As figures in the film world continue to speak out on sexual abuse and harassment, Sir Tom Jones has said that it is also common in the music industry.
The Welsh singer was speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live when he made the claim, saying: “Things have always happened in the music industry as well.”
“There’s been people complaining about publicists and different things they’ve been expected to do to get a record contract, just like a film contract,” he continued (via the BBC).
Tom then said this was something he had personal experience of, stating that an incident at the start of his career made him feel “terrible”.
“There were a few things like that. But you avoid it. You just walk out... But what’s tried on women is tried on men as well,” he said. “But then you think, ‘Well, I’ve got to get away from this person and it can’t be like this’.
“You should know that yourself, you don’t do things just because you think, ‘I should do this’.
“Your own mind will tell you that. Not just in showbusiness, but in any thing you’re in.”
“It wasn’t bad, just somebody tried to pull... it was a question and I said ‘No thank you’.”
“There’s always been that element there that people with power sometimes abuse it, but they don’t all abuse it, there are good people,” he concluded. “Things happen in showbusiness, and sometimes things are covered up and then they come to light and other people come forward - it’s like taking the cork off of a bottle.
“But justice will out. If you’ve done something wrong you’ve got to pay for it, or prove that you haven’t done anything wrong.”
Tom is not the first person to make these claims about the music industry in recent weeks.
In a blog published on HuffPost UK, Lara Baker, organiser of the AIM Independent Music Awards, wrote: “The music industry, like the film industry and probably many others, has a systemic problem with sexual harassment, sexual assault and persisting sexist attitudes, on a gross scale.”
Paloma Faith also made similar comments last week, telling the Sun: “I see sexual exploitation constantly in the music industry. I think that there’s sexual exploitation in all creative industries really – however small or however big.