Once a puppet, with her own sexuality out of her control and a musical career that involved exploitation and sexism, Charlotte Church certainly speaks from experience when she talks of the dangers of hyper-sexualisation in contemporary pop music.

Charlotte ChurchCharlotte Church's speech was eloquent and well recieved

The speech was broadcast at midnight on Tuesday 15th on BBC Radio 6, and was made as part of the John Peel Lecture on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. The eloquent address picked out modern phenomena and highlighted the perils of using sex to sell music, especially in a video medium.

"The irony behind this is that the women generally filling these roles are very young, often previous child stars or Disney-tweens, who are simply interested in getting along in an industry glamourised to be the most desirable career for young women,” she said, referencing Miley Cyrus’s controversial Wrecking Ball video.

"They are encouraged to present themselves as hyper-sexualised, unrealistic, cartoonish, as objects, reducing female sexuality to a prize you can win," Church added. “The culture of demeaning women in pop music is so ingrained as to become routine, from the way we are dealt with by management and labels, to the way we are presented to the public.

"You could trace this back to Madonna - although it probably goes back further in time. She was a template setter. By changing her image regularly, putting her sexuality in the heart of her image, videos and live performance - the statement she was making was - I am in control of ME and my sexuality.”

Charlotte Church performingCharlotte Church performing at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut

Church went on to support Annie Lennox’s call for music video censorship, although considering the vast majority of music videos are distributed online, they represent one of the most difficult formats to bowdlerize.

The one-time classical singer-turned-pop-star-cum-feminist activist also praised artists like Bjork and Prince for owning their sexuality, and using to the full potential of its power in a well-delivered, poignant speech, which you can listen to right here.