Lulu: Semi-naked acts cheapen pop

The veteran Scottish pop star said industry bosses were forcing young female artists to dress in sexy outfits and perform provocative acts or face being dropped.

The 60-year-old singer claimed the semi-naked routines performed by acts such as the Pussycat Dolls, Katy Perry and Girls Aloud were becoming more important to the industry than the music itself.

"Young girls today have to straddle naked before they can get noticed," she said. "It's cheapened the music and I think it is exploitative. I would never have stripped off like that and gyrated up and down a pole.

"There are talented kids who don't need to do that, but it is just expected of them. It's so regressive. I feel bad for them.

"To be a singer, you have to be naked and do things with your body and men on video. What has that got to do with the music?"

Lulu – who achieved stardom when her hit Shout reached the Number 1 spot in the charts when she was just 15 years old – also slated the competitive nature of the modern pop industry and claimed possession of talent alone was no longer enough to be successful.

"I would not want to be launching a career now," she said. "Nowadays, you have to achieve world domination or you get dropped by the record company. If the first single's not a hit, you're out. Today, to be successful, it is not enough to be a good singer. You have to have an army of people all focusing on that goal relentlessly.

"You don't just have to have talent and appeal. There has to be a big strategy.

"You have to be able to hold your head together, because the celebrity thing is completely out of whack. I think it's crazy."

Lulu admitted she is a fan of the music produced by Pink, Christina Aguilera, Duffy, Alexandra Burke and Amy Winehouse.

"I love Duffy and Alexandra Burke who just won the X-Factor," she said. "They are really talented. I'm an Amy Winehouse fan – she's a great writer. She reminds me of the Ronettes."

But the Glasgow-born singer is not keen on current pop culture. "It's like a McDonald's world," she said. "Everything is instant – instant success and instantly disposable.

"Even when it was really crazy in the 1960s, it wasn't like it is now. It is beyond insane."

She added: "Everybody is a celebrity. There is nobody to aspire to be. Everybody is famous and everybody is documenting every time they breathe, spit, cough or close their eyes.

"No wonder the music business doesn't mean much any more. Then, there was a mystique about things."