Cher Lloyd claims she was asked to seduce Justin Bieber to make it in the US

29 January 2025, 12:20 | Updated: 29 January 2025, 13:47

Cher Lloyd claims label asked her to seduce Justin Bieber to make it in the US
Cher Lloyd claims label asked her to seduce Justin Bieber to make it in the US. Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue, We Need to Talk
Sam  Prance

By Sam Prance

Cher Lloyd was already with her husband Craig Monk at the time.

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Cher Lloyd has opened up about the dark side of the music industry and claimed that her label asked her to seduce Justin Bieber.

As soon as Cher Lloyd appeared on The X Factor in 2010, she rose to international fame. Not only did she star on the same season as One Direction but she also stole the show with performances of songs like 'Turn My Swag On' and 'Stay'. Cher then released two hit albums and even went Top 10 in the US with the international smash hit 'Want U Back'.

However, in spite of Cher's huge success at the time, she's now revealed that things weren't so simple behind the scenes.

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Discussing her experience with sexism in the industry on the We Need To Talk podcast, Cher alleged that she was not given a promotional budget for her album and was asked to try to "hook up" with Justin Bieber to promote it instead.

She said: "We spent millions on this album but there's no budget to get people to go hear it. I walk in and I say, 'Look, I really need some cash to try and push this record.' Basically, [I was ] told no...what I needed to do to make this record take off was hit some of the clubs and find out where Bieber is and go try and get with him."

Cher added: "Now this is going back years ago. I was a teenager but I was very much with my husband at that time. He was stood in that office while I was told they weren't gonna spend money on the album [and] to hook up with someone mega famous and leech off of the back of someone else's fame."

She ended by saying: "Was I not good enough? Was I not good enough to invest in that you would rather use me in that way? They didn't care."

Despite the label's request, Cher never did date Justin Bieber. She married Craig Monk in 2013 and they now have two daughters together.

Elsewhere, Cher claimed that she was told to keep her marriage on the down low for the sake of her career. She said: "Me and Craig were about to get married and I was told by people on my team, 'Do not let the label know because they will do anything to stop this marriage.'"

She continued: "The way that they thought about me getting married is once I'm married I'm "off the market". I hate that. I'm not a singer because I want to sleep around and I want to be in different celebrity relationships."

Cher isn't the only artist to have an experience like this in the music industry. In 2018, Little Mix said their US label told them to "flirt" with important men at a radio event to get their music played in the US.

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