Curated category
Obscenity controversies in music
- Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley walked onto the stage of the International Hotel in Las Vegas on the 31st of July 1969, without a single word of introduction.
- Lady GagaStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on the 28th of March, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She would grow up to sell an estimated 124…
- EminemEminem walked onto the stage at the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001 alongside Elton John, a gay icon performing with a rapper whose lyrics had drawn protests from…
- Kanye WestKanye Omari West was born on the 8th of June 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia, and by the time he was done reshaping American music, he had become one of the most…
- Sex PistolsThe Sex Pistols formed in London in 1975, and within two and a half years they had altered the course of popular music. They never recorded a second studio…
- I Am the Walrus"I Am the Walrus" arrived in 1967 with a specific and mischievous mission: to break the minds of people who were trying too hard to understand the Beatles.
- Gangsta rapGangsta rap began its life under a different name: reality rap. That original label tells you something honest about what the genre's founders believed they…
- Jim MorrisonJim Morrison was found dead in a Paris bathtub on the morning of Saturday, the 3rd of July, 1971. He was 27 years old. No doctor had been called.
- The DoorsThe Doors formed on a beach in Santa Monica in July 1965 when Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek ran into each other in front of Manzarek's house on Fraser Avenue.
- Straight Outta ComptonStraight Outta Compton, the debut album by N.W.A, was released on the 25th of January 1989, into a music landscape that had never heard anything quite like…
- Fuck tha Police"Fuck tha Police" arrived on N.W.A's 1988 debut album Straight Outta Compton as a protest against police brutality and racial profiling.
- Don't Trust Me"Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3 arrived on the 1st of June 2008, as a lead single from the Colorado duo's second album, Want. Nobody predicted it would take more…
- The Marshall Mathers LPThe Marshall Mathers LP arrived on the 23rd of May 2000, and within a single week it had sold 1.76 million copies in the United States alone.
- Yesterday and TodayYesterday and Today, the Beatles' ninth album on Capitol Records, arrived in America in June 1966 carrying one of the most controversial covers in pop music…
- Mozart and scatologyOn the 5th of November 1777, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a letter to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart from Mannheim.