What do you think of those little "Parental Warning Explicit Content" stickers? I think that artists should just be free to put / say / whatever they want to without being bothered.. my parents don't approve of them very well so I have to go about finding my own methods of getting them.

It's only a USA problem... in the rest of the world we have the freedom

You could consider tham equivalent to Genetically Modified or BGH warnings (ahhh, I mean notification) on food. Much of the world has them but they are banned in the US.

Govt likes to keep BIg Business and the Bible Belt happy.

On many CD's I have the "Warning Explicit Content" is printed at the booklet.
Anyway I don't care except that this warning says to me, that it has to be cool...

That stickers are a good way to avoid the censored versions of some albums...

What I don't like about those warnings is that they're inserted into the album's cover art. I've seen very few CDs on which they are actually stickers (and therefore removable).

Aren't those optional?

I'm all for parents making informed decisions about the music their kids listen to (but I believe many kids can make decisions in their own best interests). However, I'm against these stickers because they are so vague. Because everything that is potentially offensive is marked EXPLICIT, the word loses its meaning. What is offensive to some may be acceptable to others, and I suspect many albums are maligned with the EXPLICIT tag due to some overzealous prude. Personally I believe it is ridiculous to read anything into the lyrics of music.

I think it would be more useful to have warning labels about shoddy engineering or crappy music.

My kid has a Marylin Manson CD (spell?) which certainly qualifies for parental advisory even on song titles, but at least it is music. Much less offensive than the F-word shouting matches some are putting out.

Some funny stuff i found... Music Censorship Incidents

And of course, the official RIAA Parental Advisory page, telling us how important censorship is.

and that's probably what quite a few (mostly male I guess) ppl think too and buy CDs because of this warning among other reasons.

while I second your previous points in your post, I strongly disagree with this one. some groups are very skilled to package very dangerous content (and I don't mean plain 'fuck', 'shit', 'mf bn' etc) into their seemingly harmless lyrics. namely some German right-wing extremists. this is a serious issue IMO.

that being said, I think the ppl in charge would be better of 'hunting down' those albums than going for small fishes that make use of their right of freedom of speech.

It has been shown to sell the albums more, though does kind of ruin the cover art of some. Next they need to have:
Dynamic Range Advisory:
1:5 compression ratio or worse, and/or hard clipping, may be present in this recording.

DonP: they are hardly banned. AFAIK, Walmart and Target have been the only chains to do anything about them censorship-wise, and anyone who buys CDs from eithe rof those places needs to a) get taste (last I was at Walmart, I looked...How the West Was Won was the only CD I found that even remotely not modern top-40), b) get frugal and buy them cheaper elsewhere, and/or c) start wondering why those places even carry music.

sometimes I think that many bands just say the F-Word one time in one of their songs so they can add this sticker and therefore boost their CD-sales...

However, sometimes it's hard to tell if their is also a uncut version of a particular album available...therefore these stickers that tell you that this CD is clean help on that

okay I just said sticker, I did not really mean it per say.

I am in highschool, not exactly a 'kid' anymore Mono.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Of all of my cd's that have parental advisory stickers, they are on the cd case cover (with the exception of Metallica's St. Anger, but who would want to listen to that anyway?).

A few years back when I was a teen, I could go buy any cd,and no store employees cared if they had advisories on them or not, so they arent stopping kids from purchasing the music.

...and even if they stop a few kiddies from buying that stuff...they'll most likely download it and not buy the clean release instead of it...or what about amazon.com? Do they check people's age? I don't think so...

I didn't mean that the parental advisories were banned. It is the GMO and BGH warnings that are banned in the US. It is also banned to say that a food does NOT have GMO or BGH except that it is implicit in "organic"

The lobbyists are afraid that faced with such informative labels, consumers would do someting irrational... like avoid GMO "enhanced" products.

heh, I just got back from the store and I got myself blink-182's self titled album. (:

AH, OK.
Such products aren't fairing terribly bad now, and some of are waking up and gradually starting to have lives from cutting down on additives and all that. When your doctors give up and you can't even handle a few days a week of schooling, you see options you barely knew were there.
If only it weren't a 1.5-2hr drive to Atlanta .

I don't doubt that this group uses CDs as propaganda. That is not what I was referring to. For the majority of American pop music (i.e. the music that gets slapped with an EXPLICIT tag) this is not the case.


I did not mean to imply so. I was referring to a general case, and not your specific situation. The point of these labels is so some 13-year-old won't (God forbid ) hear a profanity while listening to some music.

ok.. just making sure.

I didn't even know eveanescence (sp?) had any 'profanity' in their lyrics..

umm... i don't quite understand what you mean there.

...at all.

as for explicit language in music, well, i'm bored of it. it's certainly a case of "censorship as fashion", rather like making a serious film, then putting in some titties to keep the punters interested. it cheapens the art, where it would be perfectly acceptable to have titties or swear words if they were adequately allowed for in the script. i think that's what "gratuitous" means.

personally i hate censorship, but i also don't see the point in saying "fuck" just because you can. better to treat it as another word in your vocabulary, and use it where it's needed. rather like dynamics in music - the loud bits are meant to stand out, but if it's loud all the time it's boring. so it is with hard language - people are so used to "f***" that if you want to get anyone's attention these days, you have to say "c***", which is a word i don't actually like to say (but i love people's reaction to it).

i find it funny that if pink floyd's "money" were released today, it would probably have one of those stickers on it. definitely censorship as fashion. we think we're more permissive than ever, but in reality it's the '50s again - Azumanga Daioh vol 1 got an MA 15+ restricted rating because of Kimura-sensei wanting to watch the girls getting changed. all the other discs have the same stuff, but they got G ratings... censors are stupid.

when a harmless teen anime gets the same rating as Kill Bill vol 2, you know censorship has become completely meaningless. also, it offends me that sex is more censored than violence - surely something's wrong when a movie depicting "actual sex" gets outright banned in a country (and cinema patrons actually arrested for trying to watch it), but a movie like Ichi the Killer simply gets an R 18+ rating, when even the trailer to Ichi almost made me puke.

that's an interesting statement...however, what would you say to a guy to get anyone's attention?