Comments on: Sing a bleep bleep

By: Missy Sexy

Missy Sexy — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:56:51 +0000

Why doesnt any radio stations bleep out the word “Bitch”?

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 23:03:55 +0000

Every time i hear it on the radio, the phrase “f—- your God” always seems to slip past the censors on A Perfect Circle’s “judith”. Also the phrase “who the f—- are you?” in The Who’s “Who are you?” I find it amusing that they overlook the big bad “f” word so often and still bleep the word “indo” out of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice”.

By: Britt

Britt — Fri, 26 Dec 2003 06:28:27 +0000

I don’t think that curse words in music is a bad thing at all. Mostly everyone (if not stupid) can figure out what they say even if they bleep it out, so it really is pointless. When I buy CD’s, I buy the unedited ones because the edited versions are ignorant. I think older people are just trying to find a reason to complain about today’s youth and they want to be in control of them. I think many parents have control issues that they need to address.

By: dop

dop — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 15:02:00 +0000

The Australian I live with is constantly amazed at the hacked-up, remixed quality of a lot of my old 80’s pop. He just rolls with laughter over the degree of censorship found there—who knew we were living in the “free world”, eh?

By: chujoe

chujoe — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 14:33:05 +0000

Back in the 80s sometime my girlfriend & I were on a bus in Morocco. All the long-haul buses had sound systems & usually the drivers played Arabic pop featuring a lot of high female voices. We were doubled over in our seats laughing, though, when the driver put a Donna Summer tape in the machine & we heard what was then a series of very suggestive songs. As far as we could tell, nobody else on the bus spoke English.

By: epist

epist — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 09:43:30 +0000

If you ask me, the real discriminatory practice is found in th edifferent treatment of rap and non-rap. Rap music, or anything associated with rap music (and that means all black urban music) gets much closer scrutiny than Rawk, college pop or metal. Johnny Cash can sing about shooting a man (in Reno) ‘just to watch him die’ in 1965, Eric Clapton can confess to shooting the sherrif (but not the deputy) in 1974 and the Who can demand to know who the fuck you are (at the top of their lungs, no less) in 1976, but Naz gets bleeped trying to say ‘nigger’ in 2003. Nigga please. As a Canuck, the double standard was especially painful, since the Tragically Hip could barely get through a sound check without profanity. Although perhaps Downies’s mouthfull-of-marbles delivery might be partly responsible. Still, all their swear words were faithfully played (and played, and played) on Canadian radio and TV. . .

By: laura

laura — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:05:11 +0000

Like Doug, I remember hearing “Semi-Charmed Life” with the going down left in and the crystal meth bleeped out. That Shaggy song where the guy’s girlfriend catches him cheating did have a bleep. Or, I think the original had her catching them “banging on the bathroom floor” but a lot of stations played a version that said something like “love on the bathroom floor.” But it does seem to be up to the radio station a lot of the time. In that Shaggy song different stations played different versions; that’s been even more true with Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow’s “Picture.” At the beginning he says he’s been “fueled up on cocaine and whiskey,” but there’s a cut where he’s just “fueled up on whiskey” and one where that line is missing altogether.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 04:43:00 +0000

Two stories: I lived in Russia for a few years and would quite often be startled in stores or cafes where very vulgar music in english would be playing- few people knew english and even fewer listened, so no one cared. Also, on ESPN several years ago, during the Arizona Fall basball league games, they had the “pitching coach” mike, so we could all find out what the pitching coaches say to the pitchers when they talk w/ them. It turned out to be something along the lines of “You little pussy! Throw the fucking ball over the fucking plate!” It lasted only one inning, obviously.

By: B

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 00:58:49 +0000

The one that always gets me, and yes it is from another age, but I can’t STAND the edited version of Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. It’s even on his greatest hits CD. An obviously out of place overdub replaces “makin’ love in the green grass” with “laughing and a-running”. Makes my blood boil every time I hear that version.

By: Rv. Agnos

Rv. Agnos — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:28:31 +0000

Steve Miller Band, “Jet Airliner” gets played on classic rock stations all of the time. I have NEVER heard them bleep out “shit.” The lyric is: “And I’m goin’ with some hesitation You know that I can surely see That I don’t want to get caught up in any of that Funky shit goin’ down in the city.” I take a double take every time I hear it.

By: rosalind

rosalind — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:40:23 +0000

Heh. Maybe they’ll follow the “Purple Pills” model if OutKast ever wants to release “Spread,” second-best song on The Love Below, as a single for radio play. It could be about spreading jam or something…

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:26:43 +0000

Josh- re: “Regulate”: Do you remember when Eminem and D/12 released “Purple Pills” as a single? Every line of the song is about drug use, so they basically had to write an entirely different song, called “Purple Hills”, to get it on the radio. I didn’t even realize it until I heard the original song in Germany. I wonder why they thought it was worth the bother.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:23:28 +0000

“Does anyone else remember “Unbelievable” by EMF, and think that there’s definitely a sample of someone saying “What the fuck?” in the chorus?” You’re right. The sample is from Andrew Dice Clay, and that’s exactly what he’s saying. I’ve never heard it bleeped. My favorite bleeping story was from the Superbowl a few years ago. The broadcasters put helmet mikes on the players and broadcast them live. At the very beginning of the game, one of the players running out of the tunnel was loudly chanting, “FUCK THOSE FUCKERS, FUCK THOSE FUCKERS”, and they didn’t cut it. It was great.

By: shanti

shanti — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:22:28 +0000

Thanks, drapetomaniac, for reminding us about Sarah Jones, whose name had escaped me for months. I did a little google search and found a nice article on her song as well as larger gender/censorship issues on the radio from Bitch Magazine, which covers “Feminist Response to Pop Culture.”

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:21:01 +0000

George: The elephant noise isn’t the work of the censors; it’s in the (unedited) album version of “Work It”, too. Another example of “God” being a hot-button word: Eminem’s “My name is…”. The unedited version says “God sent me to piss the world off”, but the radio edit changes it to “Dre sent me to take the world on”. And speaking of “Regulate”, I was in France right after that song came out, and hearing it on French radio was quite the revelation. I hadn’t been aware of just how different the edited version was…