Parental Advisory: How Does One Define "Explicit"?

The type of media that I consume most regularly is music. I don’t have a lot of time for TV, and I find it difficult to sit still long enough to watch an entire movie. But with music, it’s not something that requires your full attention. Music usually accompanies some other activity (i.e. running, cleaning, doing homework, working out). These days, almost all music is available digitally, for either downloading or streaming. This website details the ways in which the millennial generation consumes music, with heavy emphasis on streaming. (Side note: this website also says that 68% of millennials think that music should be free. 68%! That baffles me, but whatever. Moving on.)

I’m a huge fan of streaming services, particularly Spotify. Because let’s face it, finding an album where you enjoy every single song is rare. I jam to “Sorry” by Justin Bieber every time it’s on the radio, but there’s no way in hell I’m buying that whole album. Well. Probably not. Okay maybe. Okay fine I got it for Christmas but I didn’t ask for it, okay? But that brings me to my next point: I collect CDs. Compact Disks. Music in the actual physical form. Shocking, I know. This weekend, I was cleaning my room and I decided to put on some background music. Cleaning my room is something that usually only happens like once or twice a year, and usually only when my parents threaten to kick me out if I don’t do it. So, as you can imagine, it’s quite the task. I can usually get through like three or four entire albums, but that includes snack breaks. And Tumblr breaks. And literally every other type of break that I can even slightly rationalize in my head. Anyway, my albums of choice this weekend were Delirium by Ellie Goulding, Future Hearts by All Time Low, and Around The World And Back by State Champs. As I was putting them into my stereo (I don’t know if anyone actually remembers what that is, it’s like this big thing with big speakers that you put CDs in. It has buttons and stuff). Anyway, I noticed that the only one that had a clear “explicit” label was the Ellie Goulding CD. I hadn’t really listened to it much yet, but I was paying closer attention to the lyrics, trying to decipher what exactly was “explicit” about it. I heard “no one fucks it up like us,” in one song, and “Bitches got to eat, got to get back to work” in another. I suppose the music didn’t have my full attention, but those are the only two possibly “explicit” lyrics I heard. Ellie Goulding isn’t singing about drugs or sex, at least not in such a forward way. If she is, I didn’t pick up on it. But I found it interesting because I’m very familiar with the other two albums, and Future Hearts has a few F bombs, too. Around The World And Back has far fewer, with only one that I can think of outright, and just one other swear word at all. But neither of those albums, the physical copies at least, had any explicit label displayed on them. I decided to check Spotify, and found out that they do it differently. Instead of labeling an entire album as “explicit,” the label the individual songs within the album. Same with iTunes.

So what made Ellie Goulding’s use of the word “fuck” explicit, but not Alex Gaskarth’s? Who decides that? This website lays out the “guidelines” of music rating, but notice how vague it is. “Strong language” or material that “could be considered offensive or unsuitable for children.” Looking at the labels, one would think that Ellie Goulding’s music was more explicit than All Time Low’s. If I were a parent, that would not have been the assumption that I made. So, as a hypothetically oblivious parent comparing the two, I may have bought the All Time Low album, thinking that it would be more appropriate for my child.

My last point to make is that movie rating is definitely more patrolled. It’s much more difficult for an eleven year old kid to get into an R rated movie than it is for them to download a Jay-Z album. It’s definitely not impossible, but there are at least some barriers that they would have to go through in order to see the movie. Music is available online (both legally and illegally) with absolutely zero barriers. I’ve never had to show I.D. for buying an album with an Explicit label. And an eleven year old is certainly capable of clicking the “I agree” button on a website pop-up that states “you must be 18 years or older to continue using this website.”

I guess the thing with music is that there are no specific guidelines. With movies, there is a specific rating system. There are guidelines as to what can be shown and what can be said within each specific rating. But with music, there are only two ratings, it’s either “explicit” or it’s not. And I think that everyone sort of had their own definition of “explicit.” It all depends on where you choose to draw the line. For some parents, a single swear word might be crossing that line. Some might consider sexually detailed language as the line. Some parents might literally not care at all. I was at work once and this like seven year old little girl was standing next to me, rapping Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle” word for word. And her mom was singing along.