PARENTAL ADVISORY

'Parental Advisory' is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to audio and video recordings in the United States containing offensive language and/or content. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center. In 1990, the PMRC worked with the RIAA to standardize the label, creating the now-familiar black and white design. To some, it has become known as the "'Tipper sticker'" because of Tipper Gore's visible role in the PMRC.
Some politicians have tried to criminalize the sale of explicit records to minors, and others have gone so far as to try to ban such records. Certain retailers refuse to sell albums containing the label, and many others limit the sale of such albums to adults only, although, most stores have settled on an age limit of 17 in order to buy an album containing the label. While the label is most prevalent on heavy metal, punk and, especially, hip-hop/rap albums, it can appear on any genre of CD which the RIAA believes warrants the need for one.
Although many retailers use the sticker as a criterion for censorship, whether or not to use the sticker is determined by the record company that publishes the album.^[1] Many albums with just one or few instances of strong profanity have a "parental advisory" sticker (examples include +44's ''When Your Heart Stops Beating'', Queens of the Stone Age's Lullabies to Paralyze, My Chemical Romance's ''Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge'', M.I.A.'s ''Arular'' and ''Kala'', Gwen Stefani's ''The Sweet Escape'', TLC's ''FanMail'', Lily Allen's ''Alright, Still'', the Gorillaz' ''self titled album'', Nellie McKay's ''Get Away from Me'', Angels & Airwaves's ''We Don't Need To Whisper'', Bloc Party's ''Silent Alarm'', Papa Roach's Lovehatetragedy Janet Jackson's ''All for You'', and Janet Jackson's ''Damita Jo'' (among others), although albums with multiple uses of explicit language may not. It is not a rating. There are no true standards for a parental advisory label. It is totally up to the record company whether an album needs one or not. Just because an album has a parental advisory label, doesn't mean that it is any more explicit than an album that does not have that label. For instance, the punk rock group NOFX has largely avoided the Parental Advisory sticker (though their albums contain many profanities) because they are published on the independent label, Fat Wreck Chords. Other independent artists avoid the label such as Modest Mouse as well as Negativland, and their album Escape From Noise was released on SST Records and Seeland Records, both of them independent labels. But some major label artists' CDs evade Parental Advisory, such as Panic! At The Disco's ''A Fever You Can't Sweat Out'', Cobra Starship's ''While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets'', Avril Lavigne's ''The Best Damn Thing'', most Deftones albums except Saturday Night Wrist (which has a PA), Incubus' ''A Crow Left Of The Murder...'' and ''Make Yourself'', all of Green Day's albums except for ''American Idiot'' (which has a PA), Sum 41's Underclass Hero, Atreyu's albums except for ''Lead Sails Paper Anchor'', which has a PA, and Maroon 5's ''Songs About Jane'' and ''It Won't Be Soon Before Long''.
The same can be said for Danzig's self-titled album, the Gorillaz' ''G-Sides'' (which only contains some drug and violence references in one song), Sum 41's Does This Look Infected? (which only has mild and infrequent profanity), Savatage's ''Fight for the Rock'' and Slayer's ''Seasons in the Abyss''.
Albums released on Sony BMG's record labels (Arista Records, Columbia Records, Jive Records, J Records, among others) that contain the PA sticker provide additional explanations of why the disc warrants the sticker. On System of a Down's ''Hypnotize'', for instance, under the label it reads "STRONG LANGUAGE, SEXUAL + VIOLENT CONTENT". Radiohead's ''Hail to the Thief'' has a warning of the strong offensive language on inside the CD booklet, next to the listed lyrics.
Many albums with the label have clean versions available, especially on online music stores such as iTunes or Napster.
A few albums have a note saying that the lyrics are of an adult nature, but without the sticker: ''Back to Bedlam'' by James Blunt, Jimmy Buffett's ''Live in Hawaii'', Guns N' Roses's ''"The Spaghetti Incident?"'', Savatage's ''Gutter Ballet'' and Overseer's ''Wreckage''. However, Back To Bedlam only contains one use of explicit language.
There have been some cases of unusual use of the label. After Frank Zappa campaigned against music censorship in 1985, the sticker was attached to his next album, ''Jazz from Hell'', because of the title of one track, "G-Spot Tornado", although the album is entirely instrumental and contains no lyrics that could ''be'' "explicit lyrics". The designation of instrumentals as taboo, however, is nothing new; in the 1960s, the "Rumble" instrumental by Link Wray was banned from some radio stations because it could supposedly incite "juvenile violence."
There has been the observation that the stickers appear to have had the reverse effect to what was intended - the sticker can make an album more desirable (to teenagers, for example), and the sticker has been called the musical equivalent of an "alcohol content" label. The RIAA, however, officially states that "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."^[1]
The label is also seen in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, South Africa, Japan , Australia and, Canada on albums of American origin. An album with the label is automatically banned in some conservative countries, for example Saudi Arabia. At Wal-Mart stores, only a "clean" version of the album is allowed.
As well as that, some labels put the label on a CD, but it is placed only on the packaging, and not on the actual CD. This allows the label to be easily removed, and be confused with an album that features no explicit content. Also, sometimes the label is placed on the CD case itself and it can be easily removed as well.
The label was also formerly used as a bumper each hour during Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block.

Contents

See also

Footnotes

See also

★ Parental guidance

★ Radio edit

Footnotes

1. RIAA Parental Advisory
2. RIAA Parental Advisory