Parental Advisory on Music

I don't know Britney Fox. Faster Pussycat, Slaughter, Extreme, and LA guns are 80s "hair" bands. Music is OK, I don't remember any fowl language but most sing about "relationships". Breaking Benjamin and Paramore are bands of Today. Paramore is a female singer.

Well I can tell you that the 80's band you listed are much cleaner than the music that most teens are listening to today. :-)

I don't know of a ratings site, but this is a GREAT site for checking out lyrics. I find EVERYTHING on there: www.leoslyrics.com. Good for you for looking into this. So many parents don't. :(

Ah, you are speaking my language...80's hair bands/heavy metal music! The only site I know of, thought I have never been a fan of it, is the one started by Tipper Gore in the 80's that is responsible for those warning stickers you see on CD's. It's called the PMRC-Parents Music Resource Center. As for the bands you mentioned above I can tell you that Extreme (the sappy song More Than Words) is about as clean as it can get as is Slaughter. In fact, I was the head of the local fan club chapter for Slaughter "back in the day." LOL.... L.A. Guns is not too bad honestly for a 12 yr old. Their lyrics are pretty tame. As for Paramore and Breaking Benjamin, those are current bands, NOT from the 80's. Those band members were babies and little kids in the 80's for the most part. He is probably listening to Motley Crue (my personal all time fave), Cinderella, Aerosmith (which I'm sure you know), Warrant, Sid Row, etc... Honestly, they are all fine! Back in the 80's and early 90's the music for the most part, with exception of rap, was pretty tame. Nothing like today's music at all!! If you want to email me with a list of bands I will be happy to help you. Just send me a private message and I'll return the message with my email addy. Good luck!

I know of no website, but you can type the name of a song or band into your search window, followed by the word "lyrics." Then you can read the words to any/every song the band plays. (That's probably easier than trying to understand the words by listening to the songs!)

I have a young teenager, too, and parenting her now is WAY harder than when she was 2. How come no one ever talks about the "terrible teens?" :) Hang in there!

Maybe you could download some songs and listen to them first. I am sure that some songs are better than others for kids. That is funny that he likes 80's music. I guess it is like listening to 50's music when I was a kid b/c that was my parent's music - oldies but goodies! Funny.

I don't know of a website (but I bet there's one out there). I actually listened to most of the groups you listed as a kid. My mom pretty much let us listen to anything, however, the music now days is MUCH different. I don't think there was much out then that was too bad. Isn't it great that your kid is interested in "oldies"...bet that makes you feel old, I know I do!

I just went to yahoo.com and typed "Slaughter lyrics" in the search engine and came up with 13 songs with the lyrics for them. Then you can go to youtube.com and type in the band and the song title (sometimes you can just type in the band and lots of their vids and songs show up... but if you can't find them that way, then find individual song titles.) Then you can watch them. Just be aware that the video is not always the band's video, it is sometimes a video made by the person who posted the song on youtube. It will usually tell you in the side bar notes. So you can't always blame the visuals on the band. Also, you occasionally get some goof who is singing the song they like from the band and it isn't the band performing at all.

I also constantly check lyrics as I am the coodinator for my 13 year old niece's ipod. I don't want to put anything on it that would make her parents crazy. That's how I do it!

VickiS

Why don't you just google the band and look at the lyrics? Sorry, don't have a website to tell you, but you could try that.

Go to pluggedinonline.com and click on music and they have bands in alphabetical order. It is also great to preview movies before you let your kids go see them. I love love this site.

R.,
I hear you. There is a great Rock station called 89.7 Power FM. It's local, but you can go to their website and listen, and see what bands they are playing. It tends to be somewhat hard rock. You could see if your son likes it and if he does, then you can go from there on downloading, buying music for him. I know it's kid friendly, it's Christian and my kids love it. kvrk.com.

I listened to all of them when I was a teenager. I don't know Paramore, but the rest have some o.k. songs and some not so good ones. I think none of these are considered kid friendly not because of bad words but content. You really just need to sit down and listen to the songs and make your own decision about each band. My fear in rating is that a cd could be rated good because there are not bad words, but could be about killing someone. Best of luck.

I have to laugh a little bit. As a kid I would sing along with all kinds of songs on the radio, having not much of a clue. I hear the same songs on the radio now when my kids are in the car, and they make me blush sometimes!

One thought: I think Walmart won't carry music with parental advisories. It won't help with the obscure stuff, but it may be a safer store to shop for music.

I can't help with the website rating but I am familiar (somewhat) with the band Breakin' Benjamin - good music but they do swear. They were an opening band for a concert my husband and I went to a few years ago. As adults the music was fine but I remember being surprised over the parents that allowed their young children there. I think Slaughter is the same style and language issue.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

Wow! I'm surprised you haven't heard of these bands. A couple of them were pretty popular for a while. Like someone else said, most are cleaner than a lot of songs today. Just sit and listen to the lyrics or look them up online. I'd, also, have a sit down with your son and talk to him about the type of music you don't approve of for someone his age and why because he is going to come across music that you aren't aware of and he should know what your expectations of him are.

I don't know of any "clean" rock bands. There are radio versions of songs.

We do have parties with DJ's often and the DJ's play the "clean" versions so we don't offend any parents.

As for the music...the kids are going to listen to what they like. We are very open minded and we talk about certain music, radio stations with our 14 yr old but we don't forbid anything. We know as she gets older there will be bigger things to worry about...hence...we pick our battles.

Good luck.