The freshest beef in music is between British pop act Little Mix and TV blowhard Piers Morgan.
The co-host of Good Morning Britain took Little Mix to task for posing nude with common insults painted on their bodies – in the video for their anti-body-shaming anthem “Strip.”
“What is empowering about this? I mean, seriously,” Morgan fumed. “What’s the point of it, really, other than using nudity to sell their album? That’s all it is.
“It’s nonsense. It’s just stripping off to sell records. It’s actually just using sex and sexuality to sell records. That’s it. There’s nothing else to this.”
YouTube / Little Mix
Little Mix addressed Morgan’s opinion during an interview Monday on BBC Radio, in which Jesy Nelson referred to him as “a silly tw*t.”
Morgan clapped back on Twitter. “If you're brave enough @LittleMix - come on @GMB tomorrow & say when you've just been saying about me on Radio One to my face,” he wrote. “Then we can debate your cynical exploitation of nudity to sell records.”
On GMB on Tuesday, Morgan went at Nelson. “She called me a tw*t, let’s be perfectly clear,” he sniffed. “I apologize to anyone who’s offended by the language that Little Mix used about me. Because their campaign is to stop people using rude words, that’s what she called me on national radio.”
Morgan called on Little Mix to make a public apology. “As part of your campaign to root out bad language, perhaps you can apologize for calling me a tw*t,” he said.
The host later took to Twitter to compare the Little Mix nude photo with one country act Dixie Chicks did for the cover of EW in 2003. “Hey @LittleMix - when are you going to admit you stole this idea from @dixiechicks?”
Hey @LittleMix - when are you going to admit you stole this idea from @dixiechicks? pic.twitter.com/dLRX2TMv2k
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 20, 2018
Morgan then replied to a tweet from UK tabloid The Sun linking to an article that referred to Nelson sharing a “sultry snap in her underwear” with: “Sultry? She looks ridiculous. Ask her to put some clothes on (if she has any…) & apologise for calling me a tw*t.”
Wednesday afternoon, Ariana Grande stepped into the ring, urging Little Mix on Twitter to "keep fighting the fight." She also had a message for Morgan. "i look forward to the day you realize there are other ways to go about making yourself relevant than to criticize young, beautiful, successful women for everything they do," Grande tweeted. "i think that’ll be a beautiful thing for you and your career or what’s left of it."
Little Mix has, so far, not responded to Morgan's taunts, so we'll give them the last word using some "Strip" lyrics: "Rub off all your words / don't give a... / uh, I'm over it / I don’t owe you nothin' / Nah, I don't give a..."
This post has been updated since it was first published.