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Moral Panics Of Rock Music In The 1950's

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No other genre of music has caused as much moral panic as rock has since it became mainstream in the 1950’s. Rock music is known for entertaining performances, edgy lyrics, and catchy melodies. It’s a combination of genres like jazz, country, rhythm and blues, and folk. In the early years there was some adversity throughout the early years towards musicians who made it for example censorship on tv and having members of the older generation against the genre. It caused an uproar across america because the older generation, mainly parents, didn’t like their children dancing and listening to it. Parents didn’t like the performers or the sexual nature of the songs and it was nicknamed “the devils music” by its opposers. Rock music has had a long …show more content…

In the 50’s people were worried about race mixing. They worried that rock music would lead to young white and black kids hanging out and listening to music together. At the end of the 1950’s, with Elvis going to the military and Jerry Lee Lewis being blacklisted, the buzz around rock calmed down and parents were relieved “(Moral Panics)”. Rock music was heavily censored on tv in its early years. Many rock bands and solo artist performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in the 50’s and 60’s and the host Ed Sullivan and his producers made artist change their lyrics for the broadcasted performances. In 1964 The Rolling Stones were told to change the lyrics in their song “Lets Spend the Night Together” to “Lets Spend Some Time Together” because it offended Ed Sullivan. They agreed to change the lyric for the performance but were angered that they had to do so. Their anger was visible during the performance and after when they come on the stage wearing Nazi uniforms which got them banned from the show for over two years. Another time that a song was censored was when The Doors performed on the same show in 1967 and were told to change a lyric in their song “Light My Fire”. A producer told them that the lyric “Girl We Couldn’t Get Much Higher” was inappropriate for a family show because of its association for drug use and that they needed to change the lyric to “Girl We Couldn’t Get Much Better”. The band agreed to change the lyric but during the performance Jim Morrison sang the original lyric and the band was indefinitely banned from the show (“A Legendary Story of Rock and Roll Censorship on

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