Music: Rock Is a Four-Letter Word

A Senate committee asks: Have the lyrics gone too far?

Tipper Gore can do something you can't. She can quote the loopy lyrics of a rather recherche song by W.A.S.P.: "I got pictures of naked ladies lying on my bed/ I whiff the smell of a sweet convulsion/ Thoughts are sweating inside my head/ . . . I start to howl in heat/ I . . ." and this next word presents a problem. How to handle propriety and make her point at the same time? Spelling is the answer. She pronounces each of the four letters, then finishes, ". . . like a beast."

Few people outside a core of...

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