Legendary pop star Prince died Thursday at just 57-years-old. Back in the mid-80s, the pop star’s overtly sexual hit “Darling Nikki” was partially responsible for Tipper Gore’s rock-n-roll freak-out and a highly entertaining subsequent waste of congressional time.
Gore cofounded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) after she said she was shocked by the profane lyrics in the Purple Rain album she bought for her then 11-year-old daughter.
Eventually, Gore was able to use her husband’s political capital as a senator to get Congress involved in a debate about whether the government should be helping parents decide what is appropriate for their children to hear.
But while nobody would disagree that there are certain things children shouldn’t hear, the real issue with Gore’s efforts was that she was essentially working to give parents an out for their duties of vetting what their children are exposed to in media and entertainment.
And who better to explain that to her than Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver:
As Zappa noted: “The proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes on the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years with the interpretational problems inherent in the proposal’s design.”
Though she denied it vehemently, Gore’s real goal was censorship in music, as evidenced by some of the PMRC’s demands, including:
- The establishment of a rating system for albums and concerts
- Requiring song lyrics to be printed on album covers
- Having albums with explicit cover art kept under store counters
- Making record companies break contracts with performers who engaged in violent or sexually explicit onstage behavior
- Pressuring radio and television not to air objectionable artists
In the end, Gore’s efforts gave us the “Parental Advisory” stickers we see today on albums containing vulgarity or just old fashioned sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Record companies agreed to include the stickers in an effort to avoid burdensome legislation.
In 2004, Prince told The Washington Post he wrote vulgarity into “Darling Nikki” because it was an edgy thing to do at the time.
“Times were different back then. I wouldn’t stand out today if I was brand-new and came like that,” he said. “But see, back then nobody else was doing that, and I knew that would get me over. I didn’t dress like anybody, I didn’t look like anybody, I didn’t sound like anybody. We still try to do that. Why do what everybody else is doing?”
By then he rarely performed the song.
Rest in peace, Prince.
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