Agreed, but I’d comfort myself with all the money I was making. LOL
I never heard the song except on radio, and I never heard it except with “cutie”. I’d also add that “sunburn” neither rhymes nor scans.
In the 70s I remember I heard on some airings of the song ‘Leroy Brown’ where the line …“baddest man in the whole damn town…” was dubbed to “baddest man in the whole darned town” ( the it was more like “derned” sonically ).
I mean, damn is like the softest of all 4-letter words.
I may have some of the history wrong, feel free to clarify:
National Lampoon had an off-Broadway show called, “Lemmings,” which I will come back to. One of the guys at NatLamp wrote (and performed?) a Joni Mitchell parody called, “You Put Me Through Hell,” which was broadcast on, “The NL Radio Hour.” The song had a couple “-uck” words in it which were garbled for airplay. Later, they added some more “-uck” words to the piece and included it in the Lemmings show, sung hilariously by Rhonda Coullet(?)
Slightly dirty words version:
Dirty Joni version:
Dirty Joni version starts at 11:48. Editing problem.
Perhaps so, but I’ve known many people – primarily devout Christians – who feel that it’s a word which shouldn’t be used casually or sacrilegiously. For years, TBS and TNT would censor the word when it appeared on TV shows or movies which they were re-running.
I had the National Lampoon “Radio Diner” album which contained the John Lennon parody, “Magical Misery Tour”. My version had all the F*ucks bleeped which I got a kick out of because there was hardly anything left.
The linked version is uncensored so beware.
I had just started high school when that song came out (and Keith Moon died shortly afterwards). When that song came on the radio, we would all gather around because we thought it was such a scream to hear THAT WORD on the radio.
(Aside: I very much enjoy C-SPAN2 and 3’s book readings on the weekends. They don’t censor ANYTHING; until recently, if someone was going to use a Bad Word, they would put a thing on the screen a few seconds beforehand that said, “This programs includes language that may be offensive to some viewers.” They aren’t doing that any more, although I think a lot of it is because their programming is by, for, and about adults.)
The dream is over.
Christian supergroup Lost Dogs had a song censored by their record label because it contained the line “Right by damn, I’m a lovely man.”
Radiohead’s first hit Creep swaps out “so fucking special” for “so very special” in the radio edit. I didn’t know it was “fucking” until I bought a copy of Pablo Honey on CD, so if any rock/alternative stations played the explicit version I never heard it.
Back when that song was new-ish, I remember listening to WGN-AM radio in Chicago over Christmas break midday when they had a fill-in host who was probably a very very junior employee, or maybe a guy on a trial gig. And he was filling his time with mostly talk like WGN’s style was (probably still is, I assume), but he was also mixing in some songs that were new-ish and what he thought were interesting (that was unusual for WGN).
Anyhow, he played the album version of Creep. After the first few fuckings went out over Chicago and the Midwestern airwaves the rest were mostly covered by muting the sound entirely.
Not sure if that guy ever got to do another show on WGN again…
The Doors “Break on Through (to the Other Side)”
very rarely includes the word “high”.
Usually only repeats "She get…She Get…She Get…She get…yeah!
Back then the radio station I generally listened to took out the bad words. Leroy Brown was the baddest man “in the whole town”. In Just You ‘N’ Me, “loving you girl is so easy”. And I never heard My Ding-a-Ling on the radio, even though it was a number 1 song.
That’s an interesting one because I think it changes the impression of the song. The way he says “so fucking special” really has an element of resentment to it, which gives off some incel vibes. In a good way, that is. I think it’s an amazing song.
I kinda doubt this tale.
I did my internship at WGN in the spring of -85.
Back then they had a tape loop that delayed the broadcast some seven seconds between studio and air. It was, and still is, talk radio. Quite a lot of controversial guest passed through during the years and there was always someone on watch ready to cut before something controversial actually made it out of the building.
WGN was also quite heavily staffed with many producers (a.k.a flunkies), sound engineers, news room ASF. No one went on the air on their own as a D.J. Any on air talent - especially a newbie/rookie - would’ve had had least two other people in the control booth.
Adam Sandler’s song about Chris Farley debuted during one of his stage shows and was later played on Saturday Night Live. They had to clean up a few lyrics but I think the TV version (below) is the better performance. It chokes me up a little, every time.
From the *not a lyric department, MIA’s hit Paper Planes sometimes replaces the characteristic (“All I wanna do is”) gunshots/reload samples with some goofy noises.
Original:
Radio edit:
I don’t have your insider’s point of view but I’m also a little skeptical that a mistake like that could happen at WGN. They’re sort of the Microsoft of broadcast around here.
SNL did a skit once with a High School drama club doing “Grease”. Censored the crap out of “Greased Lightning”. Much later caught a snippet of the film on cable, no less, and they actual did cut the song to pieces.
Some radio stations cut the line “My brother likes to masturbate with baby oil” from “The Thanksgiving Song.”
Way back in the 1940s, the BBC insisted on changing the line
Why don’t we do this more often
Just what we’re doin’ tonight
To
Why don’t we do this more often
Just what we’re doin’ today
Because of course, hanky-panky couldn’t possibly occur in daylight.
There’s a somewhat-new hard rock radio station here who I swear gets special bleeped versions. The can bleep the “uh” in “fuck”. Maybe that’s a new thing, pushing the envelope for the industry?