The Sexing up of pre-teens

Wednesday, 11th April 2012

Dear editor

Let me begin by relaying to you something I heard on the radio today: "Come on rude boy boy, can you get it up? Come on rude boy boy is it big enough?"

I don't think anyone would need to stop to uncover the meaning of this song. Come to think of it, I heard this on the radio yesterday as well, and the day before that and probably the day before that. I don't intend on being a prude, but is anybody else not sick of constantly being hounded with Rihanna's, and similar artists, profanities on a day to day basis? Not only is the music repetitive enough but it attains constant airtime so this music, that makes me want to bang my head off a wall, gets played over and over and over again. Are we as a society that susceptible to advertising that the more elated and extreme the border-line pornography is the more records an artist will stand to sell? It is true what they say I suppose; sex sells, it can even manage to sell music that sounds like a load of tables being pushed across a sports hall with somebody singing explicit lyrics who sounds like she's swallowed a tiny computer.

Rihanna's music is accessible and that's what we need to be worried about. It has melodies as repetitive and catchy as a play-school learning song, the main difference being that children are learning about S and M instead of their ABC's. I'm aware that this has always been the case within the popular music genre but from anyone's perspective it is easy to see that the situation is getting worse. Growing up I had the Spice Girls to look up to, their demeanour and performances were controversial at the time but it was nothing in comparison to the music and visual media of today's popular music.

Perhaps this problem is getting worse due to the monotonous recurrence of American music. They have computers make the music now so they can concentrate wholly on selling that music using promiscuity. I'm aware that I'm possibly alone in this deficiency but if you were to play to me the music of the majority of the American or American-influenced artists in the charts today, I would not be able to differentiate between them, except of course for Lady Gaga who manages to use her own name as the basis for her lyrics in the bulk of her songs. We know who you are Lady Gaga, now please leave me alone.

Kind Regards,

Laura Murphy