I came here to post just that. The beeped version is hilarious. The unbeeped, just mildly amusing.
I vastly prefer the radio edit of James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful where he says he’s “flying high” instead of “fucking high.” The former fits in with it being a nice love song, the latter makes it sound like it’s being sung by some dopey pothead.
I could not disagree more. That beat - “I’m like, {beat} fuck yoooooou” - provides a great syncopation and really punches the “fuck” that comes after it. It also really captures the brain-scrambled, taken-aback shock of the song’s narrator - for that one beat, he’s completely surprised, flabberghasted, and you can just hear the :dubious: on his face before he delivers the payoff in response. That one beat also provides a subconscious “what’s he going to say? how’s he going to react?” effect in the listener even when we’ve heard the song a million times - the essence of comedic timing even when we know how it’s going to pay off. It’s masterful.
Not a song, but I thought the censored version of the South Park episode “201” was funnier than the original for similar reasons.
In case you haven’t seen or heard of the episode, it was infamous for its inclusion of Mohammed as a character. Comedy Central decided to censor the already completed episode after the creators had submitted it. Comedy Central bleeped over all references to Mohammed, and then for unknown reasons bleeped over most of Kyle’s “I think we all learned something today” moralizing speech at the end. They were bleeping over parts that weren’t even referring to Mohammed.
I’ve heard the original, uncensored speech, and it was pretty par for the course for one of Kyle’s sermons. By bleeping it to the point of incomprehensibility, it became that much more absurd (and actually gave out a stronger anti-censorship message IMO).
“24s” by T.I. I only know the song from Need for Speed: Underground which, naturally, uses the clean version.