Dame Shirley not amused by stars’ revealing outfits
DAME Shirley Bassey lives a solitary, almost mysterious life of luxurious semi-exile, earned over six decades of stardom, and sweetened by a rare ability to speak out when it matters.
Last week, Bassey’s attention was caught by the phenomenon of female singers wearing revealing outfits at galas and premieres. The Dame did not approve.
“It is like they are all in competition with each other,” she said. “Who can wear the skimp- iest outfit? I mean come on. These young girls are talented singers, they don’t need that, but they feel they have to be in competition to have the least covering. That’s the saddest thing.”
It was duly pointed out that Bassey, 78, had spent most of her career in a fleshy haze of sequins and boas. Yet the difference was not hard to spot. Her targets – identified as the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna – strip off to attract attention, and because their agents tell them to.
Bassey’s stage outfits speak precisely to the mood, tone and mischief of her songs.
“So let me get right to the point. I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.”
You cannot sing that in a nun’s habit. Bassey, of course, comes from a time when glamour had a different meaning.
“I think you have to leave a lot to the imagination,” she said.
“Yes, my act was sexy and my dress had slits down to here, but I left a lot to the imagination. I didn’t show everything.”
Bemoaning the decline of class is a diva’s privilege, but Bassey has more reason to miss it than most.
Her deadly aura of man-eating magnetism was learnt the hard way, and honed to the point that a girl from the slums of pre-war Cardiff could swoosh through the gilded salons of high society as though she had been born in one.
The sight of a new generation cavorting in scatterings of spangles at this month’s Met Ball in New York surely made her wonder whether the effort had been worthwhile. – The Teleraph