A top record executive has launched a damning attack on music industry attitudes, claiming the insistence on over-sexualising female artists has led to "boring, crass and unoriginal" music.
Richard Russell is founder of record label XL Recordings, home to the hugely successful artist Adele, who he said had the potential to change the way women were seen in the industry by focusing on her music rather than her sexuality.
"The whole message with [Adele] is that it's just music, it's just really good music," said Russell. "There is nothing else. There are no gimmicks, no selling of sexuality. I think in the American market, particularly, they have come to the conclusion that is what you have to do."
The singer's record-breaking second album 21, which has spent 15 of the last 17 weeks at No 1, smashing Madonna's record of nine weeks in the top slot, was "almost political and sort of radical", Russell added.
His attack follows recent songs such as S&M by Rihanna, which contains the line "sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me". The song was criticised by some for the extensive use of bondage imagery in its video.
The media regulator Ofcom ruled last month that raunchy routines by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera during the December final of the X Factor were "at the limit of acceptability for transmission before the 9pm watershed". Ofcom had 2,868 complaints.
Russell said he was shocked while watching a recent MTV show featuring top 10 hits from female artists, as each video used "faux porn" imagery. "I felt a bit queasy," he said. "But now you see that Adele is No 1. What a great thing, how amazing. Not only are young girls going to see that, but [also] the business people who are behind all those videos. It's going to make them rethink what they should be doing."
Russell dismissed criticism that Adele is too mainstream, saying she was as radical as the Prodigy, who he worked with in the 1990s. "At the level it is at now, it is radical," he said. "It is clearly about the music and the talent and the things it is meant to be about. I think there has been a certain amount of confusion, and it's resulting in garbage being sold and marketing with little real value to it ... Adele is a good thing to be happening."
That a strong female performer could succeed without bowing to pressure to conform to a certain body type or being over-sexualised, was "unbelievable", he said.
"It's just so boring, crass and unoriginal," he said, adding that the problem goes "way beyond" the music industry.
Adele talked openly about her image in an interview with Q magazine, insisting that a sexualised image did not fit her music. "If you've got it, flaunt it, if it works with your music," she said.
"But I can't imagine having guns and whipped cream coming out of my tits. Even if I had Rihanna's body, I'd still be making the music I make and that don't go together."
She was derided for comments she made in the same interview that she resented paying a large tax bill. "[While] I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."
The singer added that she would not try to dodge paying tax "and do a Philip Green", but would pay her bills reluctantly.
