Jun 05, 2001

Mita Ban
No to Janet's explicit lyrics

Like her previous album, Janet Jackson's newest, All For You, has also been banned here, but her label is not giving up yet

By Samuel Lee

IT IS official: Janet Jackson's latest album, All For You, is banned.

A spokesman for the Films and Publications Department of the Ministry of Information and The Arts (Mita) said yesterday that minister Lee Yock Suan has decided to uphold the decision to ban it.

Jackson's label, EMI, had appealed to the minister in April to lift the ban after the department deemed the sexy ballad, Do You Mind, objectionable.

The 20-track album was released in the United States on April 23.

The spokesman said that the minister had accepted the advice of the Publications Appeal Committee that the sexually-explicit lyrics of the song was 'not acceptable to our society'.

Among other things, the song contains the suggestive line 'I just wanna touch you, tease you, lick you, please you, love you, make love to you'.

Chaired by Professor Eddie Kuo, Dean of the School of Communication Studies at the Nanyang Technological University, the committee comprises 15 members from the academic and professional fields.

It advises the minister on appeals lodged under the Undesirable Publications Act.

Jackson's last album, The Velvet Rope (1997), was also banned here because three of its 20 tracks dealt with homosexuality and battery.

An EMI spokesman said yesterday that the company was informed of the outcome of the appeal on May 25.

The company is still trying to persuade Jackson's management to agree to delete the track from the album so that a cleaned-up version can be sold here.

To date, her management has not agreed. 'But we're still trying,' the spokesman added.

Apart from Singapore, the only other country where All For You is banned is Saudi Arabia, she said.

However, the album can still be bought via parallel imports and tracks from the album can also be downloaded from the Internet.

Other recent titles which have got into trouble with the authorities lately include late rapper Tupac Shakur's The Rose That Grew From The Concrete, which is banned for its explicit lyrics.

Last year, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, was detained by Mita. A cleaned-up version was released eventually.

Most recently, Limp Bizkit's latest release, Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water, was recalled by Mita last week for re-assessment, after selling 20,000 copies here since its worldwide release last year.

The Films and Publications Department spokesman added that some hip hop numbers in two albums - BTNHResurrection by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Skulls & Bones by Cypress Hill - were also disallowed due to excessive swear words, drug promotion and sexually explicit lyrics.

A 'clean' copy of the former sans the offensive tracks was released while the latter was never released here.

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