6 - Ya Got Trouble: Censorship and Popular Music

Summary

Chapter 6 explores efforts to censor popular music, focusing on the “porn rock” hearings in 1985 before the Senate Commerce Committee. The hearings resulted from the efforts of an influential group of Washington wives, most prominently Tipper Gore, called the Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC. The hearings and related efforts were used to pressure the record industry into placing warning labels on record albums. The chapter examines related panics over rock ’n’ roll (including an FBI investigation of the song “Louie, Louie”) and rap music, as well as efforts to pass local laws regulating or banning such music. This culminated in the unsuccessful effort to prosecute the rap group 2 Live Crew for obscenity under Florida law. Ultimately, the censorship efforts failed, and the censors’ efforts only made the music they opposed more popular.