After reading the couple of recent threads recently about songs that toss in one or two curse words, I got to thinking about the way those kind of songs are edited for radio. In general, when a song with not-safe-for-radio words gets released as a single, the editing is clumsy and tends to call attention to the fact that there used to be a dirty word here, seemingly achieving the opposite of what was intended.
I was able to think of two recent songs, however, where i’ve heard both the original and the edited version, and I like the bowdlerized version better than the song the artist originally recorded:
“Fuckin’ Perfect”, by Pink - I heard the radio version of this many many times before I even heard the unedited version. Upon hearing it, it seemed to me like the titular F-bomb was just plain gratuitous.
“Payphone”, by Maroon 5 - I heard the unedited version before the radio one. In this case, the radio version changes the couplet “All these fairy tales are full of shit, one more fuckin’ love song i’ll be sick” to “All these fairy tales are full of it, one more stupid love song i’ll be sick” - which to me seems to flow better and make the song sound more sincere and less whiny. (The radio version also removes the guest verse from Wiz Khalifa, of whom I think I can say that no song has ever been improved by his presence, but that’s a topic for another time.)
Anyone else ever found a song where they preferred the edited version to the original?
