Gwen Sebastian Sends ‘Motel’ to Hotel at Center of ’50 Shades of Grey’ Controversy
Gwen Sebastian, who first captivated viewers (and her mentor, now touring partner Blake Shelton) while competing on "The Voice," is among those protesting a British hotel's decision to change the reading material available to its guests. But she's using a song and some air-mail stamps to make her personal protest known.
After Gwen got wind (via a story in USA Today's travel section) that Jonathan Denby, owner of the Damson Dene Hotel in England's tourist-heavy Lake District, had replaced the Gideon Bible with the wildly popular soft-porn bestseller "Fifty Shades of Grey," her record label, Flying Island Entertainment, dispatched copies of Gwen's single, "Met Him in a Motel Room" to the hotel.
"I've read and really liked 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' but I don't understand why he would replace the all-time bestseller with a popular bestseller," Gwen notes of the dubious decision.
"Met Him in a Motel Room" tells the story of a desperate woman contemplating suicide and changing her mind when she discovers the Bible in the drawer of the motel room.
In a blog post explaining the switch, Denby wrote, "Tonight millions of women will be curling up in bed with a good book and you can bet your life it won't be the Bible. More likely than not it will be 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' I haven't read the book yet -- I'm not in the target audience -- but I'm told it's a ripping good yarn and everyone who's in the target audience loves it. This made me wonder about the sense of providing a book, the Gideon Bible which no one reads, and many dislike, in the bedside cabinet of our hotel bedrooms, instead of a book which everyone wants to read, such as 'Fifty Shades of Grey.'"
The decision has already been met with criticism, much of it coming from the U.S.
"We've had quite a few e-mails quoting the scriptures to us and suggesting that it would be a good thing to put the Bible back," notes Denby.
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