Annie Lennox said young female pop stars who adopt highly sexualised or "soft porn" personas will have to "live with whatever comes from it," as she criticised record companies for promoting a hypersexualised look in pop music.
In an interview with The Independent, the 70-year-old Eurythmics singer said the industry had normalised explicit imagery and that promotion of sexually explicit videos was often driven by market forces. "They were like, 'Whoa, we've got soft porn with a musical background. That'll make a ton of money,'" Lennox told the newspaper. "Now these artists ... they've found their niche, and I'm not saying it's all soft porn. But hypersexualisation has become so normalised. I would say that if you want to do that, then you just have to live with whatever comes from it. That will be your life experience."
Lennox, who has long been vocal about sexual imagery in pop, said she objected to record-company-driven sexualisation during her own career and that she and bandmate Dave Stewart deliberately chose a tailored image. "[The suits] were a casual decision. We thought, let's be identical twins. You know, let's be Gilbert and George," she said, referring to the British artist duo. "I wanted to perform as a woman, but I didn't want to be regarded as a piece of meat."
Lennox has previously called for age ratings on sexually explicit music videos. In a 2013 Facebook post she argued that sexually explicit performances aimed at young fans should be restricted to adult audiences and questioned whether such displays were appropriate for children. "Is it appropriate for seven year olds to be thrusting their pelvises like pole dancers? I really don't think so," she wrote then, adding that the internet had complicated attempts to impose boundaries.
Her recent comments, prompted by questions about contemporary performers such as Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX, reflect a continuing debate over agency, exploitation and audience protection in popular music. Lennox said the choice to present a hypersexualised persona can be an artistic or commercial strategy that carries personal and professional consequences.
The singer emphasised that she distinguished between an artist’s autonomy and an industry that packages sexuality for profit. In the interview she framed the issue as one shaped by corporate decision-making as much as individual artists' choices, saying record companies recognised the commercial appeal of sexualised material.
Lennox’s remarks come as broader cultural conversations about sexualisation in media persist, including calls from some artists and parents for clearer guidance and content classification across platforms. She acknowledged the difficulty of enforcement in the digital era but reiterated her long-standing view that more protective measures are needed when young fans are the likely audience.
Offstage, Lennox has recent family news: her daughter Lola Lennox, 34, married Canadian model and singer Braeden Wright, 37, in an outdoor ceremony on Ibiza. Photos shared by the couple showed a lace-sleeved wedding gown, a three-tier cake, and family members, including sisters and friends, attending the cliffside celebration.
Lennox’s comments add to a string of public interventions by established musicians questioning the direction of pop aesthetics and the role of the music industry in shaping performers’ images. She framed her warnings as practical and personal rather than moralistic, saying artists should understand that their public personas can have lasting consequences beyond immediate commercial success.