Warning: This article contains references to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Viewer discretion advised. See what I did there?
April 21st, 2016. Exactly ten years ago today, Prince, the prolific pioneer of the music industry, passed away in his Minnesota home. As a native Minnesotan, this was major. Prince is kind of our claim to fame (no shade Winona). The highway by my high school is named after him.
Prince’s discography spans genres and decades, but most people know him from the iconic 1984 album Purple Rain. What you may not know is that it caused a massive controversy. It’s actually the reason parental advisory labels exist today.
Darling nikki & The Filthy 15
In 1984, Tipper Gore brought home a copy of Purple Rain for her eleven year-old daughter. Soon after, a funky groove streamed from the stereo. Track five. A little number called “Darling Nikki.” That’s when the trouble began.
In the song’s opening lines, a woman named Nikki is introduced and dubbed a sex fiend. It also features a reference to masturbation. Saucy. But probably not the song you’d play for your fifth grader. Gore certainly didn’t think so.
The lyrics were explicit. Embarrassing. Thousands of households would purchase this album with no warning of what was to come. Thus the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was formed. A committee that sought to rate musical releases like movies.
Tipper Gore had major influence over the matter. She was the wife of senator Al Gore, and the future Second Lady of the United States. It’s safe to say she had lots of sway.
So Gore and the PMRC formulated a list of the most x-rated, suggestive songs on the market and called it the Filthy Fifteen. This covered everything from Judas Priest to Madonna. Yikes. Nobody tell the PMRC about The Lemon Song.
The Outcome
Despite memorable testimonies from artists such as John Denver and Frank Zappa, the 1985 hearing came to a near unanimous decision. From that point on, albums with explicit content or language would receive a parental advisory label. A decision that still holds today.
There was just one small issue. Once retailers got the heads up that a new album was explicit, they refused to stock any copies. Turns out corporations don’t like controversy.
In Utero uproar
It wasn’t just Prince that fell victim to music censorship. Nearly a decade later, Nirvana got in some serious hot water with Walmart. In Utero, their third studio album, featured graphic images of fetuses and a track titled “Rape Me.” A song so controversial that it was banned from network television. Walmart insisted that the imagery and title be changed or they would refuse to stock the album.
Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain, said that “Rape Me” was meant to be an anti-sexual assault song. Its haunting chorus seemingly refers to the fallacy that assault victims are “asking for it.” The story ends poorly for the attacker. Still, that wasn’t enough to appease the retailers.
Cobain, ever the non-conformist, actually agreed to the change. He understood that Walmart was the only place where many small-town kids could buy Nirvana’s music. He didn’t want fans to miss out due to a technicality. “Waif Me” it was.
21st Century Censors
Nowadays, physical media is less common. We access our music through streaming services and the internet, which makes it more difficult to impose restrictions. A song isn’t playing on the radio? Okay, we’ll just go to Spotify or Youtube instead. Or worse, it’ll find us through social media algorithms.
That’s what happened with “WAP”, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallions’s scandalous hip-hop track of 2020. “WAP,” an acronym that stunned us all, was chock-full of sexual references that would make the PMRC shudder. “Darling Nikki” is tame in comparison. Radio wasn’t going to play it without a clean version. The word clean, however, is used loosely here. Even Youtube requested an edited version for the music video. Still, the original version exploded on social media and became a comedic staple of that year. Parental advisory sticker or not.
Breaking it down
You know when you’re not supposed to do something, and it makes you want it more? It’s a classic situation. The cookie jar is calling your name. To me, that’s what censorship is. We can slap a label on our music and a rating on our movies, but how do you categorize a body of work? You can’t.
Prince’s “Darling Nikki” didn’t ruin his career. He lives on as a legend. The same goes for Nirvana. In Utero went multi-platinum anyway. “WAP” didn’t fade away either. It became an online success. People love a little controversy. It’s as old as Elvis’s pelvis.
Yes, the definition of censorship is changing. But it hasn’t disappeared. Now, media is filtered in ways we don’t even see. Media algorithms and sanitized versions have become the norm. Mass appeal isn’t universal. So I wonder, who gets to determine what’s acceptable?