When Puritan America Goes on a Crusade Against Music with a Sticker
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Prince, Frank Zappa, Madonna. SIPA
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Series In 1985, an American mother launched a crusade against rock music deemed obscene. Alongside her: politicians, censors, churches. In the crosshairs: Prince, Frank Zappa, Madonna… This is how the famous black and white logo "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics" was born.
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“I met Nikki in a hotel lobby, she was masturbating with a magazine.” One morning in December 1984, 11-year-old Karenna Gore played Prince’s latest masterpiece, “Purple Rain,” on her turntable. When the first verse of the fifth track, “Darling Nikki,” began to play, her mother, Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore, gasped. Outraged, she grabbed the vinyl, ran to the record store, and demanded a refund. She refused, as the album had already been opened and played. It was the last straw. The mother wrote down her fury in a 1987 book titled “Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society”: “The vulgar lyrics embarrassed us both. I was stunned at first, then I went crazy! Millions of Americans bought that record, not knowing what to expect!”
Yet, like many other parents of her generation, this blonde woman with a strict bob wasn't born a prudish girl. She swayed to the Beatles' "Twist and Shout" as a young girl. But, she says, times have changed: "The communications industry is offering increasingly explicit images of sex and violence to younger and younger children."
This society of the spectacle, which has become pornographic, greatly displeases puritanical America...
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