Censorship of Music

Today I would like to talk about censorship in music. This history of censorship dates back to ancient civilization. In the 5th century B.C.E., the Romans viewed enforcing censorship as an honorable task. Currently, music censorship is probably the most controversial censorship topic in the United States. There are many people that argue for censorship saying that young kids should not exposed to songs about violence, gangs, drugs, and alcohol. These pro-censorship individuals argue that children imitate what musicians sing about. These people blame artists for violence among children, underage drinking, and drug abuse amongst kids.

Any argument that a person can make for total censorship is complete bogus. Musicians should be allowed to write lyrics about anything they want. I agree that there should be restrictions on what can be seen or heard on television or radio, but only to a certain extent. On standard AM/FM radio stations, there should be censorship of certain inappropriate words, but on satellite radio, there should be no censorship at all. The same goes for television. On standard music stations, like MTV, VH1, etc, there should be censorship on the songs and videos, but on certain music channels, like the music stations that Comcast Digital Cable offers, there should definitely not be any type of censorship. The F.C.C. should regulate what is censored and what is not regarding this particular issue. Nowadays, with the V-chip technology, parents can block anything that they do not want their children to view. The V-chip allows parents to block certain stations or shows based on the television content ratings. It is the parents’ responsibility to know what their children are listening to.

There is no true need for censorship anywhere, although I still think basic stations on both television and radio should be censored. With that being said however, parents are responsible with what their children listen and watch. If adults find the lyrics in songs offensive, or they believe a certain music video is offensive, than they have the choice to simply not listen to the song or not watch the video. I agree with the fact that children should not be exposed to certain songs or music videos, but this is not the job of the artists, the radio stations or the television stations to censor their music. It is the job of the parents to prevent their children from listening to offensive music.

Complete censorship would take away the musicians’ ability to express themselves. It is widespread knowledge that drugs and alcohol are closely related with musicians all across America. Artists get inspiration to write their songs from their very own lives. If a rapper smokes marijuana every day, of course he is going to write songs about smoking weed. The same is true for a musician who may have an alcohol problem. A lot of songs are written on personal experiences and firsthand accounts; taking an artist’s ability to write songs about his own life away from him is absolutely ridiculous. A musician’s main job is to entertain his listeners. Many people like to listen to songs about drugs and violence; censoring goes both ways.
If you censor all parts of the media, then you take away individuals’ rights to listen to songs that they might enjoy.

Overall, I feel that there should be censorship, but to a degree. There should not be a ton of censorship at all because censorship does hurt an artist’s audience as they cannot hear the musician express his true lyrics. If there is not censorship, either online, on television, or on the radio, it is solely the parents’ responsibility to make sure that their children do not listen to offensive material if the parents do not want to expose their children to such music. Regardless if parents disagree that something should be censored when it’s not, parents have the ability to restrict what their kids watch and listen to. If adults do not want to listen to music about offensive material, than they simply do not have to listen. Artists should be able to record music with whatever lyrics they want. Whatever happens after that is not the artists’ responsibility. As Jay-Z says in his song “99Problems”, “If you don’t like my lyrics, you can press fast-forward.”