Filthy Fifteen

One thing I love is history. To me, history is the telling of stories. 1492 doesn’t matter as much as Columbus sailing the ocean blue. The exact year is generally unimportant and taught to kids because teachers are babysitters giving out busywork instead of actually teaching. For good or for bad, history must be somewhat subjective or it’s the story of just facts as proven, then excluding nuance of significance. Conjecture and logic must be added to understand or question motivations. Without this conjecture, history books would simply be timelines of events with no wisdom behind the facts and that means no learning.

In 1984, Tipper Gore, wife of then US Representative Al Gore, bought their daughter the Purple Rain album by Prince. Using fake righteous indignation, Tipper acted appalled at the music. Working with an initially small group, all pretending they are so disconnected from their own past that they don’t remember the things they tried to watch and listen to (The Beatles, The Who, and Rolling Stones to start), feigned outrage, later forming the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization that will tell you just how dirty a song was as a resource to help musicians sell more music.

Let’s first understand Tipper. She was private school educated through high school. He father was an entrepreneur owning a plumbing supply company. She met her husband, Al Gore at his senior prom and started dating him right away. After high school she received a BA from Boston University and an MS from Vanderbilt, both in psychology. After graduating and getting married to the then future US Vice-President, she got a part time job for a newspaper in Nashville as a photographer. So a bored rich woman married a rich guy (Al Gore’s father was Al Gore Sr, a US Senator from Tennessee and Junior followed in the old man’s footsteps). One could assume she was out of touch with society. Ask a high ranking elected official the price of a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk and see what answers they give you. Tipper was born Mary Elizabeth, but her mother nicknamed her Tipper after a children’s story and the name stuck. She did advocate to help end homelessness, which is a big plus. I personally always question the motivations of people doing charity that looks good and wonder if she worked at McDonald’s if she would have been equally as active. Was her charity organic in nature? In the end, it doesn’t matter because she still did some good things regardless of why. When people are being helped, who cares if the reasons are selfish or truly altruistic?

When she sat with the wives of other US Representatives and started complaining about “dirty songs,” was that altruism or an attempt to grow her husband’s influence. A friend of mine refers to herself as a “corporate wife.” Her husband works and takes care of bringing in money and her job is to raise the kids and care for the home, but also help her husband further his career. Sometimes that could mean having a small gathering at their home and knowing which of his coworkers to invite. Tipper played “political wife” very well, all the way to Second Lady.

To paraphrase my thoughts, Tipper was a psychology major and baby boomer. I’m sure she knew music had these lyrics in it all along. She is six years younger than my father and he knew that music had naughty lyrics and metaphors in it all along. I truly believe this was a trick to help her husband’s political career. With the exception of attending a private Lutheran high school, there is nothing to indicate her to be extremely religious as a censorship advocate typically is.

The Parents Music Resource Center (xc) was soon created to try and control the consumption of music. This is the organization that helped get parental advisory warnings on album covers and proved that if you tell Americans something is dirty, we will consume vast and increased quantities of it. God bless the USA!

The plan, as stated, ultimately backfired because artists were able to have a platform to protest and be seen as victims of censorship and they were. Anytime you force someone to alter their designs in an attempt at controlling actions of consumers, you are censoring them. So what happened? Millions of thirteen year old boys flocked to Coconut Records to buy any album with the black parental advisory label on it! It was a glorious victory for economics, capitalism, and for Americans of all ages to give a big collective middle finger to the man. Look at the richest musicians and music producers of all time. More than fifty percent have an album with the parental advisory. Some musicians that held back then saw it as a license to absolute lyrical freedom and it paid big dividends.

To further parley her earnings potential, she wrote a book titled Raising PG Kids In An X-Rated Society.More brilliant marketing! Now she was selling a book after she had talked to the news media worldwide and as the wife of a senator from a “flyover state,” she finally had a real audience.

For fun and because everyone is wondering, the following is the original Filthy Fifteen:

1: Prince: Darling Nikki (1984)

2: Sheena Easton: Sugar Walls (1984)

3: Judas Priest: Eat Me Alive (1984)

4: Vanity: Strap On Robbie Baby (1984)

5: Mötley Crüe: Bastard (1983)

6: AC/DC: Let Me Put My Love Into You (1980)

7: Twisted Sister: We’re Not Gonna Take It (1984)

8: Madonna: Dress You Up (1984)

9: WASP: Animal (F__k Like A Beast) (1984)

10: Def Leppard: High’n’Dry (1981)

11: Mercyful Fate: Into The Coven (1983)

12: Black Sabbath: Trashed (1983)

13: Mary Jane Girls: In My House (1985)

14: Venom: Possessed (1985)

15: Cyndi Lauper: She Bop (1983)

You know that little black square that showed up when you bought a CD back then and persists to MP3’s today even? That’s all thanx to Tipper, the best music marketer of all time. She single-handedly sparked more album sales than any promoter before or after. If you wanted to be sure to go platinum, you had to make sure it had that parental warning…because kids always show their parents the music they bought and sit down on Sunday’s to discuss if Jesus would want them listening to it.

I’ve been contemplating starting a podcast for sometime now and it’s more of a matter of when and what than if. I’m going to do it. When I start and format are the only real questions. When I do, I will make sure to have that little black square as part of the cover art, which is not required since they are labeled explicit or not when you upload them. I will also make sure to set everything as explicit even if it’s not and all of this is just for the marketing thanx to Tipper Gore.

I don’t believe anyone from the baby boomer generation (the generation that brought us Woodstock) could be that out of touch and disconnected from society, regardless of the vast amounts of wealth and living an insulated life from us common folk as she was. Either Tipper is a great marketing genius who came up with the single best music selling strategy of all time, or she was such an out of touch prude, Big Al never got a good Tipper topper in his life, which could explain why he seems like he always has a stick up his ass.

Since this piece has to do with marketing and business as well as a personal interest in history, it was co-posted in both TheMichaelBeebe.com and on The Spark Plug Strategies website. Please check either site for more and follow both on social media. Spark Plug Strategies is in the process of being rebuilt so there may not be a lot there for right now, especially if you go to the site near the publication of this blog piece. Spark Plug Strategies is the business name under which Michael does website design and other digital media work.

For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.