Parental Advisory

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The current Parental Advisory logo, introduced in 2000.

Parental Advisory, abbreviated PAL, is a label affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to audio and recordings in the United States containing excessive use of profane language and/or sexual references.^[1] The label is prevalent on hip hop and rock albums, though it can appear on any musical genre that the RIAA believes warrants the need for one.

The logo is not a rating, and there are no agreed-upon standards for the label. It is the record company's decision whether or not an album requires a label. Some albums, however, have been considered so extreme in their violent content that the distributor of the album has put on a secondary warning next to the Parental Advisory sticker, most notably Geto Boys' self-titled album released in 1990.

The warning, which has been called the musical equivalent of an "alcohol content" label, has appeared to make some albums more desirable, resulting in the reverse effect to what was intended. The warning has achieved a degree of cult status, with comedian George Carlin titling an album Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics and numerous t-shirts,^[2] metal signs, and other paraphernalia bearing the logo. The RIAA, however, officially states, "It's not a PAL Notice that kids look for, it's the music. Independent research shows kids put limited weight on lyrics in deciding which music they like, caring more about rhythm and melody. The PAL Notice alone isn’t enough incentive."

The label is occasionally seen on other content not intended for young children, such as novels.^[3][4][5]

History

A precursor to the Parental Advisory logo, introduced in 1990.

Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). The first albums to be labeled for explicit lyrics included Prince's Purple Rain, Danzig's self-titled album, Soundgarden's Louder Than Love, Guns N Roses's Appetite for Destruction, and 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be and had the label in the form of a sticker on the cellophane wrap. The first hip hop album that received the label is Ice-T's debut album Rhyme Pays, released in 1987, whose lyrics were associated with gangsta rap, and popularized the genre.

The sticker was introduced in 1990 as a square with a dotted white line near the center of the sticker. The phrase "Explicit Lyrics" was marked on the top, and "Parental Advisory" on the bottom. The first album to bear the standard, non-removable sticker was Luke & the 2 Live Crew's 1990 album Banned in the USA. Since 1992, albums to which the label apply to have the label placed onto the album artwork. This incarnation of the logo was used until late 1993, when it was redesigned with a white box in a black rectangle instead of a white bar between black bars. In 1994, the fonts of "Parental" and "Advisory" were simplified, and "Explicit Lyrics" was replaced with "Explicit Content", although this design was not prevalent on most albums until 1996. In 2001, the fonts of "Parental Advisory" and "Explicit Content" were modified ("Explicit Lyrics" was later dropped from the labels after a few years of usage alongside "Explicit Content").

A lesser-used variation of the sticker says "Parental Guidance" rather than "Parental Advisory," as seen on some albums, including Fatboy Slim's Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Miyavi's Galyuu, U.K. copies of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and Britney Spears' Blackout, some copies of Metallica's Garage Inc.

Availability

Often times, an album will be released in two formats, an unedited version with the label, and an edited or amended version without the label, often called a "clean" version.^[6] American retailer Best Buy only carries uncensored albums in their physical stores, though customers can purchase the clean versions at its website for an additional fee, whereas in F.Y.E., a customer may purchase both explicit and clean albums in-store. (One notable exception is Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy, which carries a Parental Advisory on some online copies, though Best Buy tends to carry only the clean version.)

Walmart is known for only selling edited albums.^[7] If no edited version of the album is available, Walmart will ask the artist to make one; if the artist refuses to make an edited version, Walmart will not carry the album. However, the chain's policy on carrying explicit versions of music albums in its stores seems to vary by country, as albums with the Parental Advisory label are found in Canadian stores, for example. Some albums are available in edited formats only at the Walmart website but are not available in the stores because of controversy. The company requested the band Green Day to edit its albums American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown in 2004 and 2009, respectively, or the retail chain would refuse to sell those two albums. In both cases, Green Day refused.

In the United States, many retailers require that an individual be seventeen years of age to purchase Parental Advisory albums, while in some countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, persons of any age may purchase the albums.

The label is also seen in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Greece, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, South Africa, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, and Canada on albums of American origin. An album with the label is banned in some conservative countries (such as China and Saudi Arabia).

Inconsistencies

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The presence of a Parental Advisory label does not mean that an album is any more profane than one without. One such example is the death metal band Morbid Angel's 1993 album Covenant. While the band was signed with Giant Records, pressings of Covenant had the parental advisory sticker in the corner. However, when Giant Records went bankrupt, and Morbid Angel returned to their old independent label Earache Records, Future pressings of the album no longer contained the sticker.

Older albums often avoid being given a label even on their CD re-release, such as The Sex Pistols' 1977 LP Never Mind The Bollocks despite its title and repeated strong language in the lyrics. Sometimes when an artist releases their albums on a smaller, more obscure label, the releases can go without the sticker: Blink-182's first two albums, Cheshire Cat and Dude Ranch, initially released on smaller, independent label Cargo Music, evade the sticker today, despite the band's multi-platinum success.

Some albums do not have the label when released in the United States but bear them when sold in other countries despite being lyrically identical. An example is Avril Lavigne's Under My Skin, which did not bear the label in the United States but did in Canada because of the use of the word "shit" (which alone does not warrant the label's use in America).

Many albums with few or no instances of explicit content have a Parental Advisory sticker, including:

One particularly strange occurrence of the Parental Advisory label is Jay-Z: Unplugged. While the studio recordings of most of the songs on Unplugged feature profanity, Jay-Z used different wording during the performance to make it appropriate for the MTV Unplugged television broadcast. Despite the self-censorship, a Parental Advisory label was still printed on the cover.

Inversely, albums with multiple uses of explicit language may not have a Parental Advisory, such as:

Some albums were initially released without a label, despite extremely explicit lyrical content, then re-released with one, notably:

The former already had an edited version released in Walmart stores removing one of the heavily sexual tracks, and was then released in explicit (with the label) and clean versions in all stores. The re-releases of All for You and J.Lo added a new remix of the single from the album that was currently being promoted at the time. Both of the remixes were of explicit songs, so the remixes made the albums even more explicit, explaining why the label was added. The latter album, was released normally, with no label or edited version. About a month after its initial release, it was released with a label alongside an edited version.

Many major-label artists' records evade Parental Advisory and do not carry the sticker, such as some albums from:

Most albums released on Sony Music's record labels (Arista Records, Columbia Records, Jive Records, LaFace Records, J Records, Epic Records, Daylight Records, Work Records, among others) that contain a Parental Advisory sticker provide additional explanations of why the disc warrants the sticker and sometimes note that there is a clean version of said album available. On System of a Down's Hypnotize, for instance, under the label it reads "Strong Language, Sexual + Violent Content," and on the North American versions of Pink's albums Funhouse and I'm Not Dead and Hurricane Chris's debut album under the label it reads "Strong Language". Also, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief has a warning of the strong offensive language inside the album booklet, next to the listed lyrics.

In some cases, clean stickers may be given to albums with no profanity, such as the case with Blur's self-titled album, which was given a clean sticker because it had three tracks within "Essex Dogs": "Dancehall," the former song, and "Interlude." (The album does contain the word "piss", on all copies, however.) Strangely, Aaron Carter's self-titled debut album bears an explicit sticker on iTunes, although Carter never used profanities in his songs, making the label especially odd given his age and image. In 2006, Relient K used a "clean" sticker on its single "Must Have Done Something Right," although the band is known for not using any profanities. In 2007, rock group Garbage's best of collection was released worldwide through Warner Music Group, with all editions carrying a parental advisory label. A clean version of the album was released on iTunes, yet the single instance of profanity found throughout the album (on the track "Why Do You Love Me") remained uncensored.

A few albums have a note saying that the lyrics are of an adult nature but without the sticker: Bruce Springsteen's Devils & Dust, James Blunt's Back to Bedlam, Vanessa Amorosi's Somewhere in the Real World, Motion City Soundtrack's Even If it Kills Me, and Guns N' Roses' "The Spaghetti Incident?" (although some pressings of the latter did use the Parental Advisory sticker).

There have been some cases of unusual use of the label. After Frank Zappa campaigned against music censorship in 1985, the sticker appeared on his album Jazz from Hell because of the title of one track, "G-Spot Tornado," although the album is entirely instrumental. The designation of instrumentals as taboo, however, is nothing new; in the 1950s, the "Rumble" instrumental by Link Wray was banned from some radio stations because it could supposedly incite juvenile violence.^{[citation needed]}

Other recordings

The following recordings do not necessarily contain the label in the United States but may elsewhere:

• For Your Entertainment by Adam Lambert, due to the track "Fever", which contains homosexuality, and the taboo content found on the title track.
• Anywhere but Home by Evanescence - Given a sticker in some countries due to the Korn cover track Thoughtless, which contains the lyric "fuck".
• Master of Puppets by Metallica - Early pressings parody the "explicit lyrics" warnings of the time by warning that only one song (Damage, Inc.) would use profanity. Current copies do not carry any warning at all.
• "The Spaghetti Incident?" by Guns N Roses - Some copies contain a warning sticker warning of the content before concluding with "so don't say we didn't warn you!" with the signature "GN'FN'R". This sticker has since been dropped from CD issues.
• Use Your Illusion I & Use Your Illusion II by Guns N Roses - The CD case carried a sticker displaying "This album contains language which some listeners may find objectionable. They can F?!* off and buy something from the New Age section." These have since been dropped from CD issues, and they never appeared on any other format (cassette versions feature the original Parental Advisory logo).
• Ain't It Fun by Guns N' Roses featured a text non-sticker version on the cassette version reading "Contains Explicit Language".
• Familiar to Millions by Oasis also features a text non-sticker version on the back cover (of all versions), but is longer and different than the one mentioned for Ain't It Fun.
• Purple Rain by Prince: The song "Darling Nikki" served as the catalyst for the PMRC hearings that lead to the Parental Advisory logo.

See also

• Censorship in the United States
• Motion picture rating system
• Radio edit

References