Should the music industry do more to improve the moral content in song lyrics? The answer, to me, should simply be NO.
I don't believe that any one definition can encompass what "art" is, but music is art, and art should not be regulated or contained in the tight little space in which the moral majority chooses to cram their beliefs. Pressure has been put on the music industry for a long time now to "clean up" the lyrical content of songs, and I feel like the industry has compromised. Not only have they put warnings on music that has been deemed explicit, they release edited versions for people who may find specific content offensive so they can still enjoy the music.
So what is the problem? Why can't the compromises made be enough? Apparently the savages can only be appeased for a short period of time before their hunger to be absolute overwhelms them once again. They fail to recognize that although certain lyrics and other forms of art may be offensive to them, it is beautiful to others. Just because it's right or wrong for you, doesn't make it right or wrong for someone else. Forcing people to believe what you believe is terribly wrong, and too much of that goes on in the world today, and it never ends well. Why don't you call Iraq or use your Ouija board to summon Hitler and ask them how well that works out.
I don't care what people who hate curse words, sex, and anything that doesn't sound like Billy Joel say, the content of music has never, and will never, be the cause of the downfall of society. Marilyn Manson is not the true Anti Christ, he just writes music.
So did Beethoven.
Can you imagine what would happen if the music industry was forced to clean up the content of all the lyrics? What would happen next? It would wake up all the uptight, anal people in the entire United States. It would be war on individualism! The next thing you know we would be forced into local churches at gun point concentration camp style.
The morality police stand in front of Congress and plead their cases by quoting the angry, violent, sexual, and grotesque words of an artist who writes how they feel and releases it to the world to decide whether they enjoy it or hate it. Whether it makes sense to you or not, every lyric and every beat you have ever heard comes from the heart of an artist. Whether it is about love, love lost, anger, murder, sex, drugs, all the way down to necrophilia it was a feeling by an artist. And as hard as the extreme right would like to try to force their beliefs down the throat of Americans, they will ultimately be the ones choking on the first amendment.
And, of course, if you don't like it, DON"T LISTEN!