You may have a strong opinion about something. If you're lucky, you may live in a society where you have the right to state that opinion. You may really, really want to do just that.
But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. I think Pete Waterman should remind himself of that.
Waterman, a legendary British record producer and songwriter, recently found himself the target of plenty of anger for his remarkably tone-deaf comments about modern pop music, specifically about Sabrina Carpenter.
Pete Waterman has an interesting, and sad, take on Sabrina Carpenter
40 years ago, Pete Waterman’s opinion on all modern pop matters carried a lot of weight. Along with his writing/producing partners Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, he was responsible for dozens of hit records. 13 number-one hits in the UK in the second half of the 1980s. A couple of others in the USA. Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” written and produced by the SAW boys, hit the top on both sides of the Atlantic.
Critics – and there were many – considered SAW to be pop hacks. Relying on drum machines and synthesized bass lines, many of their songs had generic dance beats and downright sappy lyrics. It was so bad that the ultra-hip readers of Melody Maker magazine, in a decade-ending poll, voted “No more SAW records” number seven in their “Hopes for the Nineties.” It came a few spots after “Further Rise of the Green Party” and a few spots ahead of “The Ending of Apartheid.”
Finishing at number eight on that same list was “The Execution of Pete Waterman.”
Even if you had never heard of Pete Waterman or his partners before now, I think you get an idea of the role he has played in pop music – especially in the U.K. SAW eventually split up but Waterman and Stock continued writing and producing. (Aitken has had a much more limited post-SAW career.) Their influence may be seriously diminished from their peak in the late ‘80s, but Waterman retains a voice.
So it did make some news when the 78-year-old weighed in on current pop music last month with some pointed criticisms. He singled out Carpenter by name, accusing her of offensive performances. He charged her, and presumably other women who engage in sexually suggestive performances, with throwing away all the respect they have been working for lo these many decades. The most succinct distillation of his take: “If you’re asking to be respected, don’t come on in a G-string.”
I don’t doubt for an instant that there are many who agree with Waterman. Nor do I dispute his right to say this. I personally just think he should have kept his mouth shut on this particular topic.
This is not a new argument from the SAW team. Fourteen years ago, Mike Stock accused modern pop music of engaging in a “slow but unmistakable descent into pornography.” At the time, he was singling out performers like Nicole Scherzinger and Britney Spears.
We can go back further to Madonna or to Carly Simon’s Playing Possum album cover. The famous Norman Seeff photo that greeted record buyers showed a kneeling Simon in profile, dressed in a very short negligee and knee-high boots. Female artists adopting sexually suggestive attitudes have been a part of modern pop music from the time before SAW first knew of Samantha Fox.
(Fox, for those unaware, was the 16-year-old topless model who recorded a few hits for the SAW team in the late '80s, a few years removed from her modeling. If you think that raises the issue of hypocrisy in Waterman and Stock's hand-wringing over pornography, I agree.)
Somehow, Waterman’s recent comments seem to suggest that female recording artists today – and he singles out Carpenter for this charge – are crossing a line that wasn’t crossed decades ago. And you can agree with him. I just can’t help thinking that a white male music exec who hasn’t had his finger on any modern musical pulse since before the turn of the century is hurling salacious accusations at a new pop star because he wants to be relevant., and not because we have somehow crossed a dangerous line.
Maybe I’m wrong. I presume he was asked his opinion on this subject and rather than politely declining to express one – which, I remind everyone, was an option – he felt it imperative to go after Carpenter.
For the record, she doesn’t need my help in defending herself. She handled the criticism like a pro, reminding everyone that if you don’t like her music or her performance, then you do not have to buy her records or attend her shows. Easy to understand, isn’t it?
Carpenter is a young artist riding a crest right now. I don’t know how long she will stay on top. Nor do I doubt that she will make mistakes along the way. Any artist who does not test the line of what is and isn’t Ok to the mainstream is a pretty dull artist. She is doing quite well without the advice from either Pete Waterman or me. I would just note that artists who self-censor due to fear of being shamed by an older generation tend to disappear.
I’m mildly bemused by Waterman’s complaints about how a young woman should behave because I don’t believe it will have the slightest impact on Carpenter. But there is one piece of this recent story that does make me actually angry. This point comes courtesy of Mike Stock. He referred to the overly sexualized lyrics in Carpenter's songs as “lazy.”
Lazy? For real?
“Nothing’s gonna stop me now – And I don’t want to talk it over – I said nothing’s gonna stop me now – Gonna break it up, gonna take my love away, yeah, yeah.”
That is the chorus the SAW boys wrote for the Samantha Fox hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now.” BTW, that title phrase “Nothing’s gonna stop me now” is repeated 17 times in a 222-second song.
“I hear you're back together and if that’s true – You’ll just have to taste me when he kisses you – If you want forever and I bet you do – Just know you’ll taste me too.”
That’s the chorus Carpenter, Julia Michaels, and Amy Allen (winner of the Grammy’s inaugural Songwriter of the Year award) wrote for Carpenter’s hit “Taste.”
Both are break-up songs and I will freely admit that Carpenter’s song can be considered more explicit and vulgar. But as a piece of literature, with its sharp focus on tactile sensation and cutting-edge spite, I prefer it a thousand times to the redundant platitudinous pap coming from four decades ago.
Lazy, my butt. This is coming from the songwriters who, when they needed to write a follow-up to Rick Astley's mawkish hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” simply rewrote the song once again and titled it “Together Forever.”
I don’t know. Seems to me that Waterman and Stock are getting too worked up over the state of current pop. Maybe they’ve been sipping a little too much espresso.