Ariana Grande's AMA performance boosted the singer's cred into the big leagues, but Bette Midler drops the bomb with sobering comments.
Ariana Grande's AMA performance Sunday was a showstopper; the "Break Free" artist showed she has the technical chops to back up the hyped image. Arian did stripped-down versions of "Break Free" and "Problem," also teamed up with The Weeknd on "Love Me Harder."
Grande's gone a long way from her teenybopper image, especially with her relationship with Big Sean in mind. Having someone like Bette Midler comment on her career really puts a damper on things, though.
Bette Midler slams Grande for using sex as a vehicle towards fame. To Midler's credit, though, she does say Grande is just one of many artists using the tried-and-tested strategy of gaining instant recognition in the music industry.
Midler says Ariana is trying too hard to look sexy, with a wholesome voice to back it up. In an interview with The Telegraph, Midler promotes new album "It's the Girls," celebrating the comparably wholesome female groups and artists of yesteryears.
The interview veered on to the "pornification of pop music," to which Midler comments:
"It's terrible! 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 so 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. But it's not my business, 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."
Ariana Grande's AMA performance may have struck a vein, confirming Midler's observation of the music industry.
"Well whatever strictures there were have fallen apart. And now it's whatever you feel like doing you can do. I mean, apparently people really like to pretend they're having sex. They really like to slap each other's butts. I mean, don't ask me. It's beyond me. I'm too old. I don't know what the end game is going to be. I don't know where you go from all that sex in your twenties. I don't know how you sustain it."
Midler drops the bomb in her advice to artists who want to make it big in the music industry: "Trust your talent. You don't have to make a whore out of yourself to get ahead. You really don't."
