There has been a small history of songs played on radio that tend to have swearing in them but seem to escape censorship thanks to either their status or the word is too difficult to make out.
'Freestyler' by Bomfunk MCs features the phrase stolen from Roy Chubby Brown's Smokie spoof 'who the fuck is Alice' but for many years this was kept in it on the radio, but I have more recently heard it censored.
Only last week on BBC Radio 2 Chris Tarrant played a listener's request of Pink Floyd's 'Money' which included, unedited, the word 'bullshit'.
And now BBC Radio 2 have added the - excellent - new single from the Scissor Sisters onto their playlist called 'Baby Come Home', again with a swear word uncensored, in this case 'fuck'. I've heard it twice now on Ken Bruce's show, both unedited.
Now some lyrics sites say it's not an explicit line but most do and if you look at the video below, at the 38s mark and you can clearly see in the original version it is a swear word. Now on the record it's not particular clear but you can tell it's explicit and the video confirms this.
So where do radio stations stand on explicit lyrics in songs? BBC Radio 2 had Maroon 5's 'Payphone' single on rotation a couple of weeks back and that was the radio edit version but that is a heavily swearing song in its original version. It's also well known that the station plays songs that feature guest rappers in alternative versions, such as Jessie J's 'Price Tag' and the aforementioned Maroon 5 track.
In the past even songs that don't have swearing in have been edited, such as Robbie William's 'Rudebox' with the dodgy-sounding, but clean, 'funk-faces' edited alongside some low-level drug references.
So who makes the decision about what swearing to include and not to include? Is it based on level, audibility or type of artist? Swearing doesn't particularly bother me in songs but, as someone who tries very hard on my own amateur shows to cut out all swearing and when radio stations I've been involved with have had complaints about lesser-offensive words such as 'bitch', what are the rules and where is the consistency?
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