Are pop videos descending into pornography...?

Here is my other recent C4 news interview in full...

As one of the men who launched Kylie Minogue's music career says pop is now verging on porn, Madonna biographer Lucy O'Brien talk to Channel 4 News about the pressure to "sex it up".

Mike Stock was one-third of all-conquering pop production house Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), which gave the world Bananarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue. The "Hit Factory" racked up more than 100 top 40 songs in the late eighties and early 1990s, including 13 number ones.

His new campaign is to reverse the music industry's "slow but unmistakable descent into pornography".

He picked out Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry among artists who "have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency". He also criticised Nicole Scherzinger's performance on Britain's Got Talent, which he said included "overtly sexual content on a family show".

Pop writer Lucy O'Brien talks to Channel 4 News about the "pornification" of music:
Has pop music become more sexualised?
Definitely. Rihanna's S&M, Lady Gaga's Telephone, there is a link with soft porn. Videos have gradually been getting more explicit. Pop lyrics, too, have become more explicit. It's a great way of creating controversy and getting people to download/buy your single in an overcrowded market.
Madonna pushed the boundaries years ago so what's different now?
She certainly did. She's a complicated one. I think she always had an intelligent aesthetic behind the pop manipulation... she was testing taboos with videos like Justify My Love. On one level it appears as if she was just peddling the same old same old "sexy chick" persona, but actually her music and videos contained strong messages about women's empowerment and a female-centred fantasy and sexuality. She created the blueprint, and Aguilera etc followed (and imitated). Lady Gaga is interesting, but she reminds me too much of Madonna. But then again, maybe people older than me might have said, Madonna's interesting, but she's too like Mae West.
Is X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent "safe" family viewing?
I think on the whole it is very safe, apart from the young female artists who feel they have to "sex it up" in order to compete. I don't want to sound like a boring old fart, but my daughter is seven and has been copying the overtly sexy dance moves she sees on TV. That worries me. The relentless sexualisation of female singers sends out a distorted message - that to be successful as a woman you have to turn yourself into a sex object and be evaluated on that rather than your talent. I'd love my daughter to be inspired by women's work and real achievements rather than a digitised, artificial image of femininity.