Warning: Parental Advisory - buy this!

Parental Advisory Labels are used in the music industry to warn customers that the music they might be considering may contain profanities, blasphemies, sexual references or other unspecified transgressions. They started to be introduced in the US in about 1985 as a form of demarketing, designed to discourage the young and vulnerable from purchasing the product.

John Denver was sceptical about the value of
Parental Advisories

There is some anecdotal evidence, though, that the PAL system actually encourages sales, and that many would-be buyers actively seek out CDs with the warning in place. This kind of behaviour is understood by psychologists who call it psychological reactance. It is also understood by parents, particularly those with teenaged children, who have learned that the easiest way to encourage their youngster to do something is to forbid it.

At about the time the PAL system was introduced a US Senate conducted a hearing into the issue of lyrics in popular music. The normally mild-mannered folk musician John Denver was called: some of his well known pieces like Rocky Moutain High had incorrectly been tagged as being drug-related. Denver surprised senators when he explained that the labelling system would probably be counter-productive:

“That which is denied becomes that which is most desired, and that which is hidden becomes that which is most interesting. Consequently, a great deal of time and energy is spent trying to get at what is being kept from you.” (US Senate 1985: 65-66)

In other words record labels could artificially and quickly boost the street credibility of their bands by ensuring that their recordings were given the Parental Advisory sticker.

Reference

US Senate (1985), Record labelling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Ninety-Ninth Congress, First session on contents of music and the lyrics of records, Washington: US Government Printing Office