Too Late For Labels

Streaming music is truly the Wild West for parents.

Thrity years ago this month, the U.S. Senate’s “porn rock” hearing sparked by the Parent Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore, sought to make record companies label music featuring adult material. And they won. Warning stickers cropped up on records and CDs saying “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics.”

Boy, how times have changed. Thanks to the digital streaming landscape, it’s unlikely parents can stop the flow of mature content flooding into their children’s ears. And kids can get to nearly everything without leaving a digital trace.

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For instance, last weekend, iHeartRadio streamed its annual Music Festival on Yahoo — an online event open to the public covering two days of live performances by some of today’s hottest artists.

During the first night, more than a dozen acts were featured, including country, rock, classic rock, reggae, pop, hip hop, alternative and rap stars. The live broadcast was streamed uncensored, although it wasn’t noticeable until about halfway through the night when Lil Wayne and his crew took the stage.

The conversation was crude — not only in the lyrics, but in the exchange between the rappers and the audience. There were not only a few N-word references and explicit descriptions of female genitalia but coarse back-and-forths between the talent and crowd.

Much of today’s music is laden with graphic, hypersexual content, and it’s not limited to the web.

This may be expected at an ordinary concert aimed at an adult audience, but not necessarily at a “radio” event where anyone can listen. This was a free online program, streamed via Yahoo over two days, and had no bounds of propriety — at least as far as explicit content was concerned.

There is virtue, of course, in the fact that the Internet knows no bounds. For parents, however, the fact that even Yahoo has no limitations is disturbing. This is hardly the tip of the iceberg. Much of today’s popular music is laden with graphic hypersexual content, and it’s not limited to the Web.

That’s because artists are getting clever. Case in point: Lil Wayne’s “Truffle Butter” is an extremely graphic reference to an intimate sexual act. Yet, it is one of the most recognizable hits on the radio, because it’s also a food reference — and therefore, not exactly profane.

This may be the most overexposed generation of kids in history.

Some parents have gone to great lengths to protect their children from profanity by enforcing strict filters. It would be admirable if it weren’t doomed to failure. Kids have an amazing knack for disseminating information — and music — among themselves. That’s not to say it’s not worth restricting Internet use when possible, particularly for certain ages. But the challenge of profanity and explicit content in pop culture is multiplied on the Wild West of the Internet. And this begs the question: What to do?

If there is a solution for protecting children after a certain age, it’s that parents should strive to know what their children are listening to — not because they can control it, but because only then can they have a frank conversation about it. The only way to ensure kids develop healthy attitudes about profane topics is to talk to them about how to interpret lyrics that promote negative or grossly sexual messages. Parents are wise to assert influence rather than control in this sense.

This may be the most overexposed generation of kids in history. But it doesn’t have to impact them negatively. It’s up to parents to steer them in a positive direction while letting go of the steering wheel in the process.