# 'That Little Faggot' and other censorable lyrics regularly played unexpurgated **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 21, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761 "2005-09-21T19:48:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/21 "2005-09-22T00:04:30Z")
“Show biz kids making movies of themselves you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else” Steely Dan _Show Biz Kids_. This one always slips by. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/22 "2005-09-22T00:22:53Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > “Come on Eileen,” is. It’s so bad I can’t even bring myself to spell it properly. Both “come” and “cum” are acceptable spelling for the slang term for ejaculation. ---
**Author:** ![Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine_and_Smiles)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/23 "2005-09-22T00:40:28Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Sorry, the answer we’re looking for is “niggers,” but thanks for playing! Remember, kids, if a black rap artist uses an offensive slur against other blacks, it’ll get censored. But if a straight rap artist uses an offensive slur against gays, apparently nobody gives a shit. Black artists use offensive slurs against other blacks all the time. I would’ve assumed ‘faggot’ would be censored as well. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/24 "2005-09-22T00:44:18Z")
> [@Kilvert's Pagan](#): > > Rolling Stones - Start Me Up. Near the end Jagger sings “you make a dead man come” instead of “you make a grown man cry”. I’ve never heard it edited out. This has nothing to do with the reason it remains unexpurgated, but that line is a sly reference to Lucille Bogan’s classic bawdy honky-tonk blues song “Shave 'Em Dry,” in which she famously sings, “I got somethin’ between my legs that’ll make a dead man come!” Great, great song. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Hung\_Mung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Hung\_Mung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hung_Mung)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/25 "2005-09-22T00:51:35Z")
Well, down here in good ol’ Tennessee they don’t censor the “nigger” or the “faggot.” We hate everyone equally in the Volunteer State. As for Dire Straits and “Money” by Floyd, I’ve never, ever, EVER heard either one censored as long as I’ve heard them. My dad can’t remember “Money” ever being censored either. I submit Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness.” The dude is clearly saying ‘fucker’ like, four times every chorus. Yet, they take out the breakdown section where the singer relives being beaten by his mother and calls her a sick, sadistic whore. And wishes death on her. Hm…I guess a couple of 'fucker’s doesn’t sound so bad after that middle part… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/26 "2005-09-22T01:17:48Z")
> [@Sunshine and Smiles](#): > > Black artists use offensive slurs against other blacks all the time. I would’ve assumed ‘faggot’ would be censored as well. My guess was ‘faggot’ as well. I you had to censor every “nigger” in a rap song, well, y’all can complete the thought… (and, yeah, I do actually enjoy rap). ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/27 "2005-09-22T01:21:15Z")
> [@mobo85](#): > > Both “come” and “cum” are acceptable spelling for the slang term for ejaculation. But “cone” is not. However, **pravnik** posted a correction before I could post my “hone her cone” joke. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/28 "2005-09-22T01:39:45Z")
Wow, Oklahoma City metro plays the full version of all of those, as far as I’ve noticed. Guess we’re not as backwards as we could be. (I think I did hear “Money For Nothing” without that verse once.) It hasn’t always been that way - I remember when Charlie Daniels’ “Devil Went Down to Georgia” was always played with “son-of-a-gun” instead of “son-of-a-bitch” Haven’t heard that version in years, though. Another oldie I remember is Uneasy Rider, which always had “asses” bleeped out. Rolling Stones, “Bleed on Me”. “My breasts will always be open” (OK, technically no dirty words), “we all need someone we can cream on”/“you can cream on me”, “you can come all over me” . Never ever heard a censored version of that one - I think they just didn’t play it on air at all way back when. ---
**Author:** ![Marlitharn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/29 "2005-09-22T02:01:55Z")
When the Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” first came out, I remember rolling my eyes because they edited “Let’s get to the point/Let’s roll another joint.” Like we wouldn’t be able to figure it out from the _context_. I haven’t heard that one for a while, but I think they play it unedited now. ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/30 "2005-09-22T02:42:43Z")
Steely Dan’s “Time Out Of Mind” was omitted from airplay altogether for a long time because “chase the dragon” refers to either shooting heroin or snorting coke (i can’t recall which) I once emailed one of the DJs at the station I listen to, and asked why Floyd, Steve Miller, and the Who never get censored (on that station), but the live talent have to be very careful about what they say. The answer was that the FCC doesn’t control the content of recorded music (there’s another agency for that, but I don’t know the name; and that some stations’ choice to either play the ‘clean’ version, or to not play the song at all, is more dependant on what the sponsors want than any sense of moral propriety ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/31 "2005-09-22T03:25:37Z")
> [@Hung Mung](#): > > I submit Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness.” The dude is clearly saying ‘fucker’ like, four times every chorus. Yet, they take out the breakdown section where the singer relives being beaten by his mother and calls her a sick, sadistic whore. And wishes death on her. Hm…I guess a couple of 'fucker’s doesn’t sound so bad after that middle part… You know what? They leave the “You’re fucking it up” lines in there for us, too. Oddly, however, that line near the beginning (after “Can you feel that?”) gets censored. I’ve never been able to figure out whether he’s saying “Oh, shit” or “Push it,” but apparently the censors have decided that it’s the former. The censors must have been rolling a few joints while they reviewed that song. But they won’t let Tom Petty talk about rolling joints. What did they do to Everlast’s “What It’s Like” where you live? Back when that song was a hit, the local Top 40 radio station had a version was edited to within an inch of its life. In addition to the swearing, words like “whore,” “drugs,” “Colt .45,” and even “dead” were cut out. Sweet Jesus, it was like they gave a copy of the lyrics to a local kindergarden teacher and said “Here. Cross out all the words you don’t like.” The song was so bady hacked up, there was almost no point in playing it. I went out and bought the album, just so I could hear an intelligible version of that song. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/32 "2005-09-22T03:34:52Z")
Yeah, they tear up anything by Everlast pretty badly. What amazes me is when they play What It’s Like on XM and it’s still heavily edited. For what it’s worth, I’ve got all of Everlast’s CDs, though the newest one I downloaded off iTunes using nothing but free music codes from Pepsi. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Asbestos_Mango)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/33 "2005-09-22T04:39:44Z")
Anybody remember AOR? Am I just really, really old? The Who’s “You Better You Bet”. Never heard the second verse played on the local Top 40 station, but on the AOR station, they played the full-length version. Everyone sing along, now I want those feeble-minded axes overthrown/ I’m not into your passport picture, I just like your nose You welcome me with open arms and open legs/ I know only fools have needs but this one never begs. ---
**Author:** ![Sarah\_Woodruff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sarah\_Woodruff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarah_Woodruff)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/34 "2005-09-22T05:06:08Z")
> [@Kilvert's Pagan](#): > > Rolling Stones - Start Me Up. Near the end Jagger sings “you make a dead man come” instead of “you make a grown man cry”. I’ve never heard it edited out. I don’t think most radio stations even realise that line’s in there - I remember the first time I heard it on the radio (on a safe-bet, let’s-not-offend-people-'cos-we-need-advertising-revenue station) my eyes nearly started out of my head. I’ve heard an interview with Lou Reed wherein he said that when _Walk on the Wild Side_ was first released, the radio station people didn’t realise the significance of the “Candy never lost her head, even when she was giving head” lyrics, and so the song wasn’t censored at first. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/35 "2005-09-22T05:57:37Z")
> [@Kilvert's Pagan](#): > > Rolling Stones - Start Me Up. Near the end Jagger sings “you make a dead man come” instead of “you make a grown man cry”. I’ve never heard it edited out. > [@Sarah Woodruff](#): > > I don’t think most radio stations even realise that line’s in there - I remember the first time I heard it on the radio (on a safe-bet, let’s-not-offend-people-'cos-we-need-advertising-revenue station) my eyes nearly started out of my head. That line’s surprisingly easy to miss. It’s at the very end of the song and Jagger’s voice drops to a near-murmur so he could try to sneak it by. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/36 "2005-09-22T07:35:19Z")
> [@mobo85](#): > > Both “come” and “cum” are acceptable spelling for the slang term for ejaculation. I believe it originates from the phrase “come to a climax”. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/37 "2005-09-22T07:52:15Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > What did they do to Everlast’s “What It’s Like” where you live? Back when that song was a hit, the local Top 40 radio station had a version was edited to within an inch of its life. In addition to the swearing, words like “whore,” “drugs,” “Colt .45,” and even “dead” were cut out. Sweet Jesus, it was like they gave a copy of the lyrics to a local kindergarden teacher and said “Here. Cross out all the words you don’t like.” The song was so bady hacked up, there was almost no point in playing it. I went out and bought the album, just so I could hear an intelligible version of that song. This is hilarious. As a kid, there were two versions of this song that our station played. In one of them, the offending words were replaced with what sounded like the original word played backwards. (Weird!) The other version had them replaced with Warner-Brothers-esque cartoon noises. _He pulled out his chrome (BLOOP!), talked some (SPLAT!) and wound up (AIIEEEE!!!)_ It never ceased to crack me up. The other song that I remember vividly is Alanis Morissette’s “One Hand In My Pocket.” “I’m brave but I’m chicken-shit” got censored sometimes, but not other times. Very inconsistent. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/38 "2005-09-22T10:15:52Z")
Couple points here. First, the FCC recognizes “safe harbor” hours, which are between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time. During this time, kids and teenagers are assumed to be asleep, so broadcasters can get away with pretty much anything. These may or may not be going away, though, thanks to the right-wing shift of the FCC. That’s the reason you’re more likely to hear unedited songs at night. Second, most labels provide two copies of a song with offensive lyrics. They provide a “radio edit” that is clean; either the offending lyrics have been bleeped out, or the artist has actually sung a different version of the song with slightly different lyrics to make it clean. These versions are clearly labeled “radio clean”. In fact, the rule of thumb at my station is “if it’s not labeled clean, it isn’t.” Third, it’s no big deal to go into a recording studio and edit music yourself, and some smaller stations do this. You just load the song into the editing program, find the part with the naughty word(s) and reverse it. For the fraction of a second that the music is reversed, the listener usually doesn’t know the music is reversed, and it doesn’t sound as “edited”. Robin ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/39 "2005-09-22T10:58:08Z")
Up here in Canada, The Tragically Hip have a license to swear on the radio. In “At the 100th Meridian” Gord mentions “Every single fucking thing I know,” which always seems to slip past the censors. There’s another song where he talks about “where they’d stamp on burning bags of shit.” It’s not at all ambigous as to what he is saying but for some reason they let him get away with it. In “Fireworks” he says “You said you didn’t give fuck about hockey” and that one seems to have CRTC approval as well. Sometimes the local classic rock station even plays the Killer Whale Tank version of New Orleans is Sinking (“He bit my fucking arm off!”). Sarah McLachlan drops the F-bomb one time (in “Building a Mystery”) and gets censored every time her song plays. WTF? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761/40 "2005-09-22T11:52:22Z")
You beep the naughty word in Elton John’s “The \*\*\*\*\* is Back” and you don’t have much of a song left. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-little-faggot-and-other-censorable-lyrics-regularly-played-unexpurgated/322761.md?page=3)