Parental Advisory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the book of the same name, see Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America.
- For the hip-hop trio, see P.A..
Parental Advisory is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to audio and video recordings in the United States containing offensive language. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center. In 1990, the PMRC worked with the RIAA to standardize the label, creating the now-familiar black and white design. To some, it has become known as the "Tipper sticker" because of Tipper Gore's visible role in the PMRC.
Some politicians have tried to criminalize the sale of sexually explicit or lyrically violent records to minors, and others have gone so far as to try to ban such records. Certain record stores refuse to sell albums containing the label (most notably Wal-Mart), and others limit the sale of such albums to adults only. However, the power of the PMRC has greatly declined in recent years, especially with the growing popularity of rap and heavy metal (popular targets of the PMRC). Still, the RIAA encourages the labeling of any album containing explicit lyrics.
There have been some cases of unusual use of the label. After Frank Zappa campaigned against music censorship in 1985, a "parental advisory" sticker was attached to his next album, Jazz from Hell, because of the title of one track, "G-Spot Tornado", although the album is entirely instrumental and contains no lyrics that could be "explicit lyrics". The designation of instrumentals as taboo, however, is nothing new; in the 1960s, the "Rumble" instrumental by Link Wray was banned from some radio stations because it could supposedly incite "juvenile violence."
Although many retailers use the sticker as a criterion for censorship, there are no real rules as to when the sticker has to appear on a CD. For example, many albums with just one instance of strong profanity have a "parental advisory" sticker (such as Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape, Cake's Fashion Nugget, Local H's As Good As Dead Soundgarden's Louder Than Love, Jack's Mannequin's Everything In Transit or Bloc Party's Silent Alarm), although albums with multiple uses of explicit language may not. Some examples are Green Day's Dookie and Insomniac, Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, The Moon and Antarctica, The Lonesome Crowded West, Black Eyed Peas's Elephunk, Incubus's A Crow Left Of The Murder..., Redman's Dare Iz a Darkside, Children of Bodom's Hate Crew Deathroll, or Panic! At the Disco's A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. Also, some albums may not have a Parental Advisory sticker, even though they have only one use of the major curse on the album, which some people think that should be the key to make albums have the sticker (examples: Steely Dan's "Countdown to Ecstasy", Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (and its remaster in 2004), and Negativland's albums "Helter Stupid", "Dispepsi", and "A Big 10-8 Place", although the label they're on, Seeland Records, is not represented by the RIAA.)
In the UK, Madonna's Confessions On A Dance Floor received a parental advisory sticker yet it contains no profanities at all. The same can be said for Danzig's self-titled album, and Slayer's Seasons In The Abyss.
Some (but not all) albums with the sticker have additional explanations of why the disc carries the sticker. On System of a Down's Hypnotize, for instance, under the label it reads "Strong Language, + Violent Content". Radiohead's Hail to the Thief has a warning of the strong offensive language on inside the CD booklet, next to the listed lyrics.
Many albums with the label have clean versions available, especially on online music stores such as iTunes or Napster.
A few albums have a note saying that the lyrics are of an adult nature, but without the sticker: Back to Bedlam by James Blunt, Jimmy Buffett's Live in Hawaii and Overseer's Wreckage.
There has been the observation that the stickers appear to have had the reverse effect to what was intended - the sticker can make an album more desirable (to teenagers, for example), and the sticker has been called the musical equivalent of an "alcohol content" label.
The label is also seen in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Finland, The Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, South Africa, Japan and Australia, on albums of American origin.
The label is also used as a bumper each hour during Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block.
