Rock has been making certain people uptight since it was born in the 1950s and every once in a while, something comes along to push them over the edge. In the mid-70s, there was a moral panic over something tagged “sex rock,” a term coined by Time magazine when it published a scathing review of Donna Summer’s very sexy disco song, Love to Love You Baby.
Time claimed that 15% of all songs on the radio were rife with explicit sexual references and that something had to be done to stop this corrupting influence on young people. This resulted in the creation of Operation PUSH, which stood for “People United to Save Humanity.” Boycotts against record labels who refused to make things less sexy.
PUSH eventually disappeared, but the moral panics involving popular music continues.
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