i’m thinking along the lines of “Money for Nothing” by dire straits with the line “the little faggot with the earring and the makeup” or the stones “Start Me Up” with its lyrics of “you make a dead man come” i hear these regularly on oldies stations and wonder why nobody such as gays complained. i remember when third-eye blind’s song "Semi-Charmed kind of Life came out it was censored with bleeps because it dealt with crank. add to this list
I could never understand how Lou Reed got away with the reference to “giving head” in “Walk on the Wild Side.”
Well, on any “classic rock” radio station, you’ll hear
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the Who sing “Who the f*** are you?”
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Pink Floyd singing “Don’t give me that do goody-good bulls***” (in “Money”).
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Steve Miller singing “I don’t want to get caught up in any of that funky s*** going down in the city.”
Those are just a few of the obvious examples. The standards on radio often make little sense. For instance, some years back when Denis Leary’s song “A**hole” was popular, the local radio stations played it, and whenever he SANG naughty words, the words weren’t censored. But during the SPOKEN passages, when he’s ranting (and not singing), the dirty words were all bleeped!
Someone who knows FCC regulations better than I may be able to explain it… but apparently, there are certain words you c an’t SAY on radio that CAN be sung!
The word is offensive to many, but the song is a satire. That could’ve reduced complaints.
You think that’s filthy, you should listen to some old blues stuff. Like the stuff the Stones were usually ripping off. 
I didn’t think this question was quite worth its own thread, but I’m dying of curiousity. The Van Morrison song Domino has some very odd lyrics
*Don’t want to discuss it
I think it’s time for a change
You may get disgusted
And think I’m strange
In that case I’ll go underground
Get some heavy rest
Never have to worry
About what is worst and what is best
Oh oh Domino
Roll me over Romeo etc . . .
Someone once told me this song referred to a homosexual relationship. I am skeptical of that claim, but can’t come up with an alternate explanation for the lyrics. Would anyone care to help out?
Such as Louise Bogan (Bessie Jackson)'s “Shave 'em Dry,” whence the Stones borrowed that particular line.
Hmm. I’ve always heard that line as “Romeo, my Romeo” (a direct quote from “Romeo & Juliet”), not the more sexually suggestive “roll me over.” But a Google search shows that not one lyric source agrees with me.
How about another Stones’ tune, “Brown Sugar”
Pretty much the entire thing is offensive, but it’s still a great song.
There’s also no way in hell it’d be released today.
Maybe I’m naive Fruitbat, but I was always under the impression that the song was about how difficult it was to hear early rock & roll and R&B records on Irish radio when Morrison was growing up. (Hence, the “Hey Mr. D. J., I just want to hear some rhythm and blues music on the radio” line at the end of the song.)
Also, the “Domino” mentioned in the song is Fats Domino.
Semi-Charmed Life was the first one that came to mind. I was under the impression that it was viewed as offensive cause it mentioned crystal meth AND oral sex, namely in the lines:
Smiling in the pictures you would take
Doing crystal myth
Will lift you up until you break
and
She’s got her own motivation
She comes round and she goes down on me
And I make her smile
I’ve heard Closer by NIN on the radio. You know,
I want to fuck you like an animal
I want to feel you from the inside
It’s censored of course, but it’s obvious what it means. The whole song seems pretty damn offensive to me. (Not that I mind, I love NIN.)
Smoke Two Joints by Sublime gets airplay back home in CA quite often. Usually with minimum edits.
Whenever I hear that song today, I’m always a little taken aback by the line “and the colored girls sing…” I know it was common and inoffensive then, but it just sounds bad now.
I saw a live performance of “Walk on the Wild Side” on Comedy Central’s Night of Stars (or some title along those lines) a few days ago. Lou Reed was performing the song with several celebrities. He changed the lyric in question to “and the black girls sing…” There were no black girls there to sing for him, though.
I’ve heard “Let’s Go Smoke Some Pot” by Dash Rip Rock (possibly the most misattributed song on P2P networks; search for it and you’ll see it attributed to over a dozen different artists, none of them correct) on the radio many times.
Actually most of these did cause quite an uproar when they were released.
If you listen to Money for Nothing on their greatest hits CD you’ll note that MfN is expurgated. Where the ‘little faggot’ line comes in there is instead ‘Move-a Move-a’ that normally occurs later in the song. I seem to recall a big flap about it from gay rights groups when it was released and for a while MTV wouldn’t play the full version so the popular video was bowdlerized.
Same thing for the initial single release of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. The ‘giving head’ verse simply didn’t exist on the initial single release and only appeared on the LP.
Sometimes even labelling does get it. There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story that when the Rolling Stones released ‘Paint it Black’ as a single the label read ‘Paint it, Black’.
Hoo boy.
All those songs astorian mentions up there (Who are you, Money, and Jet Airliner) were released on single for radio play with the offensive words removed prior to release. No complaints were required to have that happen, the label just released it that way.
But what do I know? I listen to XM. They don’t censor a damn thing on the stations I listen (though they do on others).
Jefferson Starship’s Miracles:
“I got a taste of the real world
When I went down on you girl”
This line is from the LP edit usually played on FM stations while it was edited out of the AM version.
Chuck Berry pushed the line with “My Ding-A-Ling”, and nobody mentioned ZZ Tops ode to titty fucking, “Pearl Necklace”. I still laugh evey time I hear that song on the radio.
Lots more Stones too. “Let It Bleed” (We all need someone we can cream on…") Star Star (Not sure if the Steve McQueen head reference came [no pun intended] before Lou Reeds or not), Bitch and probably a bunch more that get classic rock radio airplay.
Relax (don’t do it) is kind of explicit too, and who can listen to “Come On Eileen” without thinking of that old joke (Whats worse than shit on Farrah Fawcett…) 
Jon
Actually they almost always play the single version as JC mentioned which goes “funky kicks going down in the city”.
Any time you hear about “jelly roll” in a blues song… well, it ain’t got nothing to do with a bakery.
Puts a whole new context on ‘Jelly Roll Morton’, doesn’t it?
Let’s not forget that Chuck Berry’s original Johnny B Goode wasn’t a ‘country boy’ but a ‘colored boy’. No way he’d get popular airplay then.
But he did get some of his own back with ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’ in which he extolled the virtues of Brown-eyed men for which he meant himself and others who had brown eyes and skin.
Go, Chuck, Go!
Having just checked the LP (through good headphones), I’m convinced that I was right all along. Van sings “Romeo, my Romeo.”
This is wholly unresearched so I don’t know why I’m posting but OH WELL…
I have seen, more than once, in trivia questions, “What color are the colored girls in Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side?’” with the correct answer being “White.”