Parental Advisory Warnings on CD's... What's the Point?
Today my youngest step daughter is off of school with a viral bug. She's ok and her absence is probably more precautionary so she doesn't infect the whole school with it. But whilst I'm here trying to do some writing, she's sat in the other room on a PC listening to Eminem and various other rap artists on YouTube.
Now I'm a musician and I know that for generations, music has been a fantastic way of teenagers being able to rebel against their parents without actually getting into too much danger. The "cutting edge" sounds of Buddy Holly and Elvis back in the 1950's dismayed the parents of that time in an era when chivalry abounded, big band and orchestral music was what was on offer and men mainly wore a shirt and tie, even around the house.
The emergence of pop music through the sixties caused equal dismay to parents of those kids, partly because their eardrums were being perforated by the high pitched screams of teenage girls who fell in love with Paul McCartney et al. Through my teenage years in the 1970's, my parents despaired at my music of choice - Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and David Bowie - and my father, for instance, couldn't understand why I didn't feel as passionate as he did about Perry Como and Bing Crosby. So yes, I'm well aware that music aimed at the younger market is not always going to appeal to their elders.
I think it was in the mid 1990's that "Parental Advisory" stickers began being put onto CD's that contained profane and vulgar language and so, for a while at least, parents had a choice as to whether to listen to that CD in earshot of their little ones, or even whether to buy it in the first place.
But now, as the Internet has developed into the font of dubious knowledge and depravity it has become, the sometimes wonderful YouTube provides anything you want at all, 24/7. it filters out adult content video (so no pornography or nudity) but that doesn't seem to apply to music. And my concern is not just about the music... the lyrics are also shown on screen "karaoke style" so there is no doubt that yes, they did actually say those offensive four letter words together with some fairly excruciating seven letter ones before topping it off with an all too frequent twelve letter expletive.
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