FILTHY FIFTEEN
The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 with the stated goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes via labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers. In 1985, the PMRC also released what they called the “Filthy Fifteen”, a list of the 15 songs they found most objectionable. (More from Wikipedia)
But before I get into all of that, let me share this appreciation for Prince that was posted by Nick Gillespie on reason.com as part of the best commentary on the PMRC that I have been able to find online. It is quite a bit more barbed than the mainstream accolades that you and I have been reading of late.
“No wonder he scared the living s--t out of ultra-squares such as Al [Gore] and Tipper Gore. In 1985, the future vice president and planet-saver and his wife were, as Tipper’s 1987 best-selling anti-rock, anti-Satanism, anti-sex manifesto put it, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Tipper headed up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose sacred document was a list of songs it called ‘The Filthy Fifteen’. These were songs that glorified sex, drugs, Satan, and masturbation and could pervert your kid — or even lead them to commit suicide. At number one on the list was Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’, from his massive soundtrack record to Purple Rain (jeezus, wasn’t that movie a revelation? Of what exactly, I can’t remember; but finally, it seemed, a rock star had truly delivered on the genius we all wanted to see emerge from pop music into film).”
* * *
The infamous Filthy Fifteen, along with the reasons for their inclusion on the list, follow. Not only is Prince listed first on the list, he was also the songwriter for #2, “Sugar Walls”; and Vanity, at #4, is a one-time Prince protegé.
2. Sheena Easton – “Sugar Walls” (sex)
3. Judas Priest – “Eat Me Alive” (sex)
* * *
I had intended to go down the list, one by one, since the point of this post is to examine the outrageous and often offensive lyrics that rock music has created over the years, beyond those that I have talked about previously in earlier posts. Frankly, the Filthy Fifteen is under-whelming in this regard and doesn’t deserve that much attention. Most of the rock artists on the list are well known enough, but I am not at all familiar with Mercyful Fate or Venom, the two “occult” offenders. Their music is pretty disgusting all right, and they likely have the PMRC to thank for one-half of their record sales.
Only a third of the songs on this list – “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, “She Bop”, “Sugar Walls”, “Dress You Up”, and “In My House” – were hits, and only the Twisted Sister number is really a signature song. Most of the Filthy Fifteen are deep album cuts that, even at the time, were likely unfamiliar to many of the fans of these bands and artists. For me, the Prince song “Darling Nikki” does not ring a bell; and the same goes for those by Def Leppard, Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and AC/DC. If this was intended as a resource to help out parents instead of just a publicity stunt, adding the album names would have saved everyone a lot of time.
The biggest surprise though is how unimaginative and pedestrian the Filthy Fifteen list is. The fact that 9 of the 15 songs on the list – and 4 of the 5 hits – are there due to “sex” raised my eyebrows at least. The number of double entendres about sex in rock music over the decades has to run into the hundreds by now – “rock and roll” itself was originally a slang term for making love – and that is pretty much all that is going on here. After all, these musicians are trying to write songs that might get played on the radio, and being truly explicit doesn’t work.
Only 2 songs on the Filthy Fifteen are listed for “drug and alcohol use”, and as far as I can tell, neither talks about drugs. The list is laden with heavy-metal bands as might be expected, but the best they could do with Black Sabbath – whose very name promises lurid occult references – is a song about getting drunk? Really?
Just one song on the Filthy Fifteen list, “Animal (F--k Like A Beast)” has a vulgar title, and W.A.S.P. had already made the decision to leave the controversial song off their debut album, W.A.S.P. The copy of the song that I have is on a 12-inch single; the cover features a circular saw blade emerging from a codpiece – the image is more cartoonish than offensive to me at least.
“Dress You Up” comes from the Madonna album Like a Virgin and is among the tamer songs in her canon; just for starters, the title song on that album, “Like a Virgin” is a lot steamier.
* * *
Rolling Stone magazine published an overview last year called “PMRC’s ‘Filthy 15’: Where Are They Now?”, where they give some of the lyrics. For the most part, they are no more offensive than the song titles. Here are some samples as taken from the Rolling Stone article, chosen almost at random: “Don’t you struggle / Don’t you fight / Let me put my love into you / Let me cut your cake with my knife" (from “Let Me Put My Love Into You”); “When it comes down to makin’ love / I’ll satisfy your every need / And every fantasy you think up” (from “In My House”); “Saturday, I feel right / I’ve been drinking all day . . . / I got my whiskey / I got my wine / I got my woman / And this time, the lights are going out” (from “High ’n Dry”).
* * *
Why “We’re Not Gonna Take It” showed up at all among the Filthy Fifteen is a real puzzler, but it brought out the ire of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who provided the most memorable testimony at the U. S. Senate hearing that he made even more effective by dressing up for the occasion. The other two musicians who testified were Frank Zappa – at least one of the F15 alumni praised him as running interference for the whole rock industry – and John Denver. This wide-ranging trio gives some indication as to how offended rock musicians were in turn about the whole offending-lyrics business.
* * *
The only song on the Filthy Fifteen that I think deserves special attention is Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop”; the song is on her major hit album, She’s So Unusual. It really is a clever take on masturbation that got past a lot of people – in fact, the music video of the song that featured a judge and a tunnel and all the rest of it provided a lot of clues that the song didn’t.
* * *
You want feelthy leerics? How about this number, “Please Please Me” by the Beatles? This is the “A” side of their third single and the first to make much noise in their home country; it is also the title song on their first album, Please Please Me. To me, this song is easier to figure out than most on the Filthy Fifteen, once you think about the lyrics even a little: The singer is asking his girlfriend to perform oral sex on him, since he is already performing oral sex on her.
(June 2016)
