The word “fuck” is usually blanked out from Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” when I hear it on (Canadian) radio. (“And are you thinking of me when you ____ her?”)
On the other hand, I think it’s usually left in when I hear the song “Who Are You?” by The Who.
The car dealer?!?
I worked in AM Top 40 radio when “Margaritaville” was on the charts. There was a shorter single version, but the original lyrics mentioned in the OP were not changed in any way.
I also played “Kodachrome” thousands of times and the single always had “crap” in it. There were some stations that bleeped it all on their own, but nowhere I ever worked.
As a station Program Director in the 1970s, one song I edited to get it on the air was “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates. Station management heard the word “bitch” and said no way. Well, it was the number-one song and we HAD to play it, but they were adamant. So, I took a razor blade to tape and repeated the line “You’re a rich girl” in place of “It’s a bitch girl.” I was really slick at tape editing and unless you were listening carefully you never would have noticed. The funny thing was that I lost track of my timing and accidently made the song 10 seconds longer.
I never owned albums as a young person. I only ever heard any of these songs when they were fresh over the AM or FM radio, mostly top-40 or AOR-type stations.
I instantly recognize the songs and lyrics the OP and others have mentioned. But I’ve only ever heard the “strong language” versions. I have no idea that toned down versions ever existed.
Now this was Los Angeles in the 70s & 80s, not Wichita during one of their periodic Bible Revivals. So the radio audience (and therefore radio management) may not have been as uptight as in other markets.
It’s certainly possible I’m mis-remembering; but I remember thinking at the time, ‘That’s not how it goes!’
Another one: ‘Games Without Frontiers’ by Peter Gabriel.
Original lyric:
Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle
Radio-friendly version:
Whistling tunes we’re kissing baboons in the jungle
Definitely a good change.
Might you have heard a “live” version? Jimmy Buffett was known for changing lyrics in concert over the years, and he recorded at least one “live” album.
Not actually changed for the radio, but the Louis Prima version of Sheik or Araby used the lines naked as a jaybird and with no pants on when in concert. But he couldn’t record it with those lines, so instead they used jumpin’ like a jaybird and with no turban on for the record.
Google gives exactly one hit for Nothin’ to show but this brand new sunburn and it’s this thread.
The all-time champ has to be Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” which got changed just to make it onto record let alone radio play. Here’s a great article on how it emerged.
I’ve never heard the edited version but legend has that Steely Dan’s song FM (No static at all) for AM radio stations, they took the sung “A…ja” -from the song Aja- dropped the “-ja” and spliced the “A” seamless over the “F” and it made a perfect fit.
A DJ on an oldies station in Indianapolis (when they played this song, before-- for some reason, they have started playing popular hits, like songs from the 10,000 Maniacs) once said that as originally written, this song was “Brown-skinned Girl,” but Van Morrison was told no one would play it, so he changed it to the song we know.
No idea whether this is a UL or not.
In “Locomotive Breath” by Jethro Tull the line “got him by the balls” was modified the same as “Jet Airliner” by substituting the lyric from the same point in another verse. In this case the word was taken from the line “in bed and having fun” so the censored line was “got him by the fun”. What the hell does that even mean?
“Shakin’” also has, buried in the lyrics, “Her tits was shakin’ till the middle of the night…”
Pink Floyd’s “Money” has, to my knowledge, always been played with the “do goody good bullshit” link left intact.
It’s also fairly long as 1970s AM radio went, so it was probably scissored for time.
“Walk On The Wild Side” has that infamous line “She never lost her head, even when she was giving head” but none of those are profanity words, per se, so it was left in.
When I was a teenager, a local rock station did something similar to “Turn Up the Radio” by Autograph.
Original: “Turn up the radio / I need the music / gimme some more”
KOME edit: “Turn up the radio / NINETY EIGHT FIVE / K-O-M-E”
They did it with this weird “robotic” voice over the song, reducing the volume of the music to drown out the actual vocals. They didn’t play this version every time, but when they did it pissed me off.
This reminds me of many years ago, when I attended a Mormon dance for teenagers. A song at the time that was popular was “Hit 'em High” by a group called the Monstars. It’s a rap song and there are some really aggressive sounding dudes on that track, including Busta Rhymes. At one point in his verse he talks about taking control of the ship/taking the championship/nothing left to do except watch the instant replay clip! Well to sensitive and easily offended Mormon ears, he just cussed up a storm. But that song is from Space Jam, a Looney Toons movie. There is not a single cuss word in it. It’s probably the cleanest song any of the artists on it have ever done. But the Mormon chaperons were blissfully unaware of this and in an effort to save us from such filth, changed the song to something a little less… urban.
There’s no way that “bullshit” was going out over the air, at least in Chicago in the 1970s. It was censored by just chopping off the second syllable, making it “bull”. But since the line rhymed with “hit”, it was pretty obvious to everyone what the actual line was.
On one of our local stations (“classic hits” format, I think) the “shit” is “bleeped” out with the sound of a cash register bell from the intro.
On our local classic rock station, on the other hand, it’s played uncensored.
There was at least one instance (in Ireland, I think) where the original lyrics made it on the air accidentally, and the DJ was reprimanded:
I was surprised as a young teen that our local rock radio stations didn’t censor the “who the fuck are you?” line from the Who’s “Who Are You?”. I think the occasional f-bomb was allowable as long as it wasn’t a direct reference to sex.
Let’s Get it Started by the Black Eyed Peas is the radio-friendly version of Let’s Get Retarded. Hah, that certainly didn’t age well.