Censorship of music is the practice of restricting free access to musical works. This censorship may stem from a wide variety of motivations, including moral, political, military or religious reasons. Censorship can range from the complete government-enforced legal prohibition of a musical work, to private, voluntary removal of content when a musical work appears in a certain context. Examples of censorship of music range from changed or excluded lyrics (this falls into the category of what is known as “radio edit”), to restricted cover album artwork, to the banning of artists airing on the radio or television for numerous conflicts, such as moral and racist issues.
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Music censorship began in the early 1940’s-1950’s, when traditional and conservative values were being challenged by early rock and R&B. “Sex and drugs were no longer hidden and secretive acts, but something to be exposed and celebrated” (Hall, 2009). R&B music began to grasp people’s attention as well, with an emphasis on sexual desires and drug references (Hall, 2009). Many people were appalled by rock and R&B because they were thought to corrupt the young minds of America and promote immoral behavior. Actual censorship began in 1955, when over 30 songs were banned; many of them by black artists. In the early 1970’s and 80’s, music censorship expanded from songs to music videos. Heavy metal rock and rap music were targeted by moral authorities due to the amount of violence that was expressed in the music. For unknown reasons, music videos performed by black artists were not being aired on MTV; that is, until complaints started streaming in from the public. Michael Jackson’s popular hit, “Billie Jean,” was the first video by a black artist to be shown on TV (Hall, 2009). The birthing of the famous black and white parental advisory label occurred in 1990, after the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) urged the music industry and government to create and promote a rating system for music, evaluating the musical content, in 1985.
It may be as simple as South African musician Johnny Clegg has said: “Censorship is based on fear.”
Music is a free expression of the ideas, traditions and emotions of individuals and of peoples. It may express musicians’ hopes and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their very identity as a culture. Yet these expressions may conflict with those of people in power. The ideas themselves may simply be unpopular or outside the current thinking or practices of a regime or special interest group. For there are those the world over who are threatened by the very nature of a free exchange of ideas. There are those who will stop at nothing to stifle them.
Music censorship has been implemented by states, religions, educational systems, families, retailers and lobbying groups – and in most cases they violate international conventions of human rights. freemuse.org
In order to allow songs to be played wherever possible, it is common to censor particular words, particularly profanity. Some music labels or artists produce censored versions themselves, sometimes with alternative lyrics, to comply with the rules set by various radio and television programs. Some stations decide to censor them themselves using one of several methods:
One of the earliest examples of censorship of music on the radio is from the 1940’s. George Formby's "When I'm Cleaning Windows" was banned from BBC radio due to the "smutty lyrics", though Formby's wife Beryl managed to change BBC's opinion.[1] The ostensibly offending lyrics were:
Another example of censorship is when, in 1956, ABC radio refused to play Billie Holiday's "Love for Sale" because the lyrics are about prostitution, but "Love For Sale" would be on the radio again. ABC also made Cole Porter change the lyric of "I Get A Kick Out Of You", which was a hit for Frank Sinatra. Porter's original stated "I get no kick from cocaine". The cleaned-up version was "I get perfume from Spain".
Another example is when the Rolling Stones went on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan asked them to sing their hit song “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, but he asked them to change the lyrics to Let’s Spend Some Time Together so it would be considered more appropriate. (Napier)
Due to its position as a public broadcaster, BBC Radio has a policy of not playing songs that contain product placement; Ray Davies of the British rock band The Kinks was forced to travel back to the United Kingdom during an American tour in order to change references to Coca-Cola to "cherry cola" from their hit song "Lola" in order to allow it to be given airplay in the country.[2]
BBC Radio was also involved in a controversy surrounding their play of the Sex Pistols single "God Save the Queen" released by Virgin Records on 27 May 1977 to coincide with the Queen's silver jubilee celebrations. Sales of the single were not prohibited, but BBC's Radio 1 banned it from airplay. It had reached number two in the BBC's own charts, but the public service broadcaster — at that time the BBCs most popular radio channel — pulled it because of its lyrics. In fact, the single reached number one on the chart.[3] The band was harassed by police when it (loudly) performed the song from a boat on the Thames. (See the entry for Sid Vicious and God Save the Queen on the Sex Pistols page.)
In 1981, the International Year of Disabled People, saw the BBC pull airplay of Ian Dury's "Spasticus Autisticus" until after dark. Dury, who had suffered from polio, intended the song to be a positive message for people with disabilities. The chorus' refrain "I'm spasticus, autisticus" was inspired by the response of the rebelling gladiators of Rome, who — at least in the version of the story portrayed in the Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus — answered to the name of their leader, "I am Spartacus", to protect him.
Radio 1 in 1984 pulled the "Relax" single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Radio 1 had concluded that the lyric "when you're gonna come" referred to sexual climax. However, FGTH has refused that their song's lyrics were sexual. In a famous incident, Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read took the record off the turntable and broke it in two. After this, but without consulting Read, Radio 1 decided to pull the record — which sent the record straight to number one for a five week stay.
In Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels", the line usually censored from airplay is "Let's roll another joint". In MTV's airings and on many radio stations, the word "joint" was reversed, obscuring it.[4]
On September 10, 2001, coinciding with the September 11, 2001 attacks, the video and single for the Rammstein song "Ich will" was released, portraying the band as terrorists who want to get a message across and receiving a kind of terrorist award for their "actions". After the attacks, the video clip was broadcast only late at night in the United States, although many media officials and politicians requested the video to be removed from television completely.[5]
In Rage Against the Machine's 1992 song "Killing in the Name," towards the end of the song, the frontman, Zack De La Rocha, screams out "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" sixteen times before the screaming of "Motherfucker!". Some radio stations block out the whole part, some just censor the word "fuck", and others play a shortened version (clocking at 4:06) which removes this section (going straight from the end of the guitar solo to the outro) along with the intro. However, in the same year, BBC Radio 1 was flooded by 138 phone call complaints by offended listeners after DJ Bruno Brookes accidentally played the uncensored version of "Killing in the Name" on BBC Radio 1's Top Forty Countdown show on a Sunday afternoon.
In December 2011, the song "Oak Tree Lament", by Buckinghamshire folk band Dirty Mavis — a protest against the building of a high speed railway line through unspoiled countryside — reached number 4 in the download charts, despite being banned from radio play in Britain by the broadcasting regulator.[6] [7]
Some words have also been mistaken for inappropriate ones. In The Black Eyed Peas's song, "My Humps", the word "brothers" is mistaken for "fuckers", and in Keri Hilson's Knock You Down, Ne-Yo's line "pimp ship flying high" was censored on radio due to ship being mistaken for shit'.
In 1991, Grand Upright v. Warner clarified that sampling without permission from the original material's copyright holders is prohibited in the United States as copyright infringement. As a result, there are a few cases, particularly in hip hop music, where record labels are forced to reissue material with anything ruled to infringe on existing copyrights removed. An early example, before the 1991 US court case, is the recall of the Euro n?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. The album, full of unauthorized sampling, was recalled under the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society by a complaint from the band ABBA.
Although not common in most democratic societies, more authoritarian governments censor music deemed critical of the government, the military, stores, TV stations, or other authorities. In many societies without a well established free press, popular music is one of the few avenues to express and share ideas, even when those ideas are encoded in otherwise innocuous song lyrics.
A recent example is Lady Gaga's song "Judas" (from her album Born This Way) which was banned in Lebanon in April 2011 for being "offensive to Christianity", according to the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper.[8] Moreover, VH1 India censored the word 'Jesus' itself from the track.
The original cover of nude Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper.[9]
German heavy metal band Scorpions' 1970s album Virgin Killer's artwork had to be changed because the original cover art showed a nude prepubescent girl, with a glass crack obscuring her genitalia. Simply, the alternative cover art depicts the members of the band in various poses.
Death metal band Cannibal Corpse's album Butchered at Birth was censored in Germany until June 2006, this album featured hanging fetus skeletons and two zombie slaughtering pregnant woman's corpse.
The popular anarcho punk site www.anarcho-punk.net had a page on the social media site Facebook until Facebook decided to delete it a few months after censoring one of their journal articles. Facebook gave no notification to the site before deleting.
Walmart has a censorship policy that requires artists to censor their albums before they carry them in store.
Some artists or record labels choose to censor themselves in order to avoid negative publicity or a Parental Advisory label. This is sometimes due to the timing of events outside of their control, such as how the September 11, 2001 attacks affected audiovisual entertainment. The release and subsequent advertising of Michael Jackson's greatest hits album was delayed until after his 2005 trial; it is not known if a guilty verdict would have further changed the timing of the release.
Examples of artists who have had their work edited or censored:
The total censorship of a song is often reported in the mass media and often has the effect of drawing more attention to the song than it would have received had it not been banned. Equally, the censorship of a word can highlight it to such a degree that it makes it more obvious what the singer has said.
In 1993, when Nirvana's In Utero album was released, it was forced to be censored by their label as well as by distributors Walmart and Kmart. Nirvana's frontman, Kurt Cobain, responded by saying "I just feel bad for all the kids who are forced to buy their music from big chain stores and have to have the edited music". The name of the song "Rape Me" was changed to "Waif Me" for these stores. The name change only appears on the back cover. The original title is still stated in the liner notes and the album insert.
The Ages. True Endeavors, n.d. Web. 3 Nov 2010.
