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CMAT wrote new song after being fat-shamed over festival show

2025-05-09 02:00:19
CMAT says social media means it's not just celebrities who are exposed to unrealistic beauty standards

Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, the second single from upcoming album Euro Country, charts the challenges of being a woman in the public eye.

It's something the singer, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, says no longer applies only to celebrities thanks to social media.

"This happens to everyone all the time," she says.

"Everyone is constantly being judged on whether or not they're commercially attractive and where they fall within these really weird goal posts.

"I just was annoyed, and I wanted to write a song about being annoyed about it."

The track begins with CMAT singing about trying to wax her legs with sticky tape when she was nine, and how the pressure to be attractive has meant she's "been having a horrible time of late".

But the lyrics are contrasted with poppy hooks and the tongue-in-cheek solution of having someone "take a sexy picture".

"The thing with this song was, I wanted it to sound joyous and uplifting to sing but also to be a bit of a rallying cry," she says.

"If we're dealing with a song that's as dark as this, and as grim as this, we have to make it a bit funny."

In the song, CMAT sends a message to "party girls dragged out by their ankles", singing: "I'm here if you need me, deep in your afters".

"I wanted the song to act as a support group for everyone who goes through this kind of thing," she tells Radio 1.

"Because it's completely outside of my control."

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