In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center launched a
full-scale assault on popular music.
They selected what they deemed the fifteen most offensive songs they
could find as examples of why the music industry needed to be closely monitored
and censored. Thankfully, Frank Zappa,
Dee Snider and John Denver staved that off.
This is a track-by-track breakdown of the songs the PRMC picked as the
so-called “filthy fifteen.”
The song.
“She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper.
To be fair, the song is blatantly and unabashedly about self pleasure. What seems less than fair is that it happens
to be about female pleasure (that will prove to have been a recurring theme to
the PRMC). There were already myriad
songs about this topic out there, they just happened to come from a male
perspective – from Chuck Berry to Simon and Garfunkel and many, many others. And many of those songs had some incredibly
suggestive lyrics. The diciest line in “She
Bop” lands as a tie between “I wanna go south and get some more” and “they say
I better stop or I’ll go blind.” Again,
the topic of discussion is clear.
However, the language used to describe it is tamer than that of “Wooly Bully” or anything put out by popular rock bands like Kiss, well, ever. Of note, their hit “Lick It Up” from the
previous year failed to gain the PRMC’s attention.
What they should have chosen.
If we’re talking about 80s pop heroes who wrote songs about
sexual topics (not counting Prince or Madonna – they’ll each get their own
entry), then we have to discuss the man who came to imbue blue collar ‘Merica
more than any other, excepting maybe The Boss.
The PRMC should have turned their focus to John Cougar. Yes, THAT John Cougar. (Is there another?) His 1980 release of Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did gave him a proper hit and set
the stage for his next behemoth American
Fool. It also contained the track “Tonight”
with a line so raw in a pop tune that you can’t help but be caught off guard
the first time you hear it. My dad
always skipped this one when the cassette played in the car and now I see
why. That single line foreshadowed the
dirty-old-man tendencies JCM would put on full display with his later work in
the 90s and 00s. Seriously, if you've never heard the song, listen to it while looking at the album cover and fight back the bile.
What has come since.
Thankfully, “She Bop” opened a new door for expression of female
sexuality in pop music. There have been
many artists who built their entire catalogue around this concept. In my mind though, there has been one song that
took this track’s less-than-subtle innuendo and put on full display for the
world to see. Whatever envelopes Britney
and Pink and Gaga may have pushed, they owe a deep debt to Cyndi Lauper. And to Divinyls’ 1990 hit, “I Touch Myself,”
with its thematic concept being laid bare in the title. The single didn’t chart
as highly as “She Bop,” but it much more overtly restated that previous sentiment
of female expression.
