Everything written by Stephen Foster has been bowdlerized.
And that great old WWII song “Bless 'em All” has been heavily bowdlerized. It is a lot more fun to sing in the original version.
The local iHeart Media pop station in my area censors a line in Rihanna’s “S&M” from
Sex in the air, I love the smell of it
to
<silence> in the air, I love the smell of it
which makes the song sound much dirtier than it already is.
Baby Shark. Apparently the original song as sung by kids at camp was filled with people getting their body parts chewed off by the sharks.
If self-bowdlerization counts, then “Forget You”/“Fuck You”/“FU” by CeeLo Green.
Battle of New Orleans was first released by its composer, Jimmy Driftwood. In spite of dicey lyrics, Johnny Horton was out within a week with a sanitized POS that axed “hell”, rewrote other words, and deleted more than half the stanzas, instead repeating one over again. Listen to the embarassing Horton version with a brown paper bag over your head.
The Radiohead song Creep had the line “You’re so fucking special” replaced by “You’re so very special” for the single version.
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According to legend the manager of British Punk Band The Sex Pistols - that’ll be Malcolm McLaren - ordered them to write a song called Submission. McLaren intending it to be in gerneral terms controversial but in commerical terms possibly benefical for sales from his clothing shop SEX which specialised in bondage wear. However the band resented being ordered about and wrote the song about a “submarine mission” bowdlerising the whole concept.
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An example of a bowdlerised performance. In 1989 Marc Almond (formerly of Soft Cell) did a duet of “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” with Gene Pitney. Almond - not only gay but his previous musical history vaguely referenced deviant sex - notes that he was absolutely ORDERED not to look at Pitney when making the promotional video less audiences get the wrong idea and be shocked by two men singing a love song. Almond says it turned out to be his most controversial song - This from a man who recorded a song called Sex Dwarf.
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Louis Prima’s popular recorded version of Sheik of Araby changed the background vocals from their stage act. On stage they sing “With no pants on” and “Naked as a jaybird” instead of the recorded “With no turban on” and “Jumpin’ as a jaybird”.
There’s a version of Van Morrison’s Brown-Eyed Girl that changes the relatively tame and innocuous “Making love in the green grass/behind the stadium”, by clipping a line from a prior verse and turning it into “Laughing and a-running/behind the stadium”
Sirius XM uses the bowdlerized version. Jeez louise, I’m subscribing, I’m a grown up; I can handle the concept of making love in the green grass.
Sirius XM is the worst for this. They changed Britney Spear’s “Work Bitch” into “Work Work”
But the most eyebrow raising line I heard was in Wheatus’ Teenage Dirtbag.
Changing the line
“Her boyfriend’s a dick, he brings a gun to school”
into
"Her boyfriend’s a dick, he brings a ___ to school
Or the radio edit of Fergie’s “Glamorous” which changes the lyric from “If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home” to “take your broke broke home.”