Banning music is nothing new. Parents, religious leaders and politicians have been trying to ban music which they deem inappropriate for centuries. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that government initiated an authority for regulating music. It was the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and it was run by Tipper Gore, the future vice-president’s wife.
The PMRC got its start when Tipper Gore decided to buy the Prince Purple Rain album for her daughter who was 11 years old at the time. Tipper and her daughter listened to the album together and everything was fine until the song “Darling Nikki” came on. For those who aren’t Prince fans, the “Darling Nikki” song lyrics begin with
I knew a girl named Nikki
I guess you could say she was a sex fiend
I met her in a hotel lobby
Masturbating with a magazine
She said, “How’d you like to waste some time?”
And I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind
The rest of the song is equally as provocative as this explicit intro and probably not something that most parents would want their pre-teens listening to. Tipper Gore says that she would have never bought the Prince album for her daughter if she’d known it contained such a vulgar song.
After hearing the Darling Nikki, Tipper Gore decided to investigate just how vulgar popular music really had become. She spent some time watching MTV and was in for a shock, particularly after seeing and hearing the videos for Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”, amongst others. Unlike many other concerned parents at the time, Tipper Gore was actually in a place to do something to stop the sexually explicit and violent music. She got together with other wives of political figures to form the Parents Music Resource Center (PRMC) in 1985. The other founding members included Susan Baker (wife of James Baker, the then Treasury Secretary) and Sally Nevius (wife of John Nevius, Washington City Council chairman).
Even though Tipper Gore claimed that the goal of the PRMC was not for censorship, many of the goals they were arguing for were borderline censorship. In the same year that the group formed, they sent letters to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and numerous recording companies requesting that they not release any explicit albums. They also demanded that, if explicit albums were released, that they should be labeled as such. Most of the companies declined to comment and none made any change to their practices.
After failing to work directly with the recording companies, the PRMC went to congress to testify about the negative influence that music was having on culture. The PRMC lobbied for many demands, including:
- a method for rating albums as well as music concerts
-a requirements that all song lyrics be put on the album cover
-a law requiring all albums with explicit covers be stored out of public view
-force recording companies to void contracts with performers who acted violently or sexually while on stage
-compel radio and TV networks to refrain from broadcasting explicit material
The result of their lobbying led to that now-infamous “Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics” label that is found on so many albums. Did this label have any effect? According to artists like Mötley Crüe and Poison, their album sales actually increased after getting the label! In today’s age of the MP3, the label isn’t even helping parents control what their kids are listening to. But, The PRMC has had its influence. At least parents have an idea now of just how explicit the content of their kids’ music is – even if they can’t do much to stop them from listening to it!