Precision F-Strike/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails does a lot with four F-Strikes.
  • Kate Nash's cute, bubbly pop song, 'Doo-Wah-Doo', ends with this line:

Well I think she's a bitch.

  • Faith No More - In the song 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies': "Happy birthday, FUCKER!" Also, later in the song: "Cause I'm the best FUCK that you ever had".
  • Though Motion City Soundtrack lyrics can be pretty foul-mouthed (@!#?@!, for example), there are some examples.
    • "Her Words Destroyed My Planet" replaces the line, "I stall before I start" with "It's all my FUCKING fault" in the penultimate chorus.
    • In "Attractive Today" there's the line "I'm also fed up with the FUCKING common cold".
  • Don Henley's album Inside Job drops a single F-bomb in the entire album - in the title song, right where he wants you to pay the most attention.
  • Reverend Bizarre's song "The Wandering Jew": "But I don't FUCKING care, because the end is near, HA!"
  • "Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band:

"I told you once, you son of a bitch, I'm the best there's ever been."

    • Averted on the radio version, where the line is changed to "...you son of a gun..."
  • During at least David Wilcox's performances of "Moe", we get this line:

"But, damn, if that was not the year they signed up / A replacement in the line-up / And so it went *gasps* / My father looked like SHEMP!"

Don't download this song
Or you'll burn in Hell before too long (and you'll deserve it!)
Go and buy the CD (go and buy it!) like you know that you should (you cheap bastard!)
Oh, don't download this song

  • Bob Dylan: "Play it fucking loud!"
    • Also "Hurricane" ("Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down") and "George Jackson" ("He wouldn't take shit from no one")
  • James Blunt's You're Beautiful has the line (which was naturally censored for radio broadcast):

"She could see from my face that I was
"Fucking high."

    • On Top Gear, he also belted out a "C'mon you little fucker!" while doing a lap in the reasonably priced car.
  • Graffiti the World by Rehab is about how warped and abusive the world really is. It's kept clean until the very last line:

"I realized just how tainted our thinking really is while in New York when I saw a teenager being arrested for taggin' a fuckin' wall."

  • Metallica's ...And Justice For All album, known as the band's "angry" album, is seething with hostility and rage at the more hypocritical elements of our society throughout. In spite of this, the album contains only one lyrical F-bomb, in the final track, "Dyers Eve." It is awesome. (The album booklet is a different story; Metallica's usual sophomoric sense of humor, rife with swear words left and right, is in full force on the album's liner notes).
    • The sticker on Master of Puppets warns us that there'd be only one song on the whole album with major swearing: "Damage, Inc.", which has THREE Precision F Strikes.
      • More specifically, "Slamming through, don't FUCK with razorback", and "FUCK it all and FUCKING no regrets"
      • This second line is repeated in "St. Anger"
    • James Hetfield also makes it a habit during live performances to switch more innocuous words with a Precision F Strike. You can hear it the live versions of "The Four Horsemen" ("Time, it's taken a SHIT on you, the lines that crack your face"), "Master of Puppets" ("Dedicated to... HOW I'M FUCKING YOU!"), "One" ("Tied to machines that make me be... CUT THIS SHIT OFF FROM ME!), and" Enter Sandman" ("I'll FUCK you in, warm within, keep you free from sin 'till the Sandman comes").
  • Fear Factory singer Burton C. Bell utilizes this trope at least twice in the album Demanufacture.
    • in the title track, he just yells "FUCK!" before a brief interlude.
    • "(H-K) Hunter-Killer" has the line "They FUCKING say!" twice.
  • Some versions of "The End" by The Doors don't finish the sentence "Mother, I want to..." Others do.
  • Both Slipknot and Disturbed avoid using any cussing in their third albums, much unlike their previous work. The albums that came after that (All Hope is Gone and Indestructible respectively) used the swearing that was there sparingly.
  • Meat Loaf's song "Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back" on the album "Bat Out of Hell II" features the rare use of a swear word (ass) by him.
  • Jonathan Coulton does this several times, and you can spot someone who hasn't heard the song by the fact they do a double-take. For example, in "First of May", it happens in the chorus:

"It's the first of May, first of May, outdoor fucking starts today..."

  • Another one on "Sticking it to myself":

"I'm trying to figure something, makes me feel, like I'd do anything it takes to be a fucking winner now!"

  • Oh, Who the fuck are you? (The radio changes it to "Who the hell are you" or just edits around it.)
    • From Doctor Jimmy: "Her fella's gonna kill me? OH FUCKING WILL HE?"
    • And, in a Real Life example, Townshend telling Abbie Hoffman to "get off my fucking stage" when the latter interrupted their set at Woodstock to bitch about John Sinclair's imprisonment for marijuana possession.
  • Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream", a very angry and confrontational song, features this in one of the last choruses. Notable because Michael Jackson usually shied away from profanity.

Stop pressurin' me,
Stop pressurin' me,
Stop fuckin' with me,
Makes me wanna scream

    • Michael also did a precision S Strike in "This Time Around". To be specific, the History album had a lot of angry songs where Mr. Jackson would swear. (Damn in "Earth Song", Shit and Bitch in "Morphine", etc.)

Somebody's out
Somebody's out to get me
They really wanna fix me, hit me
But this time around I'm taking no shit
Though you really wanna get me
You really wanna get me

  • Nightwish does this in their song Master Passion Greed. The swearing in other songs is limited to "damn," "hell," and a "bastard" here and there. However, in Master Passion Greed, it's "I fuck up everything but let me explain" in the second verse.
    • However, Bassist/Vocalist Marco Hietala drops the f-bomb frequently during live performances (in both English and Finnish)
  • Lady Gaga usually makes her sexual references in songs at least slightly hidden. Her f-strikes are so well done that, for example, the f-bomb in "Poker Face" (in the line "P-p-p-p-poker face, p-p-fuck her face") was undetected for over a year (and Weird Al uses the Mondegreen version, "P-p-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face" as censorship when covering it as part of his polka medley "Polka Face"). Also, for example, in "Monster":

I asked my girlfriend if I'd seen him 'round before
She mumbled something as we got down on the floor, baby
We might have fucked, not really sure, don't quite recall
But something tells me that I've seen him, yeah

    • She also says "shit" in Paparazzi: "snap snap to that shit on the radio".
  • Midtown gives a great example on "As Long As We Keep Our Bodies Numb, We're Safe". After the first verse and chorus, the song goes into a short instrumental bridge. Then the music suddenly stops and we are treated to a loud and enthusiastic "Fuck what you know!" Especially funny considering the name of the album was Forget What You Know.
  • The Something Corporate song "If You C Jordan" builds up to the final "fuck you Jordan."
    • Same band: My Konstantine. After most of the way through a nine-minute, quiet, introspective song that has used exactly one "damn" and exactly one "hell" in situations when stronger words might have been appropriate... "This is to a girl who got into my head with all those fucked-up things I did." Emphasis is the song's, and the sheer viciousness makes it seem very precise.
  • Alanis Morissette with her song "You Oughta Know." Although the song has a number of sex references, none are as blatant as the line "Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?"
  • A Perfect Circle holds off on the cursing until near the end of "Passive" (repeating the line "passive-aggressive bullshit" over and over as the song fades out), but they only use the F-word twice in the song. The first time just sounds like an agitated "You fucking disappoint me," but the second time is a much more profound "You FUCKING disappoint me!!" First f-strike comes around 3:05 and the second will follow afterwards.
  • A brilliant tactical F strike from Bloc Party's "Positive Tension":

Why'd you have to get so hysterical?
Why'd you have to get so hysterical? (6x)
Why'd you have to get...so fuckin' useless?

    • ...it works in context.
  • Avenged Sevenfold
    • Critical Acclaim has no less than THREE, one at the beginning of the first verse and two in M Shadow's rants following the first and second choruses.
    • Nightmare "It's your fucking nightmare."
  • Three Days Grace rarely swear in the music, with the exception of "fucked up" in their song "Riot". This bit is often edited to say "messed up" when played on public radio, although the swear word wasn't used in a sexual context.
    • the chorus of Three Days Grace's "Over-rated" has the line "Your shit is overrated," which is repeated many times, and "gone forever" has the line "so I'll stay out all night, get drunk and fuck and fight." Adam Gontier also swears a lot during live performances. Still, Three Days Grace is usually pretty conservative with their profanity in comparison to other bands and recording artists out there.
  • Despite their tendency to swear profusely in interviews the brothers Gallagher have only had two songs featuring the word fuck in their discography, the track 'Fuckin' In The Bushes' from Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, where the eponymous phrase is uttered by a recording (there is no actual vocal on the song), and the Liam-written, 'Pass Me Down The Wine', a b-side to the single 'The Importance Of Being Idle'.
  • Rise Against's song "Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated" has one particularly strong F-bomb near the end:

We came in search of answers.
We left empty handed again.
Shots fired into the sky are now returning.
Where the fuck will you hide?

    • Because Rise Against rarely use any unsavoury language, any song that has cursing could be considered this.
    • The entire album could be considered a precision strike, as Siren Song of the Counter Culture avoided the dreaded sticker despite having a couple noticeable fucks (By comparison, the next release The Sufferer and the Witness has the sticker for swearing in a single song).
    • From the Endgame album in the song Survivor Guilt

The shout out from their pedestals
with words like courage and resolve
but what they meant was fuck em all
cause freedom isn't free

  • An obscure protopunk group from the 70s, the Electric Eels, released a 1991 compilation album titled "God Says Fuck You."
  • Tori Amos's song "The Waitress" has one, in the loud, shrill chorus following the quiet, subdued tones in the verses

But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, BITCH

  • In Green Day's song "Too Much Too Soon", there is one right in the middle, during the bridge. Swearing is prevalent with Green Day, but the way it's used in this song (especially the Broadway version) is much heavier than previous swears.
    • When Dookie was first released, swearing in mainstream music was not as common as it became a few years later, so when Billie Joe utters the lyrics "You're fucking lazy" in the leadoff single "Longview", it was a shock to a lot of people who weren't used to it.
  • Bruce Springsteen, in the song "Long Time Comin'," on the subject of raising a child:

"I Reach 'neath your shirt, lay my hands across your belly
And feel another one kickin' inside
And I ain't gonna fuck it up this time"

    • Also, in the song "Queen of the Supermarket:"

"As I lift my groceries into my cart
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart"

I push the door but the key don't fit.
'Can't take no more of this fucking shit.

In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking

    • What makes this even funnier is that it was George's mother, of all people, who suggested the line.
    • OTOH, John Lennon's solo "Working Class Hero" has this doozy:

Keep you doped up with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

  • Iron Maiden's only album song with profanity (a few b-sides recorded just for laughs fit Cluster F-Bomb) is "Holy Smoke", with two ("Flies around shit, bees around honey" and the much more effective "I've lived in filth, I've lived in sin, and I still smell cleaner than the shit you're in!").
    • Related to Maiden, on the forum Maidenfans, the song "Paschendale" is usually known as "Paschenfuckingdale", PFD for short, for being a Crowning Music of Awesome.
  • While the Foo Fighters have a few songs with swearing, "Word Forward" is the one that works best:

Years that I've wasted
These I owe you's
They're just fucking words!

  • In 8 albums (roughly 5 hours of music), Weezer employs the F Stike precisely once-- and Lil Wayne is the one who drops it, on Raditude's "Can't Stop Partying."

And the unusual is the fuckin' usual
Man my life is beauitful, and my girls are mutual

    • There is also one F Strike on the full-band version of "My Brain (Is Workin' Overtime)," but this version was never officially released. Rivers Cuomo's officially-released solo version omits the entire verse.

I tell the world to fuck itself
Cause who decides what's sick or healthy?

  • The Assumption Song narrowly avoids using swear words throughout most of the song, and has a single dirty word at the end.
  • "Stay Free", by The Clash:

When you lot get out
We're gonna hit the town
We'll burn it fuckin' down
To a cinder

  • "Tommy's Down Home", from Tesla's live Five Man Acoustical Jam album:

Well, I'm a country boy from Nashville, Tennessee
Don't. Fuck. With me.

I'm no fucking buddhist, but thus is enlightenment

  • Paramore's lyricist Hayley Williams has never sworn in a song (unless you count "whore" as a swear word, which in itself could be a Precision F Strike for a band like them) so there was quite a commotion when her solo song Teenagers was released containing the line "don't ask me where I'll go, 'cause frankly I don't know and I don't give a shit."
  • The band fun.'s debut album was clean, until this moment in the 7-minute closing song "Take Your Time (Coming Home)":

If it's true, then what the fuck have I been doing the last six years?

  • While Amanda Palmer likes to throw the word 'Fuck' around absolutely everywhere it can fit, Jeep Song in completely swear-free except for one, mind-blowingly powerful line;

I guess it's just my stupid luck/that all of Boston/drives the same black fucking truck

  • Sufjan Stevens never released a song with profanity until 2010's "I Want to Be Well," repeating the line "I'm not fucking around" in the chorus 16 times.
  • Toad The Wet Sprocket's "Hold Her Down" is their only song to include any cursing ("and they don't know her, but what the fuck, they've got nothing else they can do"). It's about outrage on behalf of a rape victim, which is probably why they considered it a justified use.
  • The normally quiet and polite Cowboy Junkies drop one in the feminism-tinged "Floorboard Blues." Cue howls of approval from the audience, and a "Parental Advisory" sticker from the record company.

Don't accuse me of runnin' scared, listen to what I'm sayin'
It's a fucked up ol' world, mama, but this ol' girl, well... she ain't givin' in.

  • The only song in Billy Joel's entire recorded output to contain an F-bomb is "Laura", from The Nylon Curtain.

Here I am, feeling like a fucking fool.

'Cause I'm the son of a bitch that named you Sue!

    • And "Cocaine Blues"

99 years underneath that ground; I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down!

    • Curiously, the "son of a bitch" was bleeped out of the original recording of Live at San Quentin ... even though, in the earlier Folsom Prison album, the "bad bitch" line from "Cocaine Blues" and Johnny's line about how "you can't say 'shit' or 'hell'" (cited in the Film examples above) stayed in the recording unaltered.
  • The Kinks' "Apeman":

I look out the window but I can't see the sky
The air pollution is a-fuckin' up my eyes

    • As a way of Getting Crap Past the Radar (since it was put out as a single) the lyric sheet claimed it was "the air pollution is a-foggin' up my eyes".
  • While the band Behemoth is no stranger to using the f-word in their music, the song "Slaves Shall Serve" is a perfect invocation of this trope, at the song's climax, screaming the name of the song 8 times, ending it with "SLAVES!!! SHALL!!! FUCKING SERVE!!!"
  • Mumford and Sons' Little Lion Man. Yes, the chorus has the f-strike, but it still must count.

It was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line, I really FUCKED it up this time, didn't I my dear?

    • The fact that this is the only time that they've used the word (or any cursing, for that matter) in all the songs they've written so far gives it that much more of an impact.
  • Dream Theater's album Train of Thought has two f-strikes, one in two different songs. These are the only two times such word has been used in their discography.
  • Pretenders began their career with one. "Precious", the opening track from their debut album, lands one conspicuously at the end of the bridge leading into the final chorus:

"But not me, baby, I'm too precious, fuck off!"

    • The rest of the album explores the common pop-song subjects of sex, relationships, domestic violence, and gang rape in relatively clean language.
  • Hamell On Trial's "John Lennon" is a spoken-word ballad about his attempt as a teenager to meet John Lennon. After a very lengthy setup, he finally does, and...

John Lennon looked down on me and said
"FUCK OFF!"
It sucked to be me. I hit the men's room.

  • Houkago Tea Time has this happen every once in a while, if it's a song sung by Mio.
    • "Go! Go! Maniac"'s very first lyrical word can be translated to "Crap!". Considering it comes from Yui, who usually is innocent, it can be surprising.
  • And even after all my logic and my theory/I add a MUTHAFUCKA so you ign'ant niggas hear me
  • Touch & Go's "Tango In Harlem" has one, when the narrator talks about being mugged and refusing to hand over the $50 she has on her, instead telling her attacker "Fuck you!". It's also a Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • On Devin Townsend's Deconstruction, the singular f-bomb is dropped pretty early on in the first track "Praise the Lowered". "Smoke that FUCKING weed, boy!", the reason this is so effective is because Devin hasn't said "Fuck" on any of his records since the last Strapping Young Lad album, plus the obvious emphasis on that one line makes it even better.
  • U2: "And a fucked-up world it is, too" in "Wake Up Dead Man". The one time they've used it in a song, EVER, so it's rather jarring, especially in the last song on the album.
  • Enter Shikari do this excellently in their song Enter Shikari. The first word in the first song on their first album is singer Rou Reynolds shouting 'SHIT!', backed up by people screaming. Now that's a precision strike.
  • CAKE's cover of "I Will Survive" changes the lyric "stupid lock" to "fucking lock". Gloria Gaynor was not pleased.
  • Panic! at the Disco had "Lying Is The Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off". They rarely said anything worse than "whore" and "goddamn".

I have more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck.

  • Skeletonwitch: FIIIYAAAARRR FROM THE MOOOTHEEEER FUCKING SKKKKKYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
  • Emilie Autumn invokes this on her Opheliac record:
    • Misery Loves Company: Pray for me you fuckers if you fucking dare
    • I Know Where You Sleep: I (fucked) you/I can never live it down, never live it down
    • Thank God I'm Pretty: Everybody thinks that I'm a fucking suicide girl
    • God Help Me: Don't make me choose, I've got too much to fucking lose!
    • Marry Me: So I'll fuck who I choose for I've nothing to lose ...
  • Normally fairly mellow country singer Gillian Welch sneaks one into "Revelator", half-slurred enough that most people don't notice:

Leavin' the valley
Fuckin' outta sight

  • Elton John's "The Bitch Is Back". Though with that kind of a title, should one really be surprised?
    • "Dirty Little Girl" and "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock And Roll)" would be a better examples.
  • Pearl Jam has a few, specially "Save You", which opens with the line "I'm gonna save you, fucker".
    • "Jeremy" also drops one in the second verse when talking about how his bullying led to breaking him: "Clearly I remember picking on the boy / Seemed a harmless little fuck / Oh, but we unleashed a lion."
  • Aerosmith has a few ("Feedin' that fuckin' monkey on my back!", "I feel like I've been hit by a fuck", etc.). Like James Hetfield, Steven Tyler even adds some live ("I fuck with my boots on cause you fuck with my head").
  • P!nk certainly isn't afraid to swear, but it tends to be specific. For example, the chorus of "Last to Know":

You could have called me up to wish me luck
You could have called me back you stupid fuck

  • Guns N' Roses, known for being Sir Swearsalot in many of their songs (including "It's So Easy", "Out ta Get Me", "One in a Million", "You're (Fucking) Crazy", "Perfect Crime", "Get in the Ring", "Buick Mackane/Big Dumb Sex", and "I Don't Care About You"), is surprisingly restrained on Chinese Democracy, which has only two F-words across 14 songs, only one of which is used by lead singer/resident Small Name, Big Ego W. Axl Rose (in "Riad and the Bedouins"), the other F-word being spoken by Gene Hackman in a sample from Mississippi Burning featured in the song "Madagascar".
  • Ian Dury's Plaistow Patricia inverts this so hard and played so extreme with the first line being "ARSEHOLES BASTARDS FUCKING CUNTS AND PRICKS"
  • Australian musician Josh Pyke's "The Lighthouse Song" is a mellow little love song with this line in the chorus:

I'll just hold you tight/And we'll not let those fuckers in

  • Alex Day swears once in his entire discography. In a song about Mario Kart.

Fucking Waluigi stole my victory!

  • On the UNKLE album Psyence Fiction, the track "Guns Blazing" the swears are bleeped out until about two-thirds of the way through the song:

"Bitch nigga with the audacity to blaspheme me / Got yourself caught in a motherfuckin' tragedy"

  • The Kingsmen's cover of "Louie Louie" contains an unintentional example: one of the band members shouts "Fuck!" after making a mistake.
  • Future Perfect - St. Perfect: "You're Saint fucking Perfect in disguise". This is the sole reason for the album's Parental Advisory warning.
  • Shiny Toy Guns' "Le Disko" has the line "gonna fuck up your ego".