multi-platinum is less of a guarantee than ever before.
Jeremy Helligar is a former staff writer for People, Teen People, Us Weekly and Entertainment Weekly, who now writes about celebrities and pop culture from his couch in Buenos Aires.