Parental Advisory
The Parental Advisory Label ( PAL for short ; [ pəˈɻentᵊl ədˈvaɪzᵊɻi ], English for 'note for legal guardians', literally 'parental advice') is a label used by recording companies in the United States to mark music publications that are deemed unsuitable for minors because of offensive texts become. The basis for the labeling is a voluntary commitment by the music industry . The sticker has a fixed black and white design and bears the inscription Parental Advisory - Explicit Content (English for 'offensive content', literally 'clear content') or, more rarely, Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics (English for 'offensive lyrics ') . There are no hard and fast guidelines as to which albums must be labeled.
In the first half of 2006, according to the music industry, less than 5% of published albums were marked with the sticker.
Although several large retailers such as Walmart or Kmart refuse to sell records with this warning label, it does not seem to affect the sales of the labeled albums very much. According to the US Federal Trade Commission , about a third of US chart successes have the warning label. In the meantime, the design of the sticker has entered the iconography of pop culture: Musicians print the sticker in the original or alienated it on their albums outside the USA, there are posters or slipmats with the design. The group Heavy D. & the Boyz dedicated a song to the sticker in 1994. Products outside of the music industry also use the design, such as Twix (Peanut Butter Advisory - Unexpected Content) .
history
The sticker was created on an initiative of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a non-profit organization founded in 1985 . The initiative to found it came from Tipper Gore , the wife of the later US Vice President Al Gore . Susan Baker, wife of the then US Treasury Secretary James Baker , played a leading role in public relations . Tipper Gore was involved in the PMRC after the lyrics of Prince -album Purple Rain had heard (1984), which she had given her then eleven-year old daughter. Baker got involved after her 7-year-old daughter the text of Like a Virgin by Madonna had heard singing. The organization mainly included the wives of Washington government officials and US parliamentarians, as well as television evangelist Pat Robertson and television presenter Sheila Walsh .
Due to massive public relations work and due to the massive influence on the US legislature, which led to a Senate hearing in 1985, the organization succeeded in persuading all record companies that dominate the market to commit themselves to labeling publications that are potentially harmful to minors are. Musicians such as Frank Zappa , John Denver and Dee Snider from Twisted Sister were present as witnesses at the hearing and spoke out against labeling. In the same year, Zappa published excerpts of his speech with music as Porn Wars on the album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention . His entire, nearly 33-minute testimony was posthumously released as Congress Shall Make No Law ... on the album of the same name (2010).
Particularly attacked in this early period were albums and songs by Prince ( Darling Nikki : "I met her in a hotel lobby / Masturbating with a magazine"), Sheena Easton ( Sugar Walls : "Come spend the night inside my sugar walls"), WASP ( Animal (Fuck Like a Beast) : "I start to howl, I'm in heat / I moan and growl and the hunt drives me crazy / I fuck like a beast") and The Mentors ( Anal Vapor : "Bend up and smell my anal vapor / Your face is my toilet paper ").
The PMRC issued a list of fifteen of these songs that were most critically viewed and known as Filthy Fifteen :
| # | Artist | song | Content of the lyrics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prince | Darling Nikki | Sexual intercourse / masturbation |
| 2 | Sheena Easton | Sugar Walls | Sexual intercourse |
| 3 | Judas Priest | Eat Me Alive | Sexual intercourse |
| 4th | Vanity | Strap On 'Robbie Baby' | Sexual intercourse |
| 5 | Mötley Crüe | bastard | Violence / use of language |
| 6th | AC / DC | Let Me Put My Love Into You | Sexual intercourse |
| 7th | Twisted Sister | We're Not Gonna Take It | violence |
| 8th | Madonna | Dress you up | Sexual intercourse |
| 9 | WASP | Animal (Fuck Like a Beast) | Sexual intercourse / usage of language |
| 10 | Def Leppard | High 'n' Dry (Saturday Night) | Substance abuse |
| 11 | Mercyful Fate | Into the coven | occultism |
| 12 | Black Sabbath | Trashed | Substance abuse |
| 13 | Mary Jane Girls | In my house | Sexual intercourse |
| 14th | Venom | Possessed | occultism |
| 15th | Cyndi Lauper | She bop | Sexual intercourse / masturbation |
Of 7,500 different albums that were released between 1986 and 1989, 49 had a warning label. In 1990 the members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) agreed on the black and white sticker in its current form as the industry standard. The case of Band 2 Live Crew , which had to endure multiple “profanity” court hearings, and whose album As Nasty as They Wanna Be was among the first to wear the sticker in its current form, received special media attention .
In 1991, the largest US retailer, Walmart, decided to stop selling CDs with the warning label: as a result, most record companies also brought out abbreviated versions that could be sold without the warning label. According to the FTC , these versions account for between 0.5% and 22% of album sales, depending on the artist.
The Parental Advisory warning can be found on the publications of artists as diverse as Madonna , Lil 'Kim , Tupac Shakur , Prince , TLC , Marilyn Manson , Slipknot , Linkin Park , Hanson , Green Day , Nine Inch Nails and Limp Bizkit or Eminem , who have the sticker on every album: Artists who have both great chart successes and who have an audience that is mostly underage. The album Jazz from Hell (1986) by Frank Zappa was only given the warning because of the title of the composition G-Spot Tornado , although it was a purely instrumental album without a single line of text.
In digital distribution, titles are usually identified by the ? symbol.
Variations of the label
The former German independent label Aggro Berlin often used the phrase "consumer advice - hard texts" on the covers of its releases in an identical design to the US original. This reference was voluntary and should clarify the "hardness" of the songs or texts. This formulation is now also used by other labels and musicians in the rap field .
Web links
- Parental Advisory Label on the website of the Recording Industry Association of America (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Parental Advisory Label (“PAL”) Program. Recording Industry Association of America , archived from the original on December 22, 2010 ; Retrieved April 23, 2010 .
- ↑ https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/189098/copy-the-explicit-or-e-symbol-from-songs-in-the-ios-music-app
- ↑ Markus Zinsmaier: Echolot: Puberty fantasies . In: ZEIT ONLINE . Retrieved October 12, 2017.