In the midst of the AIDS epidemic, the singers of TLC seize the condom

At the beginning of the 1990s, the plastic in vogue was the condom. At least it should have been because, in the midst of the HIV pandemic, latex remained the best protection to put a stop to the then galloping spread of AIDS. Many young adults are still reluctant to wear it, and some artists will try to advertise it in their songs, with more or less success.

In France, the alternative rock group from Nantes, Elmer Food Beat thus sings, from 1990, their refrain ” Plastic, It’s Fantastic “, in a saucy and disconcerting tone. Elton John participates in a collective piece, That’s What Friends Are For, with Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick. George Michael writes Do You Really Want to Know, which evokes the disease without setting foot in the dish. Then-star Madonna, who has been raising money for AIDS research since the mid-1980s, is also embarrassed. The sex symbol has a hard time expressing himself on the subject. It was not until 1992 that she mentioned the disease in one of her songs, In This Life, excerpt from his album Erotica, where she mourns the death of her friends killed by AIDS.

bad press

Difficult for pop artists to seize the question, explains then, in July 1992, the very serious New York Times, in an article titled “The difficult alliance of AIDS and pop » : “It is a contradictory alliance, writes journalist, David A. Keeps, between an industry that markets sex as pleasure and a disease that links sex to death. » The only artists who will manage to deal with the subject without sounding hypocritical, preachy or corny are three young women, the TLC, one of the girl groups which sold the most albums of the 1990s, surpassing their British competitors, the Spice Girls.

Tall as three apples, comfortable in their loose and masculine clothes, they are the only ones who will be heard by adolescents and a community hard hit by the disease. While NBA star basketball player Magic Johnson announced in 1991 that he was HIV-positivethat the black tennis player Arthur Ashe (1943-1993) confirms, in 1992, that he has AIDS, the number of infections among African-Americans exceeds that of whites for the first time since the beginning of the epidemic. Three years later, AIDS becomes the leading cause of death among black men between the ages of 25 and 44, and the second among black women in the same age group. The figures are alarming, but the condom still has a bad press among young people in this community. The songs and the look of TLC will change everything.

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