Getting Crap Past the Radar/Music: Difference between revisions
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{{
You might notice many of those songs fit [[Intercourse
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* [[The Beatles (
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* Several songs contain bits of profanity that no one notices:
** Prior to the songs by Cee-Lo Green and Pink, several songs containing the word "bitch" in the title have made the top 5 of the Hot 100, most notably Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" in 1974, and Meredith Brooks' "Bitch" in 1998. One of the earliest songs that contained an uncensored "bitch" to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 was Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl" ("You can rely on the old man honey/it's a bitch girl, ..." and "You're a [[Rich Bitch]], girl"), while Jimmy Buffett's 1977 single "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" contains the lyric "... Good times and riches and son of a bitches ... ."
** The Charlie Daniels Band has gotten away with several "ass" and "son of a bitch" instances in the lyrics of their songs ("asses" along with "fags" in 1973's "Uneasy Rider," and "son of a bitch" in 1979's "The Devil Went Down to Georia").
** In "Big Bad John," the concluding lyric in the offical release was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man ... Big John!" In 1961, even the mild profanity "hell," outside religious contexts, was considered a no-no by some conservative groups, so a second release was issued, containing the milder "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man ... Big John!" However, earlier in the song, there is the lyric "Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell ... ," which apparently did not raise any objections. As for the song, "Big Bad John" topped the Billboard Hot 100 (five weeks), Easy Listening Singles (nine weeks) and Hot C&W Sides charts (two weeks) at the end of 1961, marking one of the earliest No. 1 songs to contain (mild) profanity.
*** Christians don't object to the use of the word "hell," ''per se''; they object to people using it ''in vain'' (that is, in a context other than the eschatological one). Similarly, "bitch" is okay if the female being described is a female ''dog''.
* A surprisingly subtle example in [[
** When Taylor ducks behind her book in the video for "The Story of Us", she can clearly be seen mouthing [[Precision F-Strike|"Shit!"]] at the sight of her ex.
** "Sparks Fly" managed to get rather suggestive lines past the [[Moral Guardians]] (see the song's entry on [[Intercourse
* Rock and metal bands in the [[Red China|People's Republic of China]] tend to do this with their lyrics. At larger music festivals, all the lyrics have to be approved by the Communist censors, but many musicians still manage to get veiled insults past the radar.
* An example from NewBoyz: the supposed lyrics to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j1jU8vp7tc "Back Seat"] hide the fact that they drop the [[Atomic F-Bomb|F-bomb]] [[Once Is Not Enough|twice]]. While many radio stations realize that they are actually saying "She just trying to fuck comfortably" instead of "She just trying to fit comfortably", they managed to hoodwink [[YouTube]], as it is not censored. Again the line "you're function with the man girl" gets by in their [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=herLMUn2-U0 music video], however it is actually "you're [[Future Slang|fuxing]] with the man girl", which makes a lot more sense grammatically (which should be [[Grammar Nazi|an obvious clue]] but maybe [[YouTube]] censors are [[Did Not Do the Research|illiterate]]).
* The new Dev song "In the Dark" practically had no radar. I mean:
{{quote|
** Not to mention that the video had a naked Dev, but her breasts were covered up by human hands.
* Also, LMFAO flung its name past the radar. "[[Fun
** And its' songs are just doing whatever they could to have them fling it off- I'm in Miami Bitch, I am Just a Whore, Sexy and I Know It.
*** Sexy and I Know It just got everything past the radar! "Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah...oh yeah wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah, oh yeah." And also "Girl look at that bodies, girl look at the bodies. Girl look at the bodies, I work out. That's sexy and I know it, sexy and I know it, ooh sexy and I know it, sexy-sexy-sexy-sexy and I know it!"
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* The Police's hit song "Rehumanize Yourself" features the line "he's got his hand in the air with the other cunts" which never seems to be censored on classic rock radio, most likely because censoring would make more people notice it.
* Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" is even confirmed by [[Word of God]] as being about the singer's bisexuality/mixed feelings in the bedroom with her boyfriend (hence the chorus), though this is easily passed up by listeners as the song is initially wrapped up in [[Double Entendre]]-laden Texas Hold 'Em metaphors. She also has a habit of singing Mondegreens that are a wee bit naughtier than the official lyrics and getting away with it. [[Lady Gaga]] also confirms that muffin meant [[All Men Are Perverts|exactly]] [[Freud Was Right|what]] you thought [[Unusual Euphemism|it meant]].
** Also in Gaga's 'Bad Romance', part of the lyrics go "I want your psycho, your vertigo schtick-- want you in my rear window, baby you're sick." This is kind of a subverted example because more people find it dirty before they realize it doubles as a [[Shout
* Lady Gaga's album Born This Way as a whole is good at this, not in the way of sexual content(there is plenty but not enough for a Tipper sticker), but for language sneaking. The mild swears hell and damn are sung clearly in some parts, but give it another listen and you will know that they aren't the worst words on the album, Scheiße is German for shit, but the song actually contains a couple uses of 'bullshit' in English, but somewhat twist so you can't hear it too clear. The opening to Bad Kids also has the word shit, but it sounds more like "[[She OUWT]]". Then after the first line is "I'm a bitch", but 'bitch' is swirled around and you can hardly make it out at all. Heavy Metal Lover actually contains the F word, and you can actually kind of make it out, yet the album got away without a Tipper Sticker.
* Bowling for Soup's "My Wena"
{{quote|
* "Wolf Moon" by [[Type O Negative]] isn't about werewolves. It uses werewolves as a metaphor. It's about the narrator [[Intercourse
** [[Squick|...I will never enjoy that song again.]]
* The song "Blubberboy" by Regurgitator reached #1 in Australia. It has the line "Rub me on your cunt I'll come back again". Since that worked so well, they tried to be more blatant and also charted with the song titled "I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am".
* [[Faith No More]]'s "Epic" contains the following lyrics "So you lay down on it and you do it some more" after Mike Patton was adviced to remove the f-word from the song. In concert the line is "and you fuck it some more". This is weird because there are other Faith No More songs which contain swearing.
* "Boys Light Up" by Australian Crawl is considered to be a classic Aussie rock song. But if you listen closely it's all about sex with air hostesses and also about a wife using sexual aids when her husbands away. It is really a really, really dirty song.
* "Addicted" by Simple Plan- according to Pierre Bouvier, the point of the song was to be the first band to get the word "dick" on to [[Much Music]]. "I'm a addic-dic-dic-dic-dicted to you."
** He actually does say "dick" in the song. In the bridge, Pierre sings "I'm a dick. I'm addicted to you." Most people who aren't familiar with the song assume he said "I'm addict," even though that doesn't make grammatical sense. That's why the song got past [[Much Music]]'s sensors.
** However, the song was edited for [[Karaoke Revolution]].
* The [[Blue
{{quote|
right at the very end, on the very brink of hearing.
* ''Dominance and Submission'' is apparently about a ten year old boy invited on a New Year's Eve car drive by an older friend and her brother. Listen closely and join the dots as to what really appears to happen to him in the seamy underbelly of squeaky-clean 1964 America...
* Maroon 5 pulled this off with "If I Never See Your Face Again" which is ''blatantly'' about a pair of sex buddies.
{{quote|
I wonder if he's half the lover that I am. }}
** Maroon 5 tend to do this a lot; for instance in "Harder To Breathe":
{{quote|
Hoping somebody someday'll do you like I did! }}
** I'm thinkin' a lot of Maroon 5's music is about sex...take a second listen. 'Member "This Love"?
{{quote|
Sinking my fingertips
Into every inch of you... }}
** Or, from the same song:
{{quote|
Keep her coming every night
So hard to keep her satisfied }}
*** Neither of these made it past MTV's radar, though, which only served to ''point out'' the dirtier meaning to anyone who had heard the song elsewhere uncensored.
** Wake Up Call.
{{quote|
With ''another man in my bed''.
Don't you care about me anymore? I don't think so?
Shot him dead, won't come around here anymore. }}
** Honestly, it's unusual to hear a Maroon 5 song that ISN'T somehow about sex.
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* [[The Who]]'s "Who Are You?" is almost never censored on radio stations that normally censor, despite Daltrey ad-libbing "aw, who the fuck are you?" in the chorus towards the end of the song.
** And what about the line "I only feel right on my knees"?
* Another Who song, "Squeeze Box" is about a wife tiring her husband out and keeping the neighbours up all night with her rampant ''accordion playing''. What else could it mean?
{{quote|
And she's playing all night, and the music's all right,
Momma's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night.'' }}
** Umm, you think the title Squeeze '''BOX''' is confusing?
*** [[Word of God]] says that [[Blatant Lies|it's really about an accordion]], [[All Men Are Perverts|it's just you]] who's [[Wild Mass Guessing|reading extra things into it]].
** It's obviously the part of [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s childhood we never heard about.
* The best example from the Who, in my opinion, is "Pictures of Lily" which is sung from the position of a kid whose dad gave him porn to masturbate to in order to help him fall asleep. This is one of their signature early hits. Another one from around the same time that got decent airplay was "Mary Anne With the Shaky Hands" which features the line: "What she done to a man with those shaky hands" in the chorus. Quite a few other Who songs pulled this sort of thing off quite well, too!
* They slipped one past the BBC radio censors in 1966 hit single ''Substitute''. Allegedly hacked off with Beatles-style fangirls coming to their concerts to screamm hysterically and ignore the music, there is a point in the song where thry play with words and clearly sing "Prostitute..."
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** If you're going to quote it, quote it ''all'': "You're a bum, you're a punk / You're an old slut on junk, lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed / You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot / Happy Christmas your ass / I thank God it's our last". Surely the greatest Christmas song of all time, it never fails to fill me with a warm glow. Not so much "getting crap past the radar" as [[Refuge in Audacity|"flying crap straight over the radar at top speed and launching heatseekers after anyone who wants to argue about it"]].
** The movie PS I Love You lampshaded it. The song was played at the funeral under the pretense that it was the main character's husband's favorite song. At the "You're a faggot" line the pastor started ''singing along''.
* Approximately 2.56 into "Hey Jude" by [[The Beatles (band)]], John Lennon's swearing, "Oh!... Fucking hell" was [http://www.chrishunt.biz/features01.html not removed from the released version of the song] When the band's music is remastered and put made available for digital download (surely can't be long now...) I can't help but wonder if it'll be edited out...
** There's tons of this in Beatles songs. In the "she's the kind of girl..." section of Girl, the background vocals are "Tit tit tit tit tit..." The "Eggman" in I am The Walrus refers to Eric Burdon of the Animals, called such because he liked to cover naked girls in egg yolk, Maxwell's Silver Hammer mentions Joan and her "late nights all alone with a test tube," Penny Lane mentions "fish and finger pie" (a modification of a [[British Accents|Scouser]] term for "heavy petting"). And of course, "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?".
** "Come together...Right now...Over me" I can't be the only one who thinks its describing bukkake...
** ''"Baby you're a rich man too"'', released at the time of a rift with gay Jewish manager Brian Epstein, contains Lennons's acid take on the lyric ''"Baby you're a rich fag Jew"''.
** The word "fuck" also makes an appearance in "Revolution 9," around the five-minute mark: "I joined the fucking navy and went to sea - BLOCK THAT KICK, BLOCK THAT KICK!"
* Who would have guessed that the upbeat, catchy song "Semi-Charmed Life" [[Lyrical Dissonance|was a song about sexual addictions and crystal meth usage]]? Don't believe me? Google the lyrics.
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* Not as much gotten past the radar, but let right through with the Red Carpet treatment, [[Queen Latifah]]'s "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8cHxydDb7o U.N.I.T.Y.]" often ran on radio stations with the lines "Bitch" and "Ho" uncensored. Most likely because the lyrics made it impossible to take the use of the words as offensive.
* Method Man's "All I Need" often got away with the oft-repeated line "I swear to God I hope we fuckin' die together" by stashing it in the instrument line and covering it with the more recognizable chorus.
* Sheryl Crow's song "A Change Would Do You Good" contains the line [[A Date
* "Yummy Yummy Yummy" written by Arthur Resnick and recorded by the Ohio Express. What sort of "love" can one have in one's "tummy," I wonder?
** First time I heard that song, a friend was singing it at lunch. He's gay, and he substituted love for... something else.
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** And of course, with title edited to match the lyrics, it was in the E-rated ''[[Dance Dance Revolution|DDR Max 2]]''
* "Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia, up in my bedroom / I got up to wash my face, when I came back to bed someone had taken my place" Now, what kind of lovin' would cause a guy to go wash his face after making it with a girl, hmmm?
** Oy. Kids today and their filthy, filthy minds, combined with their lack of historical knowledge. The song came out in 1970, ''when most homes weren't air-conditioned.'' "''In the afternoon,''" the second floor of a house ("''up'' in my bedroom") that doesn't have A/C can turn into an oven pretty quickly, even if it's not that hot outside. Try it sometime.
*** Perhaps, but my grandma still banned her kids from singing it for being "too smutty." Although she ALSO had a dirty mind.
*** [[Completely Missing the Point|Nice try]]. What kind of A/C only works on the body, and leaves the face sweaty? And for that matter, what kind of lovemaking leaves the body not needing a shower, ''especially'' in those conditions?
* [
** [[Don't Explain the Joke|For those that don't speak Swedish]], "Åh, när ni tar saken i egna händer" roughly means "Oh, when you take matters into your own hands" but literally translates to "[[Does This Remind You of Anything?|Oh, when you take the thing into your own hands]]". Also, the singers appear to be making a conscious effort to be pronouncing "Åh, när ni" as "Onani", which is the Swedish word for "masturbation".
*** "Onanii" is also a Japanese word for "masturbation" (one of thousands of loanwords, although they actually got it from German in this case), so Japanese [[YouTube]] and [[Nico Nico Douga]] users got the joke immediately.
* "[[One
** Of particular note is the part where she talks about the threesome she had while her boyfriend was out of town.
* [[
** Ah, Cherry Pie, the song that removes all doubt about exactly what the singer is referring to Exactly seven lines into the first Verse. Swingin' to the Left/Swingin' to the right/Think about baseball/swing all night
* An old Dixie Chicks song called "Goodbye Earl" had a sly line at the end stating that the female protagonists of the song sell "Tennessee Ham and strawberry jam". If anybody's ever seen the video, at the Tennessee Ham part all three girls do a sort of hip thrust toward the camera and slap themselves on the ass, which is followed by a shot of one of the girls doing a rather suggestive taste test on the aforementioned strawberry jam. Turns out that selling Tennessee ham is a euphemism used in connection with prostitution...
** Wait, so prostitution might be arguably better than staying with a violently abusive spouse, but-- but-- the other one was... eek!
* "Son of A Preacher Man" anyone? About a girl being deflowered by the local preacher's son? With the line "Looking to see how much we've grown?"
** Considering Dusty Springfield's original version is by far the most famous, it's not hard to mentally insert "No, really, the only boy. Ever. And even then I was checking out his sister."
* "Afternoon Delight". "This is a song about afternoon lovemaking."
** This becomes a plot point in the eponymously-titled episode of ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]''.
** In the episode "Sexy", on ''[[
* Rihanna's "Shut Up and Drive" is just a big [[Double Entendre]].
* "Knockin' at Your Back Door" by Deep Purple. Think about the possible meanings of the title... {{spoiler|yeah, it's about anal.}}
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** [[Lampshaded]] in the music video.
** The Script pulled the same trick with their song "If You See Kay."
* [[
* It seems like whenever [[Pink Floyd]]'s "Money" is played on air, they never censor the line "Money, it's a hit/Don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit."
** The early [[Pink Floyd]] single "Candy And A Currant Bun" was originally written as "Let's Roll Another One"; The BBC objected to the obvious drug reference of the title (as well as lyrics like "I'm high, don't try to spoil my fun"). The recorded version changed these lyrics, but somehow ''also'' slipped in "Ooh don't talk with me / please just fuck with me".
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** Not to mention the fact that the band's name come from {{spoiler|the name of a gigantic metallic dildo used to sodomise young teenage men engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation in William S. Burrough's ''Naked Lunch''.}}
** Becker and Fagen Lampshaded this when they [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1323851/Steely-Dan-steal-big-prize-as-stars-glitter-at-the-Grammys.html thanked Eminem] at the Grammys, which they won for an album discussing psychological torture, adultery, incest, teenage prostitutes, really awesome drug addiction, professional dominas... hope I didn't forget anything.
* [[ACDC
** The list goes on all "Night of the Long Knives".
** And "Let Me Put My Love Into You", which isn't even an innuendo, and made the [
** "At least half" is a bit of an understatement.
* Death in Vegas's song "Dirt" uses a number of samples from Woodstock, including Joe Mac Donald's FISH cheer: "What's that spell?" to which one hundred thousand hippies chant, "Fuck!" over and over again. Since the, "Gimme an F! Gimme a U!..." part was left out, it's a bit hard to figure out just what the crowd is screaming unless you know the reference.
* The Violent Femmes did this a ''lot''. From "36-24-36", which spoke of a woman being the perfect measurements and them wanting to bang her, to "Gimme The Car", which was about getting a girl drunk, high and then banging her, to the "Country Death Song", which involved the voice of it pushing his youngest daughter into a bottomless pit and then hanging himself in shame... I don't know how they weren't banned from radio.
* Sugarland's song "It Happens" sticks a "ssssh" before the title.
* The [[Primus]] song "Winona's Big Brown Beaver." I mean just look at the title.
* Stupify by [[
* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] is generally thought of as being family-friendly, but he occasionally slips one past the radar. Like this brilliant euphemism in "One More Minute", for instance:
{{quote|
You got me feeling down in the dumps
'Cause I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love
[[A Date
** An even better one? in [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|"Don't Download this Song"]] If you listen closely, at the end he says ''cheap bastard''. Wow.
** In "Hardware Store," he mentions automatic circumcisers among the other things in the store.
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* [[The Smiths]] song "A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours" contains the line "you're still a young man/so phone me, phone me, phone me", but Morrissey enunciates it so that it sounds like "fuck me."
* [[The Clash]], "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"
{{quote|
You're happy when I'm on my knees
...
Come on and let me know
Should I cool it or should I blow? }}
** Debatable, "blow" is slang for "split", "leave", "vacate". And "on my knees" is a common expression for being in a vulnerable or desperate position. Um, not necessarily the way being implied.
* There are three versions of [[Avril Lavigne]]'s ''Girlfriend'': The censored version (which blanks out the second half of "mother-fucking"), The edited version (It gets replaced with "One and only", and the uncensored version (which plays out the full word).
** Avril also did the "add more words" version of [[Last
{{quote|
I'd say I wanna blow you...
...Away, be with you every night
Am I squeezing you too tight
If I could say what I want to see
I want to see you go down
On one knee, marry me today
Guess, I’m wishing my life away
With these things I’ll never say }}
* "Poison Ivy" by The Coasters seems to be about a promiscuous, psychotic woman who gives men a sexually transmitted disease. Ah, those innocent 50s!
** Although, thanks to the [[Weird Al Effect]], most kids today will probably assume it's about the [[Batman]] character. The 1997 movie ''[[Batman and Robin (
* In Office Supply Orders [[Genesis (
** "Bastard" can be said on the radio, not that one can ever hear that particular song on the radio.
* Sometime back in the early 1980's, the band April Wine released a single called "If You See Kay," which repeated the title in every chorus. Maybe nobody thought this out...
** So Britney Spears' "If U Seek Amy" wasn't original after all...
** It wasn't as though it was subtle, as the video had numerous instances of the band holding up ''signs'' with the phrase. The only throw-off is the [[Lyrical Dissonance]], as the sweet, dreamy chorus makes the song sound like it's about a crush.
* [[
* [[Censor Decoy|The version where one gets the censors to focus on one thing in order to let another through]] was pulled off beautifully, though inadvertently, by [[The Kinks]] with ''Lola''. The BBC was so busy getting them to change the mention of Coca-Cola (something about not being allowed to advertise) that they completely missed the fact that the song was about a
* Ladies and gentlemen, raise your hands if you honestly believe that "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1c0Lle01_M The Fast Food Song]" is about, well, [[Exactly What It Says
** That song is [[Older Than They Think]] - the basic lyrics have been a staple of long, painful bus journeys in the UK for ''decades''. The Fast Food Rockers version goes a little crazy with it.
* Considering it came out in the fifties, Mr. Sandman is about a guy ''begging'' for a wet dream.
** No. First of all, the band was an all-girl group called [
* [[
** [[Accidental Innuendo]]... [
** [[Nightmare Fuel|You don't even want to know]] where [[Limp Bizkit]] got their name.
* [[
** There's also "Mama Kin", which goes uncensored on the radio despite having "shit" in the lyrics (possibly because it's pronounced "she-it" [[Painful Rhyme|so it rhymes with "see it"]]).
*** It also has that line in the chorus, that alternates between "sleeping late and smoking tea" and "sleeping late and sucking me". Either way, Aerosmith 1, radar 0.
** "Pandora's Box" still receives airplay, with its "city slicker/slitty licker" line.
** Amusingly, they lampshade it with the title track of the album, "Just Push Play", where the chorus says, "Just push play, *beep*ing A! Just push play, they're gonna beep it anyway." Except for the last chorus, when they actually change it to "Fucking A! Just push play, they're gonna *beep* it anyway."
* While it's pretty bluntly sexual to begin with, Sublime's "Caress Me Down" has a couple of lines that would probably have to be edited out for radio were they not among the song's several bursts of gratuitous Spanish: "Pero la cosa que me gusta mas es panochita", which translates to "but the thing I like the most is pussy", and "con un chingo de dinero" which translates to "with a fuckload of money".
** Also, in April 29, 1992 (Miami), while the singer is listing off places, he says the f-word, which I have never heard censored on the radio. This is likely because it is mainly in the background of the song, and is easy to miss.
* Martha and the Vandellas' song "Quicksand" places a ''lot'' of vocal emphasis on the phrase "deeper and deeper." Because it's about quicksand, you see...
* Back in [[The Seventies]] when homosexuals were very much [[Acceptable Targets]] and a favorite bogeyman of the [[Moral Guardians]], [[
** "Eat Me Alive", although it [
** It just wasn't common to see
* Goldfinger's "Here In Your Bedroom" has the singer saying, "One, Two" quickly before the bridge. At the end of the song, he says "Fuck you!" in the same manner, quickly enough to be mistaken for a simple count, and was never edited on radio. Although the modern rock station that used to play the song in my area was never strict in its editing.
* [[System of a Down]]'s "Chop Suey!" is somewhat of an example. The original song title was "Suicide", but they changed it, presumably due to the 9/11 suicides (they have said it wasn't due to record company discouragement). However, the song begins with three drumstick taps and the words "We're rolling 'Suicide'", which would have been extremely controversial in a time when suicides had just skyrocketed in number. (Also, the chorus is as follows: "I don't think you trust in my self-righteous suicide / I cry when angels deserve to die." Many people are surprised that SOAD managed to get away with this.)'
* Little Richard's career is about this trope. While "Tutti Frutti" was originally "Tutti frutti, good booty," much of the song was left intact. "She rocks to the east, she rocks to the west" was not about geography. And why was "Long Tall Sally" bald-headed? Maybe because she was really a
** Oh, for heaven's sake: his name is a euphemism for small man's bits.
** This was cleaned up ''just'' enough to meet broadcast regulations, but it didn't fool anybody, and they were mad.
* [[Kylie Minogue]]'s song "Shocked" was a significant hit in the UK back in 1991. It's something of an urban myth that at least one point in the song sees Minogue replacing the word "Shocked" with a certain other, more "colourful" word (ie, "Fucked"). This wasn't picked up on by radio playlisters at all, seeing as any controversy at the time revolved around the song's more sexually suggestive video. Minogue's fans could read this shift into mild controversy as coming in tandem with her significant image-change from wholesome girl-next-door to scantily-clad sex siren - coupled with the fact she was dating famously decadent INXS frontman Michael Hutchence at the time.
* Nowadays known primarily as an actress and due to her starring role as Rose in Doctor Who, Billie Piper's previous job as a run-of the mill kiddie-pop singer saw her attempt an image change by releasing a sexually suggestive song called "Honey To The Bee." One notable line in the song sees her singing "C'mon and buzz me!" which sounded to many more-perverted listeners as being much closer to "C'mon and fuck me!" Which didn't stop it being regularly played on the radio. At all.
** Her final top-ten hit in the UK was called "Something Deep Inside." Piper herself has admitted in hindsight that this might not have been a particularly appropriate title to give a song, considering her music had previously been marketed at a very young demographic.
* Leftfield's 1999 hit "Afrika Shox" was heavily playlisted on UK radio. The song featured guest vocals by Afrika Bambaataa, and repeated repetition of the word "funk." Which as readers might have guessed, often tends to sound a little like another rather more obscene word. Hence the song seems to contain Bambaataa repeatedly chanting 'I wanna FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!' quite a lot. The song's highly suspect nature didn't seem to trouble the radio stations that played it at all hours of the day.
* Comedic italian group "Elio e le Storie Tese" managed to do it in ''the title of their first record'' thanks to [[Bilingual Bonus]]: it's called "Elio Samaga Hukapan Kariyana Turu", which in Tamil means "let's happily fart and come with Elio". Unsurprisingly, they got even better at it by mixing silly music with [[Black Comedy]].
* The lyric sheet for [[Garbage]]'s psycho breakup song "Vow" (possibly one of the most brutal, vengeance-soaked, unhinged breakup songs ever written) includes the phrase "I came to knock you up, I came to break you down" in the chorus. If you listen to the actual track, however, it doesn't quite sound like that, especially as the song makes a lot more sense with "fuck" in the first clause. (Though Shirley Manson (aka The Creepiest Woman In Rock)'s delivery ratchets the nastiness up to 11 all by itself...)
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** Funk isn't about making sense, funk is about partying. And getting crap past the radar.
* Alizee-[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_acVRToF44&feature=player_embedded# Moi lolita]. So laden with references in lyrics and videoclip,the singer confessed it was about the title subject, and its being played in supermarkets and the like. Shows how few people know the term lolita, or what a lolita complex is.
* '''F'''oxtrot '''U'''niform '''C'''harlie '''K'''ilo is really a song just about sexual innuendos.
** "Put the you-know-what in the you-know-where, put the you-know-what in the you-know-where."
* Electric Light Orchestra's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJhs4eoevpQ&feature=related "Oh No Not Susan"] managed to get past BBC policies and had their song played on the air, with "fucking" uncensored.
* How "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood ever got on the radio is a mystery. It's not even innuendo: there's not even the smallest attempt at hiding the fact that it's about sex.
** Especially with the music video...
* The Killers' "Mr Brightside" makes the following lyrical dodge: "Now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick, and it's all in my head, but she's touching his....[[Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion|chest now]]"
* Whether it's intentional or not, [[The Jonas Brothers]] have gotten away with this quite a few times, the most prominent being from their song ''Live To Party'':
{{quote|
** Another surprising example from ''Poison Ivy'', where the narrator describes a poisonous relationship/girl:
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* The Guns 'N' Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle" could be seen as a metaphor for sex. The singer talks to a "very sexy girl/ That's very hard to please" then he goes on to say "Feel my, my, my serpentine / I, I wanna hear you scream".
** It's also interesting that an old word for orgasm is die. So when the singer says "You're in the jungle baby /You're gonna die" he means ...
** Brings a whole new meaning to the song "(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight".
*** That's exactly the meaning the singer/writer intended. The title came to him (geddit?) while having sex with his girlfriend.
* "The Art of the Ground Round" by [[PDQ Bach]] has a movement which sounds innocuous when sung by one person, but when combined in a round becomes:
{{quote|
'''Singer 2''': She's ..... up ... dress-ing, she'll... }}
** This type of song is known as a "diagonal catch", and has been popular since the Renaissance, at least.
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*** How is that a better example than "make a pussy burn with a stroke of my hand"? The only crap that song gets past the radar is putting Ted's ''[[Squick|daughter]]'' on the album cover as the titular Miss Dangerous.
* Fanny (whose name is ''not'' an example, at least intentionally, since they didn't know what that word means in the UK until after the fact) slip the whispered line "So fucking hard..." into "Rock Bottom Blues".
* Brazilian singer/songwriter Chico Buarque's song [https://web.archive.org/web/20120611032731/http://letras.terra.com.br/chico-buarque/7582/ "Apesar de você"] snuck past the Brazilian military dictatorship's censors by using [[Subtext]] to hide its true message ("we're really angry at you for being so evil and I'm going to be celebrate the inevitable day comes that the people destroy you") as the love song of a jilted man. The censors only picked up on it ''after'' the release, and ever after they paid extra-close attention to the guy's songs, rejecting perfectly innocent songs of his for imagined reasons.
* [[Led Zeppelin]] is quite good at this. Several songs, such as "Trampled Underfoot" get significant radio airplay despite consisting almost entirely of innuendo.
* Surprised to see no mention of [[Dire Straits]]' "Money For Nothing." The played-on-radio single version is unedited, so the second verse is
{{quote|
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot, he's a millionaire }}
** 25 years after its release, Canadian authorities have finally gotten around to banning it from the airwaves! Your tax dollars at work.
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* The song "Wolves" by Chasing Victory mentions a "girl in a short skirt showing off her ''assets''". Pretty tame by normal standards, but this is a '''[[Christian Rock]]''' band.
* The entirety of 'Meet your Master' by [[Nine Inch Nails]] seems to be about gay BDSM. They probably couldn't be much more blatant about it if they tried...
* [[Queen]]'s "Radio Ga Ga" is a literal example of Getting <s>crap</s> caca past the radar: Although originally intended as a lament to TV taking over good ol' radio, it was conceived by writer Roger Taylor as "Radio Caca"—consequently doubling as a criticism of the same good ol' radio. If Taylor is to be believed, however, the band never changed the wording, and it remains "radio caca" in the recording, in spite of its title (no thanks to [[Media Watchdogs]].
* [[Katy Perry]]'s "Hot n Cold" featured the lyric "You PMS like a bitch I would know". Radio edits of the song were produced to rectify that—one replacing "bitch" with "chick" and "girl".
* The [[Madonna]] songs "4 Minutes" and "Like a Prayer". "4 Minutes" is obviously about sex, and "Like a Prayer" is about going down on a man for the first time.
{{quote|
'''Like a Prayer''': "When you call my name it's like a little prayer/I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there/In the midnight hour I can feel your power/Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there" and "I hear your voice, it's like an angel sighing/I have no choice, I hear your voice/Feels like flying/I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm falling/Out of the sky, I close my eyes/Heaven help me". }}
** [[Word of God]] denies that particular interpretation of "Like A Prayer", but [[Death of the Author|nobody really cares]].
* Busted is made of this trope. When Jonas Brothers covered their song "What I Go To School For", they had to change a good 70% of the lyrics. The song is about a student who wants to sleep with the teacher.
{{quote|
''"Everyone that you teach all day But you're looking at me in a different way I guess, that's why My marks are getting so high."'' }}
** That's nothing. Air Hostess is the god of this. "The cabin pressure's rising. My coke has got no ice in there." "I messed my pants When we flew over France." "Will I see you soon In my hotel room?", And THIS is a band that was England's version of Jonas Brothers back in 2000.
* Special mention should be paid to ''[[Green Sleaves]]'', a folk song from late 16th century England. Though now ubiquitously associated with the general festivities of the Christmas holidays, the original song was a ballad about a character referred to as Lady Green Sleaves. According to [[The Other Wiki]] (where [[Viewers Are Geniuses]]), [
* The Kingsmen's garbled, unintelligible version of "Louie Louie" ignited controversy in the
* Several novelty songs of Lito Camo from the [[The Philippines]] which he claims to have been derived from children's songs. This may be true but when they are taken out of context, sung by an [[Girl
{{quote|
* [[
** Let's not forget "Grow A Pear."
* The Bomfunk M.C.s managed to slip a reference to [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|a porn movie AND a F-word past the censors]] on "Freestyler" in the verse before the second chorus:
{{quote|
To propellers, suckers get jealous
But their soft like marshmallows
You know they can't handle us
Like [[Debbie Does Dallas]]
Yeah, we come scandalous,
So who the {{spoiler|fuck}} is Alice
Is she from [[British Royal Family|Buckingham Palace]]? }}
** Which is particularly jarring for anybody who grew up with [[Winnie the Pooh|Christopher Robin]]...
* Captain Sensible of [[The Damned]] recorded a cover version of "Happy Talk" from ''[[South Pacific]]'' in 1982 - but changed the lyric "Golly baby, I'm a lucky cause" to "Golly baby, I'm a lucky {{spoiler|[[Country Matters|cunt]]}}". The vocal take on the single was recorded after a day spent [[British Pubs|down the pub]] and kept in as a joke. The word itself is [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|drawn out enough]] to make it sound enough like <s>"cause"</s> "cuss" not to be [[This Trope Is Bleep|censored]] or [[Banned in China|banned]] from airplay. [[Word of God|The Captain confirmed which word he sang on the record]] in a 2005 book published to commemorate 1000 #1 singles in the UK charts - "Happy Talk" being one of them!
* [[
* The radio edit of Missy Elliot's "Work It" alters the line "Let's get drunk, this gon' bring us closer!" But the word substituted for "drunk" is "''crunk''", a portmanteau for "''crazy'' drunk"
* [[The Ramones]] were forced to pull "Carbona Not Glue" off their 1977 album ''Leave Home'' due to potential law suit - the makers of the cleaning solvent Carbona probably would not be thrilled with it being endorsed as an inhalant. The track would eventually be restored to reissues of the album, but well before then the band managed to slip in an unlisted live version on 1991's ''Loco Live''.
** "53rd and 3rd" is also about a gay prostitute.
* The single and album versions of The Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought The Law" were different takes of the song. On the single version, Bobby sings, "I miss my baby and HER GOOD FUN." On the album version, Bobby sings, "I miss my baby and A GOOD FUCK." Oldies radio seems to be blissfully unaware of the difference in lyrics, since it's almost always the album version that gets airplay in the modern era.
(HINT: The more innocuous single version was mono-only. If it's stereo, it's the naughtier album version.)
* It can be VERY safely said that all music played these days (such as Lady Gaga, Usher, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and several other countless pop and rap names) is DEDICATED to this trope.
* ''The French Song'' by [[Joan Jett]]. The chorus describes a [[Three
* In the song ''Bottoms Up'' by Trey Songz and Nicki Minaj, Nicki clearly says
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** This goes ''completely'' uncensored on the radio, but references to a 380 pistol are promptly censored.
* According to [[Word of God]] from [[
* "Pretty Vacant" by [[Sex Pistols]] features a rather... [[Country Matters|unusual]] enunciation of the title lyric.
* [[Prince]] has invoked this trope more than once.
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* In [[Van Halen]]'s "Everybody Wants Some," David Lee Roth ad-libs "Where'd you get that shit?" and "Look, I'll pay you for it, what the fuck...". These profanities are never censored whenever the song is played on the radio.
* The French song "Les Sucettes" even got past the radar of its own ''singer''. It was written by [[Serge Gainsbourg]] for pop idol France Gall and is ostensibly about a girl who enjoys lollipops, but it was obvious to the public, once it was released, that it was actually about oral sex. Gall, just eighteen when the song was recorded (and this was 1966) had no idea until she saw the public's reaction. She felt hurt and betrayed by Gainsbourg and ended their professional relationship. "Sucette" is also a notorious porn cartoon about the sexual adventures of a young French girl.
* Let's all remember that "rock 'n' roll" was, in its day, a euphemism for sex.
* [[Sabaton]]'s ''Metal Machine'' has "Come touch my metal machine!" repeated several times. It sounds innocent until you get to the end where the singer shouts "Come hold my metal machine!" and then finishes off with "Come ''suck'' my metal machine!" Hmm, now what "metal machine" can you touch, hold ''and'' suck?
* The back cover of Sweet's ''Give Us a Wink'' depicts a wall with graffiti that would only make sense if "wink" were changed to "wank".
* George Formby was very much known for this in [[The Thirties]], in particular phallic references such as "With My Little Ukulele In My Hand". He didn't quite manage it with ''When I'm Cleaning Windows'', probably his best known hit, which was banned by [[The BBC]]. Unsurprising given lyrics like those below...
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''The bridegroom, he is doing fine,''
''I'd rather have his job than mine,''
''When I'm cleaning windows!'' }}
* The song "Jet Airliner" by the Steve Miller Band features the line "funky shit going down in the city". Some stations use the radio edit, which replaces the word with "kicks". Other stations use the original...
* Jars of Clay's song "Heaven" may very well be the only song about sex to ever become a Christian radio single.
* The chorus of the song "Right Round" by Flo-Rida goes, "You spin my head right round, right round/When you go down, when you go down down." The song makes it pretty clear that he's with a stripper, but he's not talking about the head that you think.
* There exists an almost universally rejected subgenre of metal named "[[Godwin's Law|National Socialist]] [[Black Metal]]," according to [[That Other Wiki]]. Most metal musicians (including black metallers) criticise and berate it for, among others, contradicting "[metal's] focus on individualism." Even some white supremacists with a conservative m.o. lashed at it for having a [[Lampshaded Trope|"black" or "negroid"]] influence.
* ''C'est la Vie'' by B*witched is a [[The Nineties|'90s]] pop song sung from the perspective of a child wanting to see a friend's treehouse and compare it to her own house. Innocent enough, except that this is relayed through the lyrics "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
* [[Tom Lehrer]] has "I Got It From Agnes". "It" is never actually described, but it's certainly implied that it's an STI. It also sneaks a bisexual or homosexual orgy in at one point, as well as bestiality and incest. However, it's worth noting that this did NOT get past the radar around the time of it's release. Still a pretty worthwhile attempt...
* Same concept with Procol Harum's "A Souvenir of London".
{{quote|
''Got a souvenir in London. There's a lot of it about.'' }}
* Ludo has "Whipped Cream", all about the odd antics that a person taking advantage does. It's not so subtle with the music video though.
* "Faster" by Matt Nathanson gets fairly regular radio play (at least to my knowledge) despite its [[Intercourse
* Particularly since the über-PC 1990s, [[Country Music]] has an ultra low tolerance for anything even resembling profanity. And yet:
** [[Garth Brooks]] somehow got "It's Midnight Cinderella", complete with the line "By the way he's walking, [[Ass Shove|I can guess where your slipper's at]]", into the top 5.
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** In 2005, Blake Shelton somehow got a four-week #1 hit with a song titled "Some Beach". Say that out loud and see if you can figure out what he's really meaning to say.
* 19th century hymn:
{{quote|
More glorious than the seraphim
Lead their praises. Hallelujah!
Thou bearer of the eternal Word
Most gracious, magnify the Lord }}
** Looks innocuous don't it? But this hymn was composed during the Catholic Revival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Movement when Bishops disapproved of hymns about the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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* Yes, Fergie's "London Bridge" is about a spit roast or lazy H or whatever you want to call it. One guy doing a girl via rear entry, and the other getting a blowjob from the same girl.
* Indigenous had album art where the inside flap featured a man going on a vision quest. But he's holding his loincloth up. Yes, he's naked.
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* Even [[Simon and Garfunkel]] were prone to this, on "A Simple Desultory Phillippic":
{{quote|
That's the hand I use...well, never mind. }}
* The line 'walking in the moonlight' in the fade-out to [[ABBA]]'s 'Summer Night City' sounds an awful lot like 'fucking in the moonlight'.
* The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Bang' got played on the radio, despite the line 'as a fuck, son, you suck!'
* [[
* [[Clint Black]]'s album track "Straight from the Factory" has the line "You're the only lock that's made to fit my key."
* [[
* Cage The Elephant's single "In One Ear" featured the line "The crowd will only like me if they're really fuckin' drunk". The radio edit ''did'' change this... to "the crowd will only like me if they're all smacked up". Thus, they got rid of an f-bomb, but also changed a reference to drinking to a reference to heroin use.
* The Kinks did a song about pollution and environmental issues called ''Apeman''. Opinion is divided as to whether one line, delivered in a cod-reggae accent by Ray Davies, goes ''the air pollution is a-foggin' up my eyes....'' or, er, something else. It is just ambiguous enough. The BBC plays it without censorship, anyway.
* And the name of an actually not-bad indie band - the ''Test Icicles''. Again the BBC let this go without comment.
* [[Green Day|Green Day's]] song "Longview" says the phrase "I smell like shit" more than once, but Billie Joe Armstrong, the band's singer, doesn't pronounce the "T" in the offending word. This goes completely unedited on radio.
* [[X Japan]] had a quite amusing variant that combined this with [[Refuge in Audacity]]. The original version of "Stab Me In The Back" is [[Intercourse
* [[
* Lola by [[The Kinks]] was censored by the BBC not for its lyrics about a sexual tryst with a
** Their next single, Apeman, contains the line "this air pollution is ''fogging'' up my eyes". They knew it sounds like "fucking". We know it sounds like "fucking". And whoever produced the album knew it sounds like "fucking", since they very clumsily reduce that solitary word's volume so it's barely audible. Ironically, while everyone involved claims it's definitely "fogging", this makes it harder to decipher whether Ray Davies does actually sing "fogging" or "fucking".
* Even The Monkees managed this. Their song "Gonna Buy Me A Dog" is about a guy whose girlfriend has just broken up with him. It includes the lines "She used to keep me so contented / But I can teach a dog to do that!" This went right over my head at age 11; hearing the song again some 20 years later, my reaction was, "They said WHAT?!!"
* Steps were a very family-friendly pop group with many young fans, famous in Britain during the late 1990s-early 2000s. Their video for the song "Say You'll Be Mine" (a cheesy but clean love song) showed them re-enacting famous scenes from romantic movies, including the one from ''[[
* Every protest song during a dictatorship or totalitarian regime ever, if they want to get it past the censors.
* Bloodhound Gang just bowls right over the radar with almost blunt innuendos. Though most famously is
* The music video for "Is Anybody Out There?" by K'naan and Nelly Furtado features 3 different examples of this trope. At the beginning, when the emo looking girl is inside of the comic book store and the man asks her if she's gonna buy something, she yells "Shit! Leave me alone!" at him. Later on, some other girl sees her looking in the window of the restaurant she's eating in and she says "What a skank..." and then shortly after that, the emo girl writes STFU on the window of a restaurant and flips the bird at everyone inside. This video gets regular rotation on [[VH
* Huey Lewis and the News' "Power of Love" is a cheerful little pop ditty about the [[Power of Love]], right? And certainly appropriate for the soundtrack of a PG-rated film like ''[[Back to The Future]]'' (although heaven knows that film has a pretty long entry of its own on the film sub-page of this trope), right? Except that one of the ways that the lyrics describe the [[Power of Love]] is as "Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream...." So yeah, [[Blatant Lies|that's perfectly innocent]].
* [[Spice Girls|Spice Girl]] Emma Bunton's solo hit "What Took You So Long" sneaks in the line "I'll Suck You All Night" instead of the official "What Took You All Night", if you [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpoAnnmgw4 listen closely] from around 2:00.
** In "A Girl Like Me", if one pays attention to the lyric '''''Cant - with a Girl like me''''', one can either use "mess" or "fuck" and it'll still make sense.
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