People in desperate situations will often do anything to make ends meet, but when you're
already rich and successful, you haven't got much of an excuse.
These are the musicians who sold their souls for paychecks that they probably didn't even
need.
Demi Lovato has long been open about her struggle with bulimia, which is exactly what made her
April 2017 sponsored Instagram post so shocking to her fans.
In the since-deleted photo from April 2017, the "Anyone" singer promoted detox tea, claiming
the product was part of a 30 day detox challenge she had undertaken to get rid of toxins and
prevent bloating.
But critics of detox tea claim that it doesn't shed anything beyond water weight, and its
effects on both the user's physical and mental health can be devastating.
Six months later, Lovato revealed in her Simply Complicated documentary that she struggles
with her eating disorder even more than she does with her other mental health issues,
which include bipolar disorder and addiction.
"But I have a ten year old girl who looks in the mirror and says, 'I'm not skinny.
I wanna be skinny.'"
"I said that when I was, like, four years old."
And that wasn't the only post of Lovato's that ticked off the Lovatics.
In October 2019, Lovato posted photos from a trip she'd taken to Israel to be baptized
in the Jordan River.
Fans criticized her for being insensitive to the ongoing conflict between Israel and
Palestine.
She later apologized for accepting the trip, which she claimed she had taken in exchange
for social media exposure, and which she insisted was not a political statement.
Over the past decade, Jennifer Lopez has been accused of making as much as $10 million from
a number of dictators.
Lopez first came under fire publicly in 2013 for performing for Turkmenistan president
Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, who the Human Right Foundation accused of being a despot.
J.Lo's rep insisted that if she knew of any human rights violations, she never would have
agreed to perform.
Prior to that, Lopez got $1 million to perform at a July 2011 wedding that Chechen president
Ramzan Kadyrov attended; she was also previously paid $1.4 million to perform at an allegedly
corrupt Russian businessman's birthday party.
In September 2012, Lopez was accused of meeting with an Azerbaijan dictator to discuss performing
at a music festival, after pocketing $2.5 million to perform at a soccer tournament.
A month later, she performed in Belarus, arguably Europe's only remaining dictatorship.
That November, Lopez was also paid $2 million to sing happy birthday to a Russian bureaucrat
accused of corruption.
The bureaucrat was arrested the day before his party, and it isn't known if Lopez kept
her fee.
As far as anyone knows, Lopez hasn't commented on these allegations, but Human Rights Foundation
president Thor Halvorssen said in a statement:
"J.Lo has repeatedly mingled with and entertained some of the world's worst thugs and their
cronies.
The 'Jenny-from-the-block-who-doesn't-Google' clarification may be credible in one instance,
but it beggars belief in light of a pattern of repeated behavior."
In 2011, Beyoncé came under fire after Wikileaks revealed that she had been paid up to $1 million
to perform at a private party for Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's son in 2009.
She and her team were able to mitigate the damage somewhat by donating the money she
was paid for the show to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
Her rep told CNN in a statement:
"Once it became known that the third party promoter was linked to the Gaddafi family,
the decision was made to put that payment to a good cause."
Usher reportedly performed at the same event as Beyoncé, and released a statement saying
he was sincerely troubled by the Gaddafi link, and that he would also donate his fee to the
same organisation.
After the news broke that Beyoncé and Usher had performed for Gaddafi's son, singer Nelly
Furtado issued her own unprompted apology for doing the same at a private party in Italy
in 2007.
She tweeted that she'd donate the $1 million she earned for the performance.
Like Beyoncé, Usher, and Nelly Furtado, Mariah Carey was also slammed for performing for
Moammar Gaddafi's family.
The "We Belong Together" singer performed at a private New Year's Eve party in 2008,
though Showbiz411 reported that the deal was made through a third party promoter who likely
hid the details of the party.
Carey later announced that she'd donate all the proceeds of her song "Save the Day" to
tackle human rights issues through her own foundation.
She said in a statement:
"I feel horrible and embarrassed to have participated in this mess.
Going forward, this is a lesson for all artists to learn from.
We need to be more aware and take more responsibility regardless of who books our shows.
Ultimately we as artists are to be held accountable."
Lionel Richie performed in Tripoli on April 15th, 2006 to mark the 20th anniversary of
America's offensive on Tripoli and Benghazi, with more than 1,000 senior Libyan officials
and diplomats in attendance.
At the time of the offensive, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan had said that the raids were
a retaliation for Libyan complicity in the death of a U.S. serviceman during the bombing
of a German nightclub.
"We tried quiet diplomacy, public condemnation, economic sanctions, and demonstrations of
military force.
None succeeded."
Moammar Gaddafi's daughter, who was around 10 years old in 1986, told the press at the
concert:
"Today we try to heal our wounds and shake hands with those who are here with us tonight.
Yes for peace, no for destruction."
Reuters journalist William Maclean, who was in attendance that day, recalled his own surprise
at the performance, writing:
"I had to rub my eyes to remind myself what I was seeing was real."
Maclean reported that Richie closed his set by declaring:
"Libya, I love you.
I'll be back."
In July 2014, Taylor Swift wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, slamming the
music streaming industry, mostly because artists don't make much cash from it.
That November, she removed her music from Spotify, and described streaming as an experiment,
rather than a potential solution for the recent fall in sales of physical music.
By March 2015, however, Swift had changed her tune, and put all of her albums except
1989 on Tidal.
That June, she posted a now-deleted open letter to Apple Music over their "disappointing"
three-month free trial program.
Apple later changed that policy and resolved its differences with Swift, leading some to
speculate that the entire beef was a publicity stunt.
In December 2015, she released her 1989 World Tour Documentary on Apple Music, and in April
2016 she starred in an ad for the service.
Selena Gomez is one of the most-followed people on Instagram, but she often complains that
she hates the medium as a whole.
In February 2016, the "Lose You to Love Me" singer told W Magazine that she had vowed
to give up all social media at some point, saying she only uses it to leverage her young
fan base and have a say in tabloid stories about her.
Nine months later, Gomez told her fans in the crowd at the American Music Awards:
"I don't want to see your bodies on Instagram, I want to see what's in [your heart].
I'm not trying to get validation nor do I need it anymore."
In January 2020, she told The Wall Street Journal that she was back on Instagram to
promote her album Rare, but that she was going to remove the app from her phone to avoid
it from triggering her addictive personality.
It's a tale as old as time for Gomez, who makes quite the killing off of the very social
media platform she repeatedly decries: AdWeek estimated in July 2016 that Gomez's social
media posts were worth roughly $550,000 a piece at the time, and over the years, she's
sold a number of sponsored posts for some of the world's biggest corporations.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Adam Levine.
The Maroon 5 frontman tweeted in March 2011:
"I also would like to put an official ban on celebrity fragrances.
Punishable by death from this point forward."
One year later, Levine announced plans to release his own cologne and perfume line,
called 222, and his fellow The Voice star, Christina Aguilera, called him out on it.
Posting a screenshot of his prior remark, the "Fall in Line" singer wrote:
"What a difference a year makes...Welcome to the celebrity fragrance family!"
Levine later halfway recanted his remark but still felt the need to shame fellow celebrities
with perfume lines.
He told People magazine:
"I kind of thought to myself, 'Well I'm interested in fashion and there's a lot of things about
it that could be really cool if done properly."
He added:
"So I want to do a thing that's never done properly.
That's my goal.
It's going to be cool."
"60% of the time it works every time."
In October 2009, Sting made more than $1.3 million to perform at a concert organized
by Uzbekistan's dictatorial president Islam Karimova, who was accused of jailing and deporting
political opponents and public figures with dissenting views.
What made it especially shocking was the former Police frontman's reputation for being politically,
socially, and environmentally conscious.
The backlash against Sting was widespread, and included a letter from the Director of
the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, who wrote:
"I hope that you will not accept the money for the concert, which symbolizes much of
the suffering of Uzbek people."
Sting's response to the backlash, which did not include a promise to donate his paycheck
from the show, was even more baffling.
In a statement, the singer said:
"I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are
counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of
ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular."
And how did that go over?
Well, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray had some thoughts, explaining:
"This really is transparent bollocks."
Miley Cyrus has gone back and forth on the subject of hip-hop, and that's kind of an
understatement.
She sang about Jay-Z on "Party in the USA," but then said she had never heard a Jay-Z
song before; a year later she said she called herself "a sellout" for making pop music.
And perhaps that's part of what made Cyrus' abrupt jump to hip-hop, with her album Bangerz
in 2013, so jarring.
She then slammed the entire genre to Billboard in May 2017, griping:
"I can't listen to that anymore.
That's what pushed me out of the hip-hop scene a little.
It was too much 'Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my c---', I am so not that."
She then backtracked on her remarks in a since-deleted Instagram post writing:
"I have always and will continue to love and celebrate hip-hop as I've collaborated with
some of the very best!"
Unfortunately for Cyrus, her country-pop follow-up to Bangerz, Younger Now, flopped, selling
only 45,000 copies in its first week.
Cyrus then pivoted back to hip-hop once more, for her follow-up to Younger Now, titled She
Is Coming.
Despite a United Nations boycott of South Africa in the 1980s, a slew of iconic musicians
and bands performed at the Sun City Resort and Casino in Bophuthatswana, during the country's
Apartheid regime.
Frank Sinatra made a cool $2 million to perform, while Elton John, Dolly Parton, Queen and
Liza Minnelli were among the other artists who pocketed allegedly dirty money for their
services.
Queen guitarist Brian May said of the band's decision to perform at Sun City in 1984:
"We've thought a lot about the morals of it, and it is something we've decided to do.
The band is not political, we play to anybody who wants to come and listen."
According to The New York Times, Liza Minnelli agreed to perform under the conditions that
the concert was integrated, but only 200 out of 4,500 attendees of her 1982 show were people
of color.
A number of other artists, however, stuck to their guns and refused to play, including
Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder, and Ella Fitzgerald.
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