Quasimodem in some other thread brought up that pheasant plucker song, which I hadn’t thought of in years. “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son. I’m just plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes!” The whole point of the song is that it’s trying to make you sing “fucking pleasants” or “pleasant fucker” - you’re trying not to, and the audience is hoping you’ll slip up. I remember as a kid there were other tongue twisters like that designed to make forbidden words if you slipped up.
So is there a name for the phenomenon? Studies done by folklorists and such about the social significance or what have you?
Really good example of something I wanted to bring up. Note that this is distinctly different than a tongue-twister, which doesn’t have to be musical to work. Instead, we have an obvious dirty word that rhymes to complete the lyric, but the singer instead supplies a clean, non rhyming lyric, or steps on it with a chorus in such a way that it doesn’t interrupt the melody. That one’s a good bit more appealing than the classic Bang, Bang Lulu or the Shaving Cream song
That particular one, while entertaining, doesn’t seem to fit the OP’s criteria. It doesn’t seem all that difficult to avoid saying the implied swear-words, unlike the other examples in this thread.
One game I remember from childhood: Carefully coach your victim to respond with “shystle” whenever you say “pit” and respond with “pit” whenever you say “shystle”. After carefully prepping them for each response, then start the game in earnest with “pistol!”
No, that’s different - that’s like “Sweet Violets” or the childhood rhyme about Miss Lucy and her steamboat, currently under discussion in another thread. In those, the singer relishes flipping your expectations around, usually with a rhyme scheme.