Parental Advisory - History

History

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 can be imposed on any explicit content, such as swearing, nudity, drug references and crime.

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.