‘I was called an enemy of the people’: how the US Senate went to war with the biggest rock stars of the 1980s

Bringin’ on the heartbreak … Senator Paula Hawkins holds up the cover of Def Leppard’s album Pyromania at a PMRC hearing. Photograph: James Colburn/Globe Photos/ZUMA/Alamy

Prince’s Purple Rain album had been bought by 11 million Americans by May 1985. One of them was 11-year-old Karenna Gore. Back home, Karenna’s mother was shocked to hear Prince sing, on the album’s fifth track Darling Nikki: “I knew a girl named Nikki / I guess you could say she was a sex fiend / I met her in a hotel lobby/ masturbating with a magazine.”

“I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Karenna’s mother, Tipper Gore. “The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned – then I got mad!”