Isn’t it the version used by one of the CSI offshoots?
Cole Porter had a lot of un-PC lyrics that were changed: You’re The Top originally had a reference to Mussolini, and Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love opened with Chinks and Japs doing it rather than birds and bees.
Ditto on “Let’s Get Retarded.” When I heard radio personalities Don and Mike talking about the song, I thought they were talking about some sort of parody of “Let’s Get it Started.” “Let’s get Retarded” just sounded ridiculous, but I looked it up and found it was the original.
Also “Creep” by Radiohead. I think I prefer the clean version. (“you’re so very special” instead of “you’re so fucking special.”)
Jefferson Starship, Miracles. The radio version simply skipped (IIRC) the following couplet:
I got a taste of the real world,
When I went down on you girl.
And the radio version also left out the lyric: “when I’m dancin’ inside you.”
A dirty, dirty song. And I didn’t even know it was censored until I bought the album many years later.
More obviously, changing the line “I get no kick from cocaine” to “Some like the perfumes in Spain.” For years, the latter was the usual film/broadcast version until Mel Brooks went back to the original in Blazing Saddles.
Do the Dresden Dolls get played on the radio? Because in the original version of the song “Coin-Operated Boy”, there’s a line “I could even fuck him in the ass”, which was changed to “I could even take him in the bath” for the album that was released more widely.
Well whaddya know, Ludacris has hoes where I used to go to school. Maybe I should check up on my old high-school classmates and see what their preferred male companionship is nowadays…
Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl has “shit” censored out several times; rather, they’ve taken out the “it” but left the “shh.” On the video, the singer and dancers put their finger to their lips in a few corresponding places.
Also, same singer, Whatcha Waiting For?: the word “ho” is removed from “take a chance you stupid —”.
:smack: Now the video makes so much more sense.
The album version of Jethro Tull’s “My God” on the Aqualung album is heavily sanitized. The lyrics that they use live are much more directly specific and cutting, directly calling out Catholicism, the pope, and Islam by name instead of just alluding to them.
It was the other way around in these parts: you never heard the uncensored version until maybe ten or fifteen years ago. Before that, it was edited.
RR
Seems they are doing this on a lot of classic rock songs these days. Pink Floyd’s “Money” has the word “bullshit” bleeped out. Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” has “funky shit going down in the city” changed to “funky kicks…”. Songs I grew up listening to don’t sound the same anymore.
The uncensored version of Eminem’s “My Name Is” is pure brilliance in its unbelievable offensiveness. The radio edit, which took out the more offensive lines along with the profanity… not so much. I still laugh my ass off when I hear the original.
There are quite a few people, including me, who have never heard the uncensored version o f Jet Airliner. Up until a couple years ago when it was mentioned on this board I always wondered what “funky kicks” were.
But thankfully I’ve never heard the censored version of “Money” except in a stupid PBS special (which caused me to turn off the TV, which I only kept on because it was the Floyd.) Ironically, they are editing “Money” in order to not be fined by the FCC, which means they’re making decisions around mostly…money. (Okay, it’d be more ironic if they edited “Have a Cigar”.)
The entire second verse of Dire Straits’ "Money For Nothing has been removed from the single version. The one talking about the “little faggot” with his earring and his makeup. The sanitized version was even substituted for the original on the Dire Straits greatest hits compilation “Sultans of Swing.”
From Wikipedia:
At least, thanks to Cecil, we know what the pompatus of love is.
“At the Hundredth Meridian” by the Tragically Hip. One of my favorite songs.
One line as heard on the radio:
“It would seem to me I remember every single fucking thing I know”
It’s sort of slurred, but I’ve never heard it bleeped or otherwise censored. So I had a good laugh when I noticed that the Hip themselves give the lyric on their website as:
“It would seem to me I remember every single bloody, warm, and horrible thing I know”
I wonder just what radar they’re trying to fly under…
Wheatus’s Teenage Dirtbag includes the following lines:
When UK music channels played the video, ‘dick’ and ‘ass’ were left in; the word ‘gun’ was not.
The Lemonheads song Big Gay Heart includes the line You don’t need to suck my dick; when the track was released as a single, it became duck my sick.
Kirsty MacColl’s Free World had Gotta get it up and shag it cleaned up to Gotta get it up and wag it when it was played on the radio.
I just heard this song last night and had never heard the censored version before. Was quite jarring… especially when you are singing along…
…and it tastes just like Co---- WTF?
I always misheard the background singer’s line of ‘I gotta leave’ as ‘I gotta wee’. :o
I never realized the version of Anthrax’s “I’m the man” I knew was censored - I thought the weird sound effects were just part of the song, but it turned out it very much was. I still can’t figure out why, as it’s not really mainstream.
Back when I was young, Carole Pope and Rough Trade had a hit with a song called “High School Confidential.” Local FM Stations played the original version of the song which contained the lyric “she makes me cream my jeans/ when she walks by.” The solution for AM stations was a version that simply blanked the first part of the word “cream,” resulting in the odd-sounding lyric “she makes me ____m my jeans/ when she walks by.”