La Roux has attacked the US television channel Fox Business for using her song Bulletproof in an item on backpacks designed to protect children during school shootings.
Producers chose the La Roux song, including the lyrics: “This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof”, to accompany the opening footage, prompting the artist, Elly Jackson, to tell the magazine Billboard: “Using Bulletproof, a song I wrote about relationships, for a piece like this is abhorrent. I have never, and would never approve my music to be used in this way.”
The “back to school” portion of the channel’s Mornings with Maria programme aired earlier this week and follows an academic year that saw some of the worst school shootings in US history.
It featured clothing referred to by Carolina Ballesteros Casas, marketing manager for the manufacturer MC Armor, as “fashion with ballistics” and the backpacks, which she said were designed specifically for American schoolchildren.
“In the US, sadly, there is the gun fact,” she told the programme. “Everybody can have a gun. So, here, kids need to be protected.”
The host, Maria Bartiromo, replied: “It’s incredible that this has come to this, though – that we need bulletproof clothing.” Referring to a protective jacket, she added: “Some of these things are quite fashion-forward.”
A Fox Business Network spokesperson told the Guardian: “The song was chosen by the production team and the selection has been addressed.”
According to CNN there were 23 school shootings in which someone was hurt or killed in 2018 to 25 May – an average of more than one a week. The worst occurred in Parkland, Florida, in February, when 17 people were killed. In May 10 people were killed in a shooting at Santa Fe High School, in Texas.
Fox Business Network is the sister channel of Fox News, the rightwing, pro-guns news channel thought to be heavily favoured by US president Donald Trump.
