Ken Paulson

Prince turned the music industry upside down with his innovative funk and unconventional business models, but one of his most impactful moves was entirely inadvertent.

He inspired the “Parental Advisory” label on CDs.

His groundbreaking 1984 album Purple Rain was one of the best-selling albums of the year. Tipper Gore, wife of then-Sen. Al Gore, picked up a copy as a gift for her 11-year old daughter. In her book Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, she explained what happened next.

“When we brought the album home, put it on our stereo, and listened to it together, we heard the words to ... 'Darling Nikki': 'I knew a girl named Nikki/Guess (you) could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine'," she recounted. "The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned, but then I got mad! Millions of Americans were buying Purple Rain with no idea what to expect. Thousands of parents were giving the album to their children — many even younger than my daughter.”

That outrage led to the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center, a group organized by Tipper Gore and other prominent women in Washington, D.C. In their bid to raise awareness about sexual content in pop songs, the PMRC issued a list of the “Filthy Fifteen” songs they found most objectionable, with Prince’s Darling Nikki topping the list.

Others on the list included Madonna’s Dress You Up, Black Sabbath’s Trashed and AC/DC’s Let me Put My Love Into You. In addition to these Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, the list included artists like Cyndi Lauper, Sheena Easton and the Mary Jane Girls.

Censorship of rock ‘n’ roll is as old as the art form. Elvis Presley’s second single Good Rockin’ Tonight was banned in Houston in 1954 because certain lyrics were seen as too suggestive. The Everly Brothers’ Wake up Little Susie was literally banned in Boston.

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But this was different. This was the wife of an influential senator leaning on the music industry to label albums as being inappropriate for minors. And when you have the political connections of a Tipper Gore, you can back up your activism with a Senate hearing.

We’d seen it all before in other media. Industries fearful of government regulation quickly rally to impose self-regulation. That’s why movies are rated and why the comic books you read as a kid bore the legend of the Comics Code Authority.

Predictably enough, the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group, was quick to propose its own labeling system, but the show — a September 1985 hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — went on.

This was the most entertaining Commerce Committee meeting in history. John Denver spoke out against censorship, pointing out that his song Rocky Mountain High was largely mistaken for a drug song. Twisted Sister front man Dee Snider earnestly explained that their song Under the Blade was actually about surgery anxiety, and Frank Zappa, well, was Frank Zappa.

“The $8.98 purchase price does not entitle you to a kiss on the foot from the composer or performer in exchange for a spin in the family Victrola,” Zappa testified. “Taken as a whole, the complete list of PMRC demands reads like an instruction manual for some sinister kind of ‘toilet training program’ to house-break all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few. Ladies, how dare you?”

In the end, most of the recording industry “voluntarily” agreed to label CDs that included explicit language and sexual content.

So what’s wrong with that? Don’t parents deserve to know what their kids are listening to?

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First of all, this wasn’t so voluntary. This wasn’t a consumer-friendly gesture by civic-minded record companies. This was the U.S. government regulating media through the threat of legislation, despite the First Amendment’s prohibition against government control of content.

The bigger problem, though, is what came next. Rather than embracing the labeling system and rewarding “responsible” record companies, major retailers like Walmart refused to stock CDs with advisory stickers. That meant that in order to get those albums into stores, record companies had to censor lyrics, producing “clean” versions that were often a far cry from the artists’ intent.

Emboldened, Walmart even demanded change in artwork, including an album cover by John Mellencamp that depicted Mellencamp with Christ and the devil standing by his side. So long Satan. Goodbye Jesus.

Of course, 31 years later, this all seems quaint. There’s no need to label CDs when no one is buying them. And in an era of teen sexting, suggestive lyrics are the least of parents’ concerns.

The man who topped the “Filthy Fifteen” is now being celebrated as an artist of vision and integrity. Clearly America has changed. What never changes, though, is the threat of government trying to control ideas it finds offensive.

Ken Paulson is the president of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

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