Charlotte Church: The Blurred Lines Video Jettisoned A Mediocre Artist To Fame

At last week's annual John Peel lecture (named in honour of the highly regarded BBC presenter), lapsed Welsh pop star Charlotte Church took aim at sexism in the music industry.

The one-time classical music protégé took careful aim at the men behind the hits, not the women who perform them - yet her talk was reported around the world as: slamming  Miley Cyrus, hitting out at Rihanna or attacking Britney Spears.

However, Church used her own past experience to explain the machinations that lead to female artists presenting themselves as "unobtainable sexbots".

Church revealed: "When I was 19 or 20, I found myself in this position, being pressured into wearing more and more revealing outfits.  And the lines I had spit at me again and again, generally by middle-aged men, were 'you look great, you've got a great body, why not show it off?'"

She squarely lays blame at the feet of "male writers and producers and record label guys" who make "a ton of money" peddling "tits out" pop videos.

Church stressed her disappointment in discovering that a woman directed ("the indefensible") Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video, adding that the clip was "the biggest part in jettisoning a song by a mediocre artist into the biggest track of the year."

Lines vocalist Pharrell Williams isn't let off the hook either. Church confessed to being disappointed that Williams took part in the song, which she refers to as "2013′s Roundtable Of Chauvinism".

Church ended by announcing her support for Annie Lennox's recent call for an online music video ratings system: "If Rihanna had not grown up watching the videos of the '90s, then it might not be quite so essential for her to portray her sexuality so luridly, so constantly, and so influentially upon the next generation."

The full lecture can be streamed at the BBC Radio 6  website until Monday.