I entertained myself reading the past two or three posts by mentally replacing each instance of the word “bleep” with assorted very rude words. 
According to the Stiff Little Fingers, no.
If we’re considering responsibility for this practice, then I think you’ve got it backwards. It’s the radio station that’s deciding what words they will or will not put on the air. The music distributor is merely providing what their customers - radio stations in this case - want. So if radio stations want cleaned up versions of pop songs, the music companies will offer them as part of their product list.
In other words, it’s the radio stations which are generating demand for censored pop songs. The censors work at the behest of the broadcaster. So blame the radio stations.
As a certified old fart, I’ll give a bit of historical details.
In the dawn of time, there were these things called “45s”. These were the single (plus flip side) records played on the radio. Songs of the normal 3:05 length fit on these. There were also used in jukeboxes.
When album rock started taking off, not all songs would still fit on a 45. So record companies started making “single” versions of hit records. The single version of the Who’s Who Are You is shorter, slightly restructured, and omits all uses of “fuck”. There is also a single version of Won’t Get Fooled Again, but that edit was for time, but not language.
Steve Miller has already been mentioned. Funky kicks was the 45, funky shit was the album. Other songs had similar edits.
Along came the 80s, and station’s restrictions on language were relaxed. Stations could now play funky shit fuckety fuck songs with no backlash. It was a golden era.
Somewhere during the late 90s to early 2000s this country became prudish all over again.
I listen to the cable music service Music Choice. They have a channel called “classic rock” and one called “70s”. The 70s channel would play the 45 versions, and CR would play the album versions of the same songs. SO you would get funky kicks and the short 45 version of Who Are You on the 70s, and funky shit and Who the Fuck Are You on CR. Since both versions were “legit” it was easy.
Now, in the puritanical 2010s, both channels play sanitized versions, but the CR channel plays deliberately bowdlerized versions - the Who Are You is the full length album version, but the fucks have been digitally edited. Pink Floyd’s Money is edited into “do goody good bullssssss”. Knopfler sings of the “little [unintelligble murmur to keep the meter] with the earrring and the makeup”
I’m not sure why we went backwards. It’s really odd.
And it isn’t just radio. The cable channel WE shows reruns of Law and Order. Note that this was a show that was broadcast over the air, under the stringent broadcast network standards and practices. Yet, We will edit their shows for content! Words with all the bite and vulgarity of “crap” have been removed. it’s really odd. They shows still involve murder, rape, and general bloody mayhem, but the word “bitch” offends their sensibilities.
And WE isn’t like the evangelical christian station. They show Marriage Boot Camp and Growing Up Hip Hop and Bridezillas and Mama June. Man, the* promos* for those shows offend me! What happened to this country?
It does here, but it just drops out, no word substitution. Surprisingly on the same station I also hear Sublime’s, “What I got” with the line, “I can play the guitar like a motherfucking riot” totally unedited.
Nearly all the edits I hear, it’s obvious what the word is they are censoring. Usually they just drop the vowel sound. I mean what is the point of censoring at all in that case. I mean, if a person is offended by the word fuck, they’re going to be just as offended by “f_ck”.
Who Are You does get censored these days, at least around here. But instead of dropping, bleeping, or replacing “fuck”, they just eliminate the entire line. And it’s been done so skillfully that it’s very hard to tell where that line should have been.
Halsey and G-Easy’s “Him and Me” is played on local commercial radio and they bleep out both “bitch” (which G-Easy says a lot in this “love song”), and censors “If she caught me cheating she would surely cut by <bleep> off.” People are filling these censored words in with the obvious ones, so why bother?
Desperation.
The iron fist of the Christian Wrong (you know who/what I mean) is doing two things at once: gripping tighter and tighter, and at the same time crumbling into dust. Trying to chalk up one last battle victory, in a war that it has already lost.
Yet another old fart here…
The earliest “censored” song I remember is “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” Back then, before the internet, it actually took us a couple weeks to figure out exactly what the missing word was. For several days, we though it was f***. We were disappointed to learn the word was much milder.
Strangely, Jefferson Airplane’s “We Can Be Together” was usually played in all its glory. This was probably because it was aired mainly by college stations and they didn’t give a f***.
And I thought my wife was going to pass out the first time some Eminem came up on my playlist.
Just asking questions wrote: “Yet, We will edit their shows for content! Words with all the bite and vulgarity of “crap” have been removed. it’s really odd. They shows still involve murder, rape, and general bloody mayhem, but the word “bitch” offends their sensibilities.”
Reminds me of an old cartoon: First panel shows TV talk show guest saying: “I didn’t give a damn about it.” Second panel shows TV with “I didn’t give a bleep about it.” Also the assemble family watching each with their own thought balloon: “Fuck?” “Shit?” “Piss?” “Crap?” Sometimes what people think you censored is worse that what was actually censored.
Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” was censored on one country station I know of. “We’ll put a boot in your [explosion] it’s the American way.”
Country music seemed more family friendly than rock then. I don’t listen much anymore, but it all seems to be about getting drunk and hooking up when I do hear it now.
I used to enjoy guessing whether Steve Miller would say shit or kicks. Seems like it was a fifty-fifty chance back then. Later, by the mid-80s, it was always shit. All the other songs mentioned here weren’t censored, either.
Now, on non-Sirius/XM stations, it’s always kicks.
All the other songs mentioned in this thread are censored all the time now, too.
All because Janet Jackson had to show her booby on TV.
Yep, that’s how I remember it. Anyone else?
Another fine Music Choice edit. On the Stage And Screen channel, they play a selection from the Inglourious Basterds Soundtrack. Or, as it is know there, “Inglourious B*******s”.
It is. The version my local classic rock station plays eliminates that verse entirely.
I’ve never heard the censored version of any of these songs in communist, socialist Canada.
Radiohead and the song Creep.
The album version had the lyric “So fucking special” but a radio friendly version was recorded with “So very special.”
TCMF-2L
Yeah, within a few weeks of ‘Money for Nothing’ being released there was some controversy and the verse-less version was released. It even appears on the Greatest Hits CD they released.
Pointless, really. But there you go.
I think "Who Are You"usually gets edited these days but, around here, I’ve never heard the unedited version of “What I Got.” I’m listening to the radio edit they have on Youtube, but it’s not that version. That version drops out both "high"and "motherfucking"from that line. The one I remember hearing leaves in the "high"and replaces the "motherfucking"with a record scratch.
Three songs our radio station does play uncensored are:
Balls To the Wall by Accept.
Hair of the Dog by Nazareth. “Now you’re messin’ with a son of a bitch.”
Mother by Pink Floyd. “Mother do you think they’ll try to break my balls?”