Why do US music "clean" radio edits have such mild words censored?

Cafe Society
1

I figured this was closer to a General Question than a Cafe Society question, but the mods are more than free to touch that dial and spin it over to the classic and hit sounds of Cafe Society FM if they deem it appropriate. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I listen to the radio a lot (I spend a lot of time driving). Since there’s only so much news I can listen to, and I avoid talkback because it’s the radio equivalent of YouTube comments, I like to listen to various music stations too, and naturally sometimes they play songs which I know contain swear words.

Some of the stations have made a choice to play the “uncensored” version of songs with fairly mild swear-words by Australian standards; I’ve heard the word “shit” in lyrics on commercial radio quite often - while other radio stations play a “clean” edit with the naughty words blanked out or otherwise masked by the music. I also believe most of these edited versions come from the record labels, usually in the US, because the commercial radio stations don’t have the time to be messing around deciding which swear-words they’re OK with in a song and censoring the rest themselves.

Now, I completely understand why commercial FM radio stations can’t/won’t broadcast words like “Motherfucker”, “Nigga” and/or even “Shit” - but what I can’t work out though is why these “clean” edits often omit (mostly) harmless words like “Ass” or “Balls” yet leave “Bitch” in.

I understand there’s different community standards - I don’t think most adults in Australia would object to a song with the word “shit” in it being played uncensored outside the school drop-off/pick-up slot, for example - but are there really significant numbers of people in the US who would get an attack of the vapours over a radio station broadcasting a chart song which included uncensored lyrics like “The haters can kiss my ass”?

As an example, if you take the Macklemore song Thrift Shop, in the “clean” edit, the line where the artist is singing “I got a big cock” is censored, but a later reference to a used set of bedsheets smelling of “piss” is left in. (It goes without saying the refrain “This is fucking awesome” is censored out; I understand why that is.)

The “censored” edit of Lilly Allen’s Hard Out Here is almost unlistenable because so much of it is blanked out - yet, when you listen to the “uncensored” version most of the blanked words are things like “balls” and “tits” which, whilst not the most decorous of terms, are hardly something one would think the average person would find objectionable, particularly in light of how the song’s refrain is about how things are “hard out here for a bitch” and is uncensored.

Basically, I don’t get why “Bitch” is OK but “Ass” isn’t - or why “Cock” is objectionable but “Piss” is acceptable. Why is that? Who comes up with these things? Do people think it’s stupid too or are there significant numbers of people in the US genuinely glad their eardrums haven’t been exposed to the word “Ass” in a Top 40 song on the radio?

2

I haven’t heard the song you’re talking about, but sometimes it just depends on A)who the audience is and B)how noticeable the lyric is.

Up until just recently, almost every station didn’t edit the line “Who the fuck are you” out of The Who’s, Who are you. I remember being at work and hearing for the thousandth time and saying “Wait, what did he just say?”

Money For Nothing by Dire Straits uses faggot twice and has been played, unedited for twenty years, then one day I noticed the line just wasn’t there. Turns out Canada took up an issue with it and a bunch of other countries followed suit. Several have since backed off and started playing the original song again (or at least going back and forth).

3

You’re looking for a rational explanation where it doesn’t exist. The editing is done by some low-level technician at the radio studio, almost certainly with minimal input from his/her superiors, except that the song needs to be OK to air.

As such, there is a huge variation in what words get edited out, and it is utterly impossible to draw any sort of firm standards, except with the “classic” swear words like fuck or shit.

Even then, there can be some strange oversites. For many years, my local rock station played Guns ‘N’ Roses song “Mr. Brownstone” with the word motherfucker uncensored. Eventually, some time in the early 2000’s, they got around to censoring the word. I guess it fell thru the cracks until someone finally complained.

4

Another example that’s even more comical: Disturb’s “Down With the Sickness”.

The radio version edits out a prolonged rant that’s profane and, well, pretty disturbed. And that’s fine. But at the beginning, there’s a mumbled line that sounds like it might be “Oh, shit.” The second word get censored out on the radio version.

However, after listening to the song over & over again at home, I’m pretty sure that he’s actually saying “Push it.” So, they edited out something that might be a swear word. And yet the refrain contains the much more obvious line “You’re fucking it up” and this is not censored.

5

Remember Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”?

A month or so ago, I heard a radio station play a version that omitted the verse with “that little faggot’s got his own jet airplane, that little faggot is a millionaire.”

6

And even there, who knows? In the Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner,” sometimes it’ll be the “funky shit going down in the city,” and sometimes it’ll be ‘stuff’ instead of ‘shit.’

7

One of the music channels in the uk sometimes misses the first line of Queens ‘we are the champions’. Just in case anyone thinks he’s paid his jews rather than his dues I guess.

‘Olivers army’ by Elvis Costello often gets played in full on radio 2 even though it contains the ‘n-word’. Radio 2 is probably the most conservative and middle class station that plays music so it’s quite a surprise.

8

The BBC has banned some very ordinary songs over the years, including God Bless the Child" by Billie Holiday and I Am the Walrus" by The Beatles… Both now played, uncensored, on Radio 2.

Probably their most well known ban was on Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’aime,…Moi Non Plus. Later rescinded. There is a good video here - Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg - Je T'aime,...Moi Non Plus - YouTube

9

Moderator Action

Spinning the dial to the smooth sounds of Cafe Society FM.

(moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society)

10

Back when Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” was on the radio, there were three versions of the first line.

  1. The original: “When I think back about the crap I learned in high school.”
  2. The bleeped: “When I think back about the <bleep> I learned in high school.”
  3. The edited, where they took the same syllables from the second verse: “When I think back about the girls I knew in high school.”

You’d hear different versions on different stations.

Ultimately, censorship is always silly.

11

IMO America is a little more precious about this stuff than most of the rest of the world, and even within the USA there are regional differences. Here in Utah, “damn” is OK, but “God damn” gets the bleep every time, because the prevailing Mormon culture here does not dig teh blasphemes.

12

In the U.S. this is governed by the FCC. Their rules and guidelines may be found here:
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and-profanity

Some of their rules are a bit vague, though, like this one:

[QUOTE=FCC]

The FCC has defined profanity as “including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance.”

[/QUOTE]

Because the rules are vague, some radio stations take a more conservative approach than others. It also depends on what area you live in. If your average listener is a New York City cab driver who swears at every single person who cuts him off, a mild swear on the radio is much less likely to be reported to the FCC than if your average listener is someone like Ned Flanders somewhere in the U.S. Bible Belt.

Friends who work in the radio industry tell me that basically if the record company provides them with a censored version, they play it. In that sense the industry is kinda self-regulating. Record companies provide censored versions to radio stations because the stations often won’t play their music if it’s not censored out of fear of FCC fines. The record companies themselves decide exactly what to censor, based on sometimes vague FCC guidelines, which gives a lot of inconsistency. The FCC does not get involved in the production of every song and does not give their OK as to whether a particular song meets their guidelines. The FCC only gets involved when someone complains, and then they either fine or they don’t.

13

I have an DJ edited LP of Todd Rundgren A Wizard A True Star, banded for airplay.

The song When The Shit Hits The Fan has a blaring kazoo sound instead of the normal word “shit”. It sounds so stupid I doubt anyone ever played it on the air.

14

Sounds like they mean, as to amount to a nuisance… to the FCC. Enough people writing angry letters/e-mails or calling to scream and yell at you to What Are You Going To Do About This, and you will have to do something. Sometimes if a particular song will hardly if ever be heard on stations that Ned will listen to, he’ll hardly know to complain.

15

My question is different: Why the need for all the cursing in today’s pop music?

For example, there’s a Mariah Carey song, #Beautiful which is a nice, sleepy love song, the sort you can see Stevie Nicks and Don Henley singing to each other circa 1982. But for the life of me I can’t figure out why they would have lines like this in such a mellow song:

And, sorry but the inner 98yo in me is asking “Why?” Why couldn’t they just write the lyrics as “When you act like that…” and “your mind is just so beautiful”?

So, imho, the people who need to edit the songs are the songwriters themselves. When you put “ass” and “fucking” in the lyrics to an average AOR pop song, you’re taking your “freedom” to be crude more than a bit far.

16

I always get a kick out it when they bleep god but not damn in ‘god damn’.

17

I listened to KROQ when I lived in L.A. KROQ is called an ‘alternative’ station that appeals to a younger crowd. (I never grew up, and am nearly as old as Kevin & Bean!) I always wondered why they edited ‘tits’ out of Sublime’s Wrong Way. Seems like an innocuous word to me, especially for that audience in that city.

I was driving through California’s central valley (farm land), and they removed a significant part of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. ISTR that they removed the ‘And the coloured girls go…’ line each time… but left in the ‘giving head’ lyric.

18

Actually I’ve heard “ass” regularly on American radio, from Beck’s “Loser” to the live version of Garth Brooks’ “Friends In Low Places”.

19

Especially when you can be just as offensive without using any naughty words at all, right?

[QUOTE=Jessica Simpson]
Pour yourself all over me
And I’ll cherish every drop here on my knees
[/QUOTE]

20

I know you’re joking, but yes, exactly. It’s better to hear that than “I want to suck your cock”.