At the end of the discussion on Tuesday, we briefly brought up how they did not know whether or not record sales increased in metal with the parental advisory sticker in place and I wanted to shed some light on the idea of the role of authority figures trying to stop youth listening to a certain type of music.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two examples of parents and authority figures actually stimulating the popularity of music by trying to protest it. The first being Elvis in the mid to late 1950's. Rock and Roll as a whole was pretty new and parents felt pretty threatened by it. Among all of these ,new rock and rolls acts perhaps no one made parents feel as threatened (with the exception of Jerry Lee Lewis, who's actions were extremely inappropriate and ruined his career) as Elvis and hip swiveling dance moves during his performances that parents thought was very suggestive and not appropriate for their children to see. No matter what the parent did to try and stop him from catching on with their children (this includes Elvis' first performance on the Ed Sullivan show, where he is famously shot from only the waist up so his dancing is not seen on television) Elvis just kept getting more and more famous.
The second thing I can think of is when Billy Joel released "Only the Good Die Young." This song talked about the Catholic church, and not in the way the church likes being talked about. Because of this, the church banned the music. This only caused Joel's record sales to dramatically increase until he had one of the biggest albums/ singles in the country because every kid had to hear what the Catholic church was so angry about. No matter what the music, I think that parents trying to stop their kids from listening to a certain kind of music will only make them want to pursue that music more. Parents can also lead to making music more popular than it previously was by drawing attention to it. Then the idea of "any publicity is good publicity" starts coming into play, and in some ways, having parents dislike music only makes kids want it more. If the parental advisory stickers had no effect on album sales, Dee Snyder testifying in front of congress on television almost certainly did.
Mike, those are two really good examples, but do you think there are any modern artists that have benefited from "bad press?" I certainly think that numerous hip hop artists have benefited from the parental advisory sticker such as Eminem, who is known for some incredibly expletive and violent lyrical content. As you said, it creates an intrigue that consumers feel the need to discover what is so controversial about it. Good point.
ReplyDeleteI feel like these two people already had moderate fame before they introduced these controversial acts into American culture, especially with Billy Joel. Also it seems like one needs to walk a fine line when introducing something new into the mainstream, as Elvis swerving his hips, no matter how outrageous it was to parents and people in positions of power, it was relatively harmless overall. Billy Joel's song appeared solely for popularity and controversy, but his lyrics were not really that degrading to the Catholic Church so much as it was exposing the teenagers from the time. But with both of these artists, they had popularity among the American people prior to their actions. There's not that much public outcry from all of the death metal bands that have questionable names to begin with and their downright disgusting lyrics (I understand that I am generalizing rather harshly but still).
ReplyDeleteI definitely think there are some modern examples, especially rap from the late nineties and early 2000's.
ReplyDeletePersonally I also don't think that "Only the Good Die Young" was a very offensive song to Catholicism, but the Catholics did think so. He was popular, but he admits that without the catholic church, the album never would have reached the massive popularity it did. (http://performingsongwriter.com/only-good-die-young/)
And that's what I'm trying to say. Ultimately a very underground death metal band with followers maybe only in the couple thousands won't benefit from the outrage of parents or even attract attention from them because they aren't that famous. But sometimes a moderately popular act can be thrust into prominence by way of scandal. Marylin manson and Black Sabbath can certainly attribute at least some of their fame to the controversies surrounding them.
Of course there are some lines that cannot be crossed. Sometimes the controversy is too extreme and can ruin an artist's career. Like Sinead O'Connor ripping the picture of the Pope on television and Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 13 year old cousin.
I agree with Joseph. With Meek Mill's "Amen," a Philadelphia area pastor Rev. Jomo K. Johnson raised uproar on the explicit lyrics (More specifically using the word "Amen" in a typical rap song about ladies and fame); This didn't seem to affect the download numbers on his mixtape Dream Chasers 2, however, nor the views of his YouTube video. Most likely it's because the audience are already expecting this kind of material.
ReplyDeleteWhen it boils down to it, I think parents can have affect on certain types of music, but when it comes to subjects like heavy metal and rap, they won't have a chance of influencing the groups within these genres.