Bowdlerise/Music: Difference between revisions

** Incidentally, both versions are available on iTunes, [[Orwellian Retcon|and not marked as "clean" or "uncensored".]] So, best of luck...

* The song "Almost" by Bowling for Soup, a title quite appropriate in that after the edits it's [[Incredibly Lame Pun|almost]] a different song. For example:

But lost to a slut with much bigger breastses }}

** ...became...

But lost to a girl who sewed her own dresses }}

** Then we have this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNbOr0ylYZk little number]. Note the omission of "Drunk" and "fourteen" but the distinct presence of "slut with much bigger breatses". Seems like a stupid place to draw the line.

* The Stories' "Brother Louie", a song about the joy and pain of an interracial love affair turned marriage proposal, lost its unique punch when a brief spoken word interlude representing the fathers of the fated couple was cut out from the original Hot Chocolate version that it was a cover of. White voice: "No spook in the family." Black voice: "No honk in the family."

* Wheatus' song "Teenage Dirtbag" was censored on UK radio by blanking words out of one verse:

My {{spoiler|ass}} if he knew the truth }}

** Interestingly enough, this song was part of the UK soundtrack album for the anime series Beyblade V-Force. Even more interesting that only the second line of the aforementioned chorus has a censor blank on it.

** A similar phenomenon happens with Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" when "Oooh, this my shit" becomes "Oooh, this my shhh".

* ''[[Guitar Hero]] 3'' comically censors the word "niggers" in The [[Dead Kennedys]]' "[[Holiday in Cambodia]]":

** The same edit changes the line "Kiss ass while you bitch" to "Kiss ''up'' while you ''snitch''".

** When [[System of a Down|Serj Tankian]] and [[Foo Fighters]] covered the song for an appearance on MTV's Video Music Awards in 2007, they had to use the same altered lyric.

** Well, who wouldn't have? The bowdlerisation didn't even comply with the ''rhyme scheme'', for crying out loud.

* The [[Dresden Dolls]] song "Coin Operated Boy" has two versions:

::vs.

** Hilariously, the music video uses the second, bowdlerised line, but uses the video (and a back scrubber, and facial expressions) to imply the first. Apparently Amanda's known to roll her eyes when performing live and being made to use the bowdlerised version line.

* One band name that was bowdlerized was the Butthole Surfers. When they hit the Top 40 with "Pepper," many radio stations called them the "BH Surfers." Their name is even rendered as "B****h**** Surfers" on the clean version of the album ''Electriclarryland''.

* The song "Daddy Cool" was shortened by about 10 seconds by Portugal radio broadcasters to remove the ''squick'' feminine voice.

* The Song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a supreme example of this, in its original form it was about a hobo convincing a young boy to follow him with tales of mountains made of candy, who he then [forced to "sit on his peg". The original ending of the song even went like this:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains. }}

* On some radio stations the line "Praying to a God that I don't believe in" in the song Breakeven by the Skript was changed to "Praying to a God that I barely believe in."

* Comedian Billy Connolly's parody version of the song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." contained a line about the singer's wife calling him "an F-ing C". This was beeped out on the single.

* P!nk's recent song "F**kin' Perfect" was changed for the radio, obviously. The lyrics change from

Like you're nothing, you're f**kin' perfect, to me }}

to

Like you're nothing, you are perfect, to me }}

** May cause quite a surprise for fans searching for this song online.

* Bob Carlisle's album ''Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace)'' has a song called "It Is Well with My Soul" (not the hymn), that borrowed a few lines from a well-known [[James Brown]] song for the bridge. Problem: Carlisle's mostly Christian audience (at the time) likely wouldn't have appreciated the term "sex machine". So the lyric becomes: "Get up (get on up)/Stay on the scene/Aww, [[Lampshaded Double Entendre|you know what I mean]]."

* Kanye West's "Power" originally had a second verse that started with a somewhat unwarranted [[Take That]] against ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' and a much-needed [[Take That]] against Kanye himself:

As I look down at my dia-mond-encrusted piece" }}

** Naturally, when Kanye West was chosen as the musical guest for the season 36 episode hosted by Bryan Cranston, the entire second verse had to be changed. One would expect the ''SNL'' [[Take That]] to be altered and some of the profanity to be replaced with euphemisms, but instead a completely new verse was written ([[Your Mileage May Vary|and, in some reviewers' opinions, a better verse than the original one]]). The new second verse goes like this:

But I be on the same thing ’til you prove me wrong." }}

* Some stations edited the reggae-rap bridge from [[Sugarland]]'s "Stuck Like Glue", either because it was mildly suggestive ("Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, feelin' kinda sick / Just a spoonful of sugar make it better real quick"), because it was so bizarre sounding, or both.

* Averted in the [[Green Day]] album "21st Century Breakdown". Wal-Mart attempted to get Green Day to record a censored version of the album, as the store does not sell explicit albums. The band refused.

* Canadian music video channel [[Much Music]] has a history of censoring references to suicide. It is therefore unsurprising that the word "suicide" was removed from Papa Roach's "Last Resort." More surprising was the removal of the word "resort", despite being ''part of the title!''

* "No News" by country music band Lonestar. "Joined a cult, joined the Klan" became "Playing guitar with the band".

* "Alright Guy" by Todd Snider. In at least the official music video, the line "Now maybe I'm dirty, and maybe I smoke a little dope / Hey, it ain't like I'm goin' on TV and tearin' up pictures of the Pope" silenced the word "dope". Later on, "Hey, I was only kidding when I called them a couple of dicks" (in reference to a couple police officers) reverses the word "dicks".

* [[Kid Rock]] and [[Sheryl Crow]]'s "Picture": "I've been fueling up on cocaine and whiskey" is either changed to "water and whiskey", or just mutes "cocaine".

** Speaking of [[Kid Rock]], he also parodied this in the song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOQE_LUESs "Cowboy"].

* Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" has all the gun references (mostly the words "bullet" and "gun") removed from radio edits and the rare times it appears on a music video channel.

* [[The Notorious B.I.G.]]'s "Gimme The Loot" includes a line about robbing a pregnant woman at gun point. Apparently, this was considered beyond the pale by either album producer Sean Combs or someone at the record label, because even the otherwise uncensored version of the song still censors that line. It's somewhat bizarre to listen to a song that's full of cursing and violence and realize you've just heard the word "pregnant" bleeped out. "Machine Gun Funk" also [[Sound Effect Bleep|Sound Effect Bleeps]] out the phrase "the blue suits" with police sirens for unknown reasons, though the line is so relatively innocuous that this might have even just been done [[Rule of Cool|because it sounded cool]].

* After Lee Hazelwood threatened to sue them over their lyric changes, the only way [[Megadeth]] could include their cover of "These Boots" on subsequent releases of ''Killing is My Business... and Business is Good!'' was to censor every changed lyric, resulting in a remastered version with about half the words being bleeped out, which makes their version seem much filthier than it actually was.

* NWOBHM band Tank have an odd subversion. The booklet in the 2005 reissue of ''Honour and Blood'' blatantly changes the lyrics of many of the songs to remove violent or controversial content. However, the actual audio remains unaltered aside from the remastering, leading to numerous situations where what the booklet says is clearly not what Algy is actually singing. While some of the changes may well be a case of the people making the booklet [[Critical Research Failure|trying to write out the lyrics by ear instead of looking them up]] and ending up with a [[Mondegreen]], others definitely seem to be deliberate, such as the removal of all references to Islam in "The War Drags Ever On" (which plays the "all Muslims are terrorists" card so hard that many people would be shocked to learn that it was written over a decade and a half before 9/11). For example, the lyrics for the first verse of the song are actually:

Whatever rights had a man }}

** But according to the booklet, what he's singing should be heard as:

Whatever rights have a man }}

* Brazilian comedy group Casseta & Planeta has a song that the chorus roughly translates to [[Lyrical Dissonance|"I am so sad/I am a fucking wreck/I'm in the shit/Became a card out of the deck"]]. The G-rated version featured on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9sjR1I6Xcw this televised performance] has an impressively funny array of bowdlerization. Said chorus is translated first to a quite risqué version (I am a goddamn wreck/I [[Black Comedy Rape|got down to pick up]] [[Slippery Soap|the soap]]), another alludes the original line "eu me fudi" ("I've fucked myself") with "I've made a fondue", and the final one is a [[Stealth Pun]] lampshading that they're running out of words to replace the cuss word "caralho" ("I bought a dictionary, couldn't find a word that rhymes with baralho").