The PMRC: The Day the Grown-Ups Put a Warning Label on Rock ’n’ Roll

They wanted to protect the kids. We bought the records anyway.

Image: Tipper Gore and Susan Baker testifying at PMRC hearings. Source: Newsweek

There has always been something dangerous about young people finding their own music.

Not necessarily dangerous to the young people.

Dangerous to the grown-ups.

Give a generation something new to listen to, something their parents don't quite understand, and eventually somebody somewhere will become deeply concerned about what is happening to the children.

The music is too loud.

The dancing is too sexual.

The clothes are inappropriate.

The lyrics are obscene.

The performers are corrupting them.

The kids are going to hell.

Civilization is ending.

Again.

And somehow, civilization keeps surviving long enough for those very same kids to grow up and become concerned about whatever the next generation is doing.

Funny how that works.

Gen X certainly didn't invent this battle.

But in 1985, we got one hell of a front-row seat.

And it came with a sticker.

I Had Seen This Movie Before

I was very young when Anita Bryant launched her “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977 against a Dade County, Florida ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Image: Anita Bryant. Source: NBC News

I wasn't even in double digits yet.

I couldn't have explained gay-rights politics. I didn't understand lobbying organizations or culture wars or the growing political power of organized social conservatism.

I knew something considerably simpler.

There were people in my family who were what we called, in those days, “in the closet.”

We knew.

I loved them.

And that was pretty much the end of the intellectual exercise for Little Angel.

Why somebody was gay didn't particularly interest me. They were still the people I loved.

So when adults organized themselves around condemning people like them, my young mind formed an equally uncomplicated opinion.

This seems mean.

Bryant's campaign became enormously visible nationally and helped make “protecting children” a potent rallying cry in battles over gay rights.

I didn't have sophisticated language for what I was watching.

But I remembered the feeling.

Somebody announces there is a threat.

Somebody points at a group, an idea, a book, a lifestyle, a piece of art or a cultural change.

Then somebody says:

We have to protect the children.

By the time the grown-ups came for our music?

Well.

I was older.

I had opinions.

I had a stereo.

And I was considerably more difficult to impress.

You might say I was ready to...

rage against the machine.

Sorry.

Wrong decade.

We'll get there.

Before Us, There Was Always Somebody Else

The history goes back much farther than Gen X.

Jazz scared people.

And you cannot tell the history of American fear surrounding popular music without talking about race.

Black musical forms weren't merely criticized because adults disliked the sound. In parts of America, music that crossed racial boundaries threatened the racial order itself.

As rock ’n’ roll emerged, opponents sometimes explicitly attacked it as “race music.” One documented example comes from segregationist Asa Earl Carter, who campaigned against rock ’n’ roll in Alabama and described the music in openly racist terms, associating it with racial mixing and the degradation of white culture.

Think about that.

Before somebody was worried about Prince singing about sex, somebody else had been worried about white kids listening to music rooted in Black culture.

Before heavy metal was supposedly destroying the children, rock ’n’ roll was destroying the children.

Before rock ’n’ roll, jazz was causing trouble.

The Beat generation scared people.

The counterculture scared people.

Long hair scared people.

Elvis' hips apparently threatened national stability.

The Beatles arrived.

The Stones arrived.

Rock became heavier.

Sex became more explicit.

Politics entered the music.

Artists challenged war, authority, racism, religion, gender expectations and just about everything else available for challenging.

The walls kept moving.

Then Gen X got the keys.

Oh, Lord.

Enter Prince

Image: Prince. Source: Wikipedia

In 1985, Tipper Gore heard something that disturbed her.

Her 11-year-old daughter had Purple Rain.

And tucked inside that enormously successful Prince album was a little song called “Darling Nikki.”

If you know, you know.

If you don't...

Well.

Nikki was not discussing homework.

Gore later described hearing the song's sexual content, including its reference to masturbation, and beginning to pay much closer attention to what children could encounter on popular records. She connected with other Washington-area mothers who shared similar concerns.

Among them were Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar; and Sally Nevius.

The Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC, was born.

And this is where history is more interesting than the simplified version many of us remember.

The PMRC was not a government agency.

It did not possess the legal authority to ban records.

This wasn't simply a Republican operation, either. Tipper Gore's husband, Al Gore, was a Democratic senator. Susan Baker was married to a prominent Republican administration official.

This was a politically connected pressure campaign, one that crossed partisan lines and sought changes from the recording industry.

And it had clout.

In an April 1985 letter reported by The Washington Post, members explicitly described wanting to create grassroots pressure on the music industry.

The concerns weren't imaginary.

Popular music really had become more sexually explicit in places.

Some artists were deliberately provocative.

Some songs discussed drugs.

Some invoked violence.

Some metal bands gleefully played with Satanic and occult imagery because freaking people out was practically part of the marketing plan.

Parents were entitled to hear some of it and say:

Not in my house.

That's parenting.

But another question was developing underneath it.

How far should everybody else's choices be shaped by that concern?

And that's where things got interesting.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Filthy Fifteen

The PMRC identified fifteen songs it considered particularly objectionable.

They became known as:

THE FILTHY FIFTEEN

And I think we should actually look at them.

Not vaguely discuss dangerous music.

Here is what was causing the alarm.

1. Prince — “Darling Nikki” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

2. Sheena Easton — “Sugar Walls” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

3. Judas Priest — “Eat Me Alive” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

4. Vanity — “Strap On ‘Robbie Baby’” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

5. Mötley Crüe — “Bastard” Flagged for: Violence

6. AC/DC — “Let Me Put My Love Into You” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

7. Twisted Sister — “We’re Not Gonna Take It” Flagged for: Violence

8. Madonna — “Dress You Up” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

9. W.A.S.P. — “Animal (F* Like a Beast)”** Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

10. Def Leppard — “High ’n’ Dry (Saturday Night)” Flagged for: Drugs/Alcohol

11. Mercyful Fate — “Into the Coven” Flagged for: Occult

12. Black Sabbath — “Trashed” Flagged for: Drugs/Alcohol

13. Mary Jane Girls — “In My House” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

14. Venom — “Possessed” Flagged for: Occult

15. Cyndi Lauper — “She Bop” Flagged for: Sexually explicit content

The classifications appear in material associated with the congressional record of the controversy.

Now.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend all fifteen were misunderstood meditations on the human condition.

W.A.S.P. called a song “Animal (F* Like a Beast).”**

I'm not sure we're going to win the subtlety argument on that one.

😂

Some of this music was designed to provoke.

That was the freaking point.

But then look farther down the list.

Cyndi Lauper.

Madonna.

Twisted Sister.

And yes, our friend from this morning:

“We're Not Gonna Take It.”

Rated for violence.

Suddenly we have moved beyond simply asking whether a lyric contains an explicit word.

We're interpreting art.

And interpretation is where things can get messy very quickly.

Washington, Meet Rock ’n’ Roll

On September 19, 1985, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing titled Record Labeling: Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records.

The official published record runs 170 pages.

There wasn't legislation pending to ban rock music. Contemporary coverage described the hearing largely as a forum focused on the issue.

But don't mistake that for everybody being relaxed about it.

Senator Ernest Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, described some of the music as having no redeeming social value and said that if he could constitutionally find a way to eliminate it, he would.

So...

Yeah.

The musicians had reasons to show up.

And what musicians they were.

Frank Zappa.

John Denver.

And...

Lord have mercy.

Dee Snider.

😂

Frank Zappa Was Not Having It

Image: Frank Zappa. Source: TV Insider

Nobody needed to wonder what Frank Zappa thought.

He came prepared.

Zappa argued that the PMRC proposals threatened civil liberties and famously compared the approach to treating dandruff through decapitation. He also described the broader demands as a kind of cultural “toilet training” for artists.

This was Frank Zappa.

Diplomatic restraint wasn't exactly the brand.

His larger argument, though, was serious.

Parents already had the right to decide what entered their homes.

His concern was what happened when that parental authority expanded outward and began shaping the choices available to everybody.

That's a distinction worth remembering.

I don't want my child listening to this.

Fine.

Nobody should be making this.

Different conversation.

Then John Denver Walked In

Image: John Denver. Source: IMDb

This may be my favorite part.

Because if the opposition had consisted exclusively of heavy-metal musicians with pentagrams hanging from their necks, it would have been terribly easy to dismiss them.

Then came John Denver.

Wholesome, smiling, Rocky-Mountain-high John Denver.

And he opposed censorship too.

Denver had personal experience with lyrical interpretation. “Rocky Mountain High” had been banned by some radio stations because people interpreted the word high as a drug reference. Denver explained that the song was actually about the exhilaration he experienced in the mountains.

His point was devastatingly simple:

If they misunderstood me, who else are they going to misunderstand?

Denver argued that individual and family self-restraint were different from standards imposed by government or self-appointed moral watchdogs.

Suddenly this wasn't about defending dirty songs.

It was about defending the possibility that somebody else might interpret your art incorrectly.

Which brings us to...

DEE FREAKING SNIDER

You couldn't have cast this better.

The man walked into the United States Senate looking like...

Well.

Dee Snider.

Image: Dee Snider testifies at Senate hearing. Source: Rolling Stone Magazine

Long blond hair.

Denim.

Rock-star presentation.

The lead singer of Twisted Sister.

One of the people whose music had been specifically targeted by the PMRC.

And then he opened his mouth.

Snider told the committee he was 30 years old, married, the father of a three-year-old, raised Christian, and that he didn't smoke, drink or use drugs.

Then he challenged the interpretations being placed on his music.

One PMRC allegation had interpreted Twisted Sister's “Under the Blade” through sadomasochistic imagery. Snider explained that he had written the song about his guitarist Eddie Ojeda's fear before throat surgery.

And “We're Not Gonna Take It”?

The video was slapstick.

Cartoon violence.

The thing we talked about in the last article: the overbearing father gets launched through the house while Gen X cheers.

Snider's larger point was devastating for exactly the reason we've been discussing.

You looked at the package and decided you understood what was inside.

You saw the hair.

You saw the clothes.

You heard heavy metal.

You filled in the blanks.

Then the guy behind the image sat down and explained himself.

The hearing transcript preserves a particularly revealing exchange with Senator Al Gore, who questioned Snider about the name of Twisted Sister's fan club and the meaning of his songs. Snider stood behind his work and argued that interpretation without context could become character assassination.

That's the part that stayed with me.

Don't confuse presentation with intelligence.

Don't confuse rebellion with ignorance.

And don't assume you understand the artist simply because you don't understand the art.

Then Came the Sticker

Image: Parental advisory sticker. Source: Wikipedia.

The PMRC didn't leave Washington with a federal censorship board.

Congress didn't pass a law rating rock albums.

Instead, the recording industry moved toward self-regulation.

On November 1, 1985, an agreement was announced under which participating record companies would identify releases containing explicit sex, violence or substance abuse with the words:

EXPLICIT LYRICS — PARENTAL ADVISORY

Alternatively, companies could provide printed lyrics. Contemporary trade reporting documented the agreement and the participating labels.

The system continued evolving. In 1990, the industry introduced a standardized, recognizable Parental Advisory logo.

And thus one of the most recognizable little rectangles in music history was born.

PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT

The scarlet letter of the record store.

Except...

There was a small flaw in the plan.

We were teenagers.

😂

Tell a teenager:

There's something on this record adults don't think you should hear.

Well, shit.

Now I need to hear it.

The Rebellion Was Predictable

This is the part adults repeatedly underestimate about youth culture.

Push on art and sometimes art pushes back.

Harder.

Rock did.

Metal did.

Rap certainly did.

Artists wrote songs attacking censorship and the PMRC.

Some embraced the controversy.

Some treated the warning label almost like a badge.

And music didn't become less explicit.

Quite the opposite.

Hip-hop was about to explode into an entirely new cultural force.

Metal kept pushing.

Popular music kept pushing.

Sexual expression kept pushing.

Language kept pushing.

And only a few years later, another musical fight would go considerably further than warning stickers.

Enter...

2 Live Crew.

Oh, no.

We are not doing that today.

😂

That story involves obscenity law, arrests, record stores, federal courts, race, sex, hip-hop and the First Amendment.

2 Live Crew deserves its own trip through the Wayback Machine.

Trust me.

We'll get there.

The Walls Keep Moving

And this is where I think the story becomes much bigger than the PMRC.

Because music isn't the only place I've watched this happen.

Art pushes boundaries.

Then culture adjusts.

Then somebody pushes again.

I remember when Basic Instinct came out in 1992.

And Sharon Stone crossed and uncrossed her legs in that interrogation room.

Good Lord.

People lost their minds.

The film became controversial for its sexual content, violence and representations of sexuality; it initially received an NC-17 rating before cuts were made for an R.

That scene became part of popular culture.

Years later, television gave us Game of Thrones, with nudity, sexuality and graphic violence arriving directly in people's living rooms.

I'm not suggesting one caused the other.

I'm saying:

Look how far the wall moved.

And sometimes later generations also look backward and ask new questions about how those boundaries were pushed. Sharon Stone has since said she was misled about what would be visible in that famous shot, while director Paul Verhoeven has disputed her account.

That's important too.

Progress isn't simply:

More explicit = more free.

Culture moves.

Then culture reexamines itself.

Consent.

Power.

Representation.

Exploitation.

Who controls the image?

Who controls the art?

Who controls access to it?

Every generation renegotiates the room.

The Unspoken Doctrine of Courage

At the end of the day, I keep returning to something I have believed for most of my life.

Art is art.

That doesn't mean I have to like all of it.

God knows I don't.

It doesn't mean every song is profound.

Every painting isn't beautiful.

Every movie isn't good.

Every book doesn't contain something I particularly want to read.

Some art comforts us.

Some entertains us.

Some makes us dance.

Some gives us exactly what we came looking for.

And some artists look around at the room we've built and say:

This room is too damn small.

Those are the wall-pushers.

Sometimes they're brilliant.

Sometimes they're vulgar.

Sometimes they're offensive.

Sometimes they're ridiculous.

Sometimes they go too far.

But they push.

And perhaps true artists have always been bound by some unspoken doctrine of courage.

Make the thing.

Make the thing even though somebody won't like it.

Make the thing even though somebody won't understand it.

Make the thing even though somebody may tell you it shouldn't exist.

Because sometimes an artist isn't creating for the room as it is.

They're pushing out the walls to make room for whoever comes next.

And Now We’re the Grown-Ups

There's the uncomfortable part.

Gen X grew up.

I know.

I don't particularly care for this development either.

😂

But here we are.

We're the parents.

The grandparents.

The executives.

The teachers.

The politicians.

The people running organizations.

The people deciding what is acceptable.

And somewhere there is a young person making something we don't understand.

Something obnoxious.

Something sexual.

Something loud.

Something offensive.

Something that doesn't look like art to us at all.

Maybe it isn't good.

Maybe it's terrible.

Maybe we don't want it in our homes.

That's okay.

But before we decide the room needs to become smaller...

Maybe we should remember what it felt like when somebody tried to make it smaller around us.

Because that may be the real legacy of the PMRC.

Not simply a sticker.

The questions survived.

What should children be allowed to encounter?

Who decides?

Parents?

Artists?

Corporations?

Retailers?

Platforms?

Government?

Where does parental responsibility end?

Where does corporate responsibility begin?

Where does protection become restriction?

And where does restriction become control?

Those questions haven't disappeared.

The technology has changed.

Vinyl became cassettes.

Cassettes became CDs.

CDs became downloads.

Downloads became streaming.

The record store became the platform.

The shelf became the feed.

The gatekeeper became, increasingly, the algorithm.

The argument moved.

So What Comes Next?

I don't know.

And maybe that's the most honest answer.

I don't know what the next great battle over art and culture will look like.

But history gives me reason to believe there will be one.

There always seems to be.

Some new music.

Some new technology.

Some new sexuality.

Some new language.

Some new artistic form.

Some new group of kids doing something the adults don't understand.

And somewhere somebody will announce:

We need to protect them from this.

Sometimes they'll even be right that something deserves scrutiny.

That's the difficult part.

Protecting children matters.

Parental responsibility matters.

Artistic freedom matters.

Those ideas can coexist.

The challenge is deciding where one ends and another begins.

And perhaps that's why I still think about the kids we were in 1985.

We weren't asking adults to like our music.

We were asking them to let it exist.

Some artists gave us exactly what we wanted.

Others pushed against the walls.

And because they did, the room we inherited became larger.

So maybe our responsibility now isn't to approve of everything coming behind us.

Maybe it's simply to remember something.

We once needed somebody to leave enough room for us.

Let's be very careful before we close it around somebody else.

Otherwise, after all these years...

we might discover that somewhere along the way...

we became the parent in the Twisted Sister video.

And Gen X?

That would be embarrassing as hell.

🤘❤️

References & Further Reading

For anyone who wants to wander farther down this particular rabbit hole, these are good places to begin:

U.S. Senate, Record Labeling: Hearing Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, September 19, 1985. This is the big one: the published 170-page congressional hearing record containing the testimony and exchanges surrounding the controversy. Read the 1985 hearing record

The Washington Post, “The Capitol Hill Rock War,” September 20, 1985. Contemporary reporting from the day after the hearing, including the atmosphere in Washington and arguments from both sides. Read The Capitol Hill Rock War

The Washington Post, “Mothers’ Group Wants Prince to Clean Up His Act,” April 23, 1985. Particularly useful because it captures the PMRC campaign near its beginning rather than through decades of hindsight. Read the 1985 Washington Post report

Cash Box, November 16, 1985, “The Final Agreement.” Contemporary music-industry reporting documenting the November 1 agreement and the original “Explicit Lyrics — Parental Advisory” language. Read the contemporary music-industry coverage

Federal Trade Commission, Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children, appendices. Useful for following how the voluntary advisory system evolved after the original PMRC controversy, including the standardized logo introduced in 1990. Read the FTC material on entertainment labeling

And yes...

2 Live Crew is waiting for us.

Because if the PMRC story asks, “Should we put a warning on the record?”

the next story eventually asks something considerably more frightening:

“Can the government declare the record itself obscene?”

That, my friends, is another Saturday. 🤘

Thanks for taking this trip back with me.

What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.

Follow and subscribe to Rock ’n’ Roll Angel for more music, memories, pop culture, and wonderfully strange adventures from growing up Gen X.

Come find me beyond the memories:

🌐 DrAYHeath.com ▶️ YouTube: @TheMysticScribe 📱 Instagram: @ayheath 📱 TikTok & X: @drayheath 📚 Books by Dr. AY Heath available on Amazon

Until next time...

Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.

— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)

#RockNRollAngel #GenX #GenerationX #GenXCulture #GenXHistory #GenXCulturalStoryteller #PMRC #FilthyFifteen #ParentalAdvisory #ExplicitContent #MusicCensorship #Censorship #ArtisticFreedom #FreedomOfExpression #RockNRoll #RockHistory #MusicHistory #80sMusic #80sRock #HeavyMetal #Prince #TwistedSister #DeeSnider #FrankZappa #JohnDenver #TipperGore #MTVGeneration #CultureWars #MusicAndCulture #ArtIsArt #ProtectTheArt #LetArtistsCreate #TheMusicThatRaisedUs

#RockNRollAngel #GenX #GenXMemories #GenXCulture #MusicMemories #DrAYHeath #MysticScribe