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Star of £38 video takes a pop at sexy rivals

 Star of £38 video takes a pop at sexy rivalss    
  
 Cassandra Jardine 
  
1    A NEW video is likely to send the music 
 industry into a spin when it is shown on Top 
 of the Pops2 next week. If it looks as if it’s 
 been shot on security cameras that’s because 
5 it has been. The artist - shown shoplifting 
 CDs - didn’t bother to comb her hair and 
 refuses to make sexy poses. And, at a time 
 when singers spend £100,000 - “at least” - on 
 a video to promote their single, hers cost just 
10 £38. 
2    This is the singer/songwriter Thea 
 Gilmore, a middle-class intellectual who is 
 emerging as the pest of the music business. 
 She took over the security cameras at Virgin 
15 Megastore in Crewe for two evenings to make 
 the video for her song Mainstream. “I don’t750    One of her pet hates is record covers of
 think I brushed my hair, but I did put on clean dolly girls. So, for Mainstream, she devised a
 jeans,” she says. satirical assembly of Barbies posed like a girl
3    Her protest is in part against the band - until the toy company Mattel
20 investment expected of artists - half of which threatened legal action.
 they have to pay back to their record855    Her charges against the business don’t stop
 companies. Beyoncé’s latest video cost there. She hates the way marketing dominates
 £350,000, but even that pales beside the artists. She loathes the idea of being told what
 record £7 million spent by Michael and Janet to sing by record company men and detests
25 Jackson on Scream in 1995. the way money is splashed around. “No one
4    But Gilmore’s video is also a strike against60 needs to spend £300,000 to £400,000 making
 the way in which the music industry presents an album or an advance of £1·2 million,” she
 its female stars. “Women are invariably sold says.
 on sex,” she says. “I’m totally uncomfortable9    Angry though she sounds, her manner is
30 with being asked to pout and it’s not right that polite and warm. She was born into a liberal
 you walk into a record store and only find65 intellectual household in Oxfordshire. “We
 beautifully-coiffed women in coquettish had a nice house in an affluent part of the
 poses.” country,” she admits. “And there was nothing
5    With long legs and a fine-boned face, she, wrong with my parents.”
35 too, could use her looks to seduce. But, at 23,10    Gilmore is not embarrassed by the
 she hasn’t worn a skirt since her schooldays70 apparent contradiction of making an album
 and is ambivalent about the make-up that entitled Stories From the Gutter. Still, she is
 surrounds her large, green eyes. “You either torn. She wants people to hear her words, but
 have to be cute or shout,” she says - and she doesn’t want to become another music
40 has chosen the latter. industry victim. “You could look at bands
6    Her outspokenness comes when she could75 with lots of money and say that looks easy for
 be on the brink of the big time. Avalanche, them, but it wouldn’t be easy for me to
 her fifth album, was released in August and surrender control,” she says. “For me it’s
 has sold 20,000 copies. Four major record easier to go through life without cash in my
45 companies are chasing Gilmore, who over the pocket.”
 past four years has been described as “the1180    Will she still be saying that in a few years’
 finest singer/songwriter of her generation”. time?
 Yet this latest single is a full-frontal attack on 
 the moguls who could make her rich. The Daily Telegraph