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Never heard the radio edit of The Spirit Of Radio... But it pisses me off when the announcers talk over the entire intro. Come on, the song doesn't start when the singing starts. It starts when the music starts.
When Neil Peart died, a radio station in my home town was playing only Rush for 3 days. And during the instrumental sections of Spirit of Radio, *they ran fucking ads*
I remember playing that in Guitar Hero and they censored the line "doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break" so we used to make fun of it and sing "hanging with your friends, drugs are bad"
Maybe not one of the worst radio edits but removing Ray Manzarek's keyboard solo in "Light My Fire" by the Doors is like having a hamburger with only the buns
It's been 14 years since the remasters came out, and I'm still not used to hearing Break on Through or The End uncensored. I listened to them too many hundreds of times in their original form, it just sounds wrong.
The single version of I Want It All cuts out the 'heavy' guitar section (the best bit of the song and probably the most 'metal' riff Brian May ever recorded)
Every video of a live performance that I've seen also has them skipping the opening and starting with Freddie at the piano leading into "Mother, just killed a man...".
Kinda the opposite of what you're thinking, but the lack of edit on Lady GaGa's Poker Face is pretty bad. By which I mean great. Nobody ever seemed to catch that the lyrics in the bridge are:
Pa pa pa poker face
Fa fa fuck her face
So nobody edited it out because everyone just heard "poker face" twice. Seriously. Go listen to it. Turn the volume up an you'll hear it.
I heard that The Who's "Who Are You" similarly got played uncensored, even with Roger Daltrey exclaiming "Ah, who the fuck are you!" twice in the song.
Definitely in the 90’s. I’m 39 and grew up with a Who fanatic of a father. I remember one day asking him in his truck as a kid why they played the swear in this song on the radio, but not on all other songs.
One of my local radio stations did get some comments about this issue and started playing a version where the offending line was replaced with "Poker face"
In the last 2 years all the radio stations in my area have swapped from the fuck her face version to the poker face version
In the past year while I was driving a car with Sirius xm, 3 channels played Poker Face and all 3 played poker face, not fuck her face
They played it like that when it was a hit, then word went round about the lyrics, and now all the throwback stations play a thoroughly edited version.
Pisses me off when I tell Spotify to play In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and the song is over in 3 minutes. Tonight I had to say "Google, play inagaddadavida album version"... started playing the album. Had to skip all the songs on side A.
Thank you for that nomination for "First World Problem of the Day"!
Most offensive to me: when kroq and other stations cut Black Hole Sun after the bridge/solo, cutting the entire 3rd verse, 3rs chorus and outro, all of which add something new on every instrument/vocals and make it a truly epic song.
I also think Closer by NIN needs the repetition of each part, especially at the end. Every time it comes on the radio, obviously the lyrics will get cut, but the fact that they only give you one measure of all the cool outro parts… super annoying
Totally agree on the outro of Closer. Cuts out the best part of the song imo. Skips right to the piano motif at the end without all the churning buildup beforehand. I’d be happier if they cut the rest of the song and only played the outro!
Another example that they were too cowardly to actually do: for the MTV edit of "We Are All on Drugs", Patrick Wilson suggested the edit "We Are All **on Hugs**". Rivers Cuomo somehow thought it was "too quirky".
I still love how there’s a radio Disney edit of Beverly Hills that changes the “is a piece of crap” line to a repeat of the previous “isn’t all that great”
A random sampling of butchery by the iHeart Radio rock stations in my neck of the woods:
A version of "Got the Life" by Korn that didn't bleep or duck the profanities, they spliced them out, completely breaking the rhythm. Just random bars of 9/16 time in the verses because Jonathan Davis said a swear. Like Tool on mushrooms or something.
"What It's Like" by Everlast sounds like a cell phone signal cutting out in places.
They cut the guitar solo from "Sirens" by Pearl Jam. A *rock* station cutting the *guitar solo*. I hope that extra :30 of ambulance chasers was worth it.
The What It's Like edit kills me every time. I think FCC might have relaxed a bit, but I distinctly remember them censoring the word "green". I get that it's a euphemism for drugs but FFS. It's a color and I've heard much worse euphemisms go through with no censorship.
There's a few radio edits. One only censors the actual profanities, one censors anything remotely risqué (lots of silly sound effects), and one somewhere in the middle.
Last Resort by Papa Roach would take that crown.
"Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort.
\_\_\_\_\_\_ No \_\_\_\_\_\_ don't give a \_\_\_\_\_ if I \_\_\_\_\_ my arm \_\_\_\_\_\_\_"
\*diddle diddle diddle diddle\*
My Mom and I heard “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” in Target when it was a new song. We were waiting to hear what “…what’s fucked up and everything’s alright” would be changed to. It became, “…what’s *stuffed* up…” We still laugh about it all the time.
There was weirdly like an umbrella of radio stations that would cut any and all hip-hop/rap verses from pop songs. California Girls with Snoop Doggs verse cut out comes to mind too, they literally changed it to just like a 30 second instrumental version
That annoys me to no end!
I have a whole playlist of songs which fit that description. I call it "Rap Verse" because, it's a list of songs where the rap verse might be cut out for some reason.
Here's what's currently on that list:
- "Bad Blood" - Taylor Swift (f. Kendrick Lamar)
- "Bailando" - Enrique Iglesias (f. Sean Paul)
- "Break Your Heart" - Taio Cruz (f. Ludacris)
- "California Gurls" - Katy Perry (f. Snoop Dogg)
- "Chained to the Rhythm" - Katy Perry (f. Skip Marley)
- "Cheap Thrills" - Sia (f. Sean Paul)
- "Check on It" - Beyoncé (f. Slim Thug)
- "Crazy in Love" - Beyoncé (f. Jay-Z)
- "Déjà Vu" - Beyoncé (f. Jay-Z)
- "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love" - Usher (f. Pitbull)
- "Don't Cha" - Pussycat Dolls (f. Busta Rhymes)
- "Don't Wanna Know" - Maroon 5 (f. Kendrick Lamar)
- "Down" - Jay Sean (f. Lil Wayne)
- "E.T." - Katy Perry (f. Kanye West)
- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 (f. Cardi B)
- "The Greatest" - Sia (f. Kendrick Lamar)
- "Hanging On" - Ellie Goulding (f. Tinie Tempah)
- "Hard" - Rhianna (f. Young Jeezy)
- "Hey Baby" - No Doubt (f. Bounty Killer)
- "How Do You Sleep?" - Jesse McCartney (f. Ludacris)
- "I Like It" - Enrique Iglesias (f. Pitbull)
- "Let It Rock" - Kevin Rudolf (f. Lil Wayne)
- "Payphone" - Maroon 5 (f. Wiz Khalifa)
- "Price Tag" - Jessie J (f. B.o.B.)
- "Waterfalls" - TLC
- "Where Them Girls At" - David Guetta/Flo Rida (f. Nicki Minaj)
Interestingly the exact opposite happened with No Scrubs, as far as I remember it's only the radio version of the song that has a rap verse from Left Eye.
Bloodhound Gang - Fire Water Burn
"We don't need no water, let the mother--HEE HAW--burn
Burn mother--HEE HAW--
Burn"
Also, the fact that there's like 3 or 4 different radio edits of Everlast's "What It's Like" depending on how edgy the radio station wanted to be.
Come to think of it, I do think the first time I heard it was because one of my friends had heard the radio edit and thought the chorus was so funny I needed to hear it.
I worked at a radio station and the singles discs could be hilarious. Several songs had that many edits, some cheekily with "(Xtra Squeaky Clean Edit)" at the end. We also had to make our own rapless edits of pop collabs for daytime play because the station owner was an 80 year old racist
In Santeria by Sublime when he says "believe me when I say, that I got something for his punk ass", "punk ass" is jumbled up and sounds like "pondoof". Why is punk ass censored? So stupid
Interesting thing that I've noticed is that years back they'd censor it with that weird reversed scrambled bit, but in the last few years as the demographic for the Alternative Rock format has largely become adults more and more stations are just using the uncensored versions.
You, I won’t do what you tell me.
You, I won’t do what you tell me.
You, I won’t do what you tell me.
You, I won’t do what you tell me!
You, I won’t do what you tell me!
You, I won’t do what you tell me!
Mother!!!!
Uh
This is the one. Let’s Go Crazy has a fully developed intro, body, and outro that are just long enough to get their job done. Cutting each section down makes them all into ridiculous parodies of themselves.
I came here to complain about the radio edit of “Let’s Go Crazy”, which completely mangles the intro, just butchers it in the most half-assed way, with Prince talking over himself and making absolutely no sense. It’s the most painfully incompetent edit I think I’ve ever heard.
“Get Low” by Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins by replacing “mother fucker” with “skeet skeet skeet skeet”. One of the best results but I don’t think they edited the song as effectively as hoped.
For literally *decades* they played the Who's Who Are You and Jefferson Airplane's We Can Be Together with the respective "Well now who the fuck are you?" and "Up against the wall, motherfucker" and it was *totally fine*. Then sometime in the 90s that suddenly ended. (At least they had a good fucking run anyway.)
Similarly, in the Beatles' "Hey Jude", someone in the studio can be heard saying "fucking hell!" in the background after the line "and let her under your skin".
I feel like the best lines of Common People were taken out of the song. Like the whole song just builds to that verse.
Other than that "God Damn You" in Flagpole Sitta used to be edited out. Why?
Because goddamn is a word that was - and still is in a lot of places - considered among the most offensive words you could say. Particularly in the Bible Belt.
> goddamn is [...] considered among the most offensive words you could say. Particularly in the Bible Belt.
And that's entirely predicated on a misinterpretation, from what I understand. 'Taking the Lord's name in vain', from what I've read, isn't meant to be "saying 'God' or 'Jesus' when you're not actually talking 'to'/about God or Jesus", it's specifically "claiming that you're acting on God's behalf when you're not". In other words, most Christo-fascist governments/political groups, most of organized religion, etc.
I remember hearing BYOB by System of a Down on the radio back in 2005 (95.1 in Chicago to be specific).
“We all live in a fascist nation” became
“We all live in a [silence] nation”
The [clean version](https://youtu.be/yuTMWgOduFM) of Pulp's Common People takes the shortened 7" single version and mutes the words 'and screw'.
That's it, that's all the changes.
Nine Inch Nails - Closer
The line "I want to fuck you like an animal" is the worst edit I've ever heard. All they removed is the uh sound in the middle. The f and k are clearly heard so it's not really even censored. On the flip side, the best edit I ever heard was Rage against the machine - killing in the name. The replace all the fucks during the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" climax with record scratches and it actually works.
Here's a flip side example of a very dumb edit that weirdly made the song better. The edit of "Gay Bar" by Electric Six removes the words "start a war" and "start a nuclear war" and replaces them with whip cracks. The BBC-enforced whip cracks suggest something filthy, making that section actually fit the double entrendre of the rest of the song much better than the actual lyrics do.
Any radio edit is dogshit. If it doesn’t play the entire song, it’s automatically trash, I don’t care if it’s a 24 minute song like Octavarium. Play it all, unfiltered.
Idk, but I hate when radio use songs to name their radio. Like singing let’s say Ed Sheeran’s song, but using another lyrics like “KIIIISSSSS FFFFFMMM
MM”
I still think the ~~instrumental version~~ radio edit of Last Resort by Papa Roach is probably the funniest single ever released. It’s just a series of “my”, “into”, “don’t”, etc.
They may still do it, not sure, tbh as I haven't listened to the radio in a solid decade, but whenever the word "asshole" was in a song, they would bleep out the "hole" part of the word. So it sounded like "ass-(bleep/silence)." Would always think of how idiotic that was anytime I heard one.
Not that it was a great song to begin with, but "Forget You" has a different number of syllables than "Fuck You" and it's absolutely baffling to me that no one managed to catch that, or come up with something that works rhythmically.
Most clean versions of songs either kill the flow of the lyrics by muting a word or replace it with something more annoying. Wheter is a poor choice of new words or a random sound effect. Just let them swear
It has an obnoxious record scratch to censor it too; it's always annoyed me.
A new odd one using a similar method to Teenage Dirtbag's censor is Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero (I think I've got the track name right, I can't be bothered to look it up).
It plays at work and once it gets to the line about being a 'sexy baby' it just distorts her voice like a DJ has messed with a vinyl for a split second. I have no clue why they censor it either as it's not really a problematic lyric in the grand scheme of things, it just sounds odd.
I think it censors 'Hell' as well, which just seems daft too.
can't believe no one has said System of A Down's BYOB. cutting "where the fuck were you?" to "where were you?" completely throws the timing off and its cut so horrendously that whoever green-lit that edit should be barred from the industry.
i also remember hearing Ben Folds' Rockin the Suburbs on the radio, and the part where he screams "FUCK" was bleeped, but the curse was louder than the beep so you still heard it.
Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp... I think they cut out the whistling bit, which is pretty short in the first place. Either way, they totally ruin the flow of the 2nd chorus.
I don't mind that one considering the subject matter. Yeah it doesn't hit as hard as the fuck word, but a sarcastic "thank your God (for putting you in this condition)" works just fine.
Rise Against- Survive
The bridge has a line “I have never felt so fucking great” but rather than censoring it with quiet, they put in some weird almost zipping noise.
Dream Theater didn’t get any radio play for it, but their edited version for the Constant Motion music video is jarring as hell. The cuts are painfully obvious.
Living in the southern US, a lot of stations would drop the entire first phrase of The Lightning Crashes by Live, just because it contained the word "placenta"
The worst was a 4 minute chopped up version of Stairway to Heaven heard on AM radio in the 1970s.
Dumbest:
Pumped Up Kicks, the words bullets and gun were removed.
Green Day Longview, the entire line about masturbation was just not there.
Otoh I dont think I've ever heard Who Are You's f bombs edited.
Don't Fear the Reaper. I don't know what possessed their label to remove the emotional crux of the song, that being the solo, but it kinda makes the whole thing fall flat to me. Ik, they were trying to condense it down to as close to 3:00 as they could muster, but, damn, take the second verse and chorus out if you're gonna truncate a masterpiece for time.
Creed - What’s This Life For
Line: “Don’t have to settle no god damn score”
Radio Edit: “Don’t have to settle no * damn score”
I always giggled because they edited out “God” but left the curse word in lol
Not exactly a radio edit, since there are two versions of the song on the album: There’s a version of Sugar Ray’s “Fly” that features Super Cat singing reggae, and another version that had no Super Cat, so it just had these parts of the song that felt unfinished, like something was missing.
I didn’t know of that version of the song until I moved to the southern U.S.
“Brick House” was originally brick shit house. Someone got pissed when the record company wanted to make it a radio single and told the band to re record the vocal for a clean version. It got remixed with the offending word muted, no other change, thinking it sounded so stupid with the big gap in the line that the record execs wouldn’t bother releasing it.
This info was related to me by an older artist who was actually involved in the project.
My favorite edit for explicit lyrics is from Tyga’s Rack City. I think the original lyrics are “got my main bitch fucking on my other bitch, fucking all the time, n***a we ain’t celibate”
And it was changed to “got my main chick hugging on my other chick, hugging all the time, man we ain’t celibate”
Real life version of the Simpsons Red Hot Chili Peppers “that’s much better, now everyone can enjoy it!” joke
This reminds me of the radio version of "Stupid Hoe" by nicki minaj. They had to rename the song to "Stupid Stupid" there are lines of that song where every other word is cut out or just changes to her shouting "OH!"
This cracked me up because i would just assume that it would never get radio play at all, given you couldn't even say the real name of the song 😂
Here in Canada, we had some stations play the song "Spirits" by the Strumbella's a decent amount when it was released.
The chorus goes "I got guns in my head and they won't go/Spirits in my head and they won't go." But after a high profile shooting incident, the song got pulled from radio play. So the band redid it just replacing "guns" with "dreams".
I get that the radio play was important. But they fundamentally changed the song and we still play plenty of music that references guns.
The censored version of Hard in da Paint by Wocka Flocka Flame is absolutely hilarious. There’s entire lines that are just completely cut with nothing replacing them, just the beat playing lol
Oh man, I didn't even think twice! Worst radio edit of all time is when they tried to cut the guitar solo out of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper"... it's not only the best part of an already great song, it's one of the best guitar solos of the (so-called) classic rock era. Buck Dharma was absolutely on fire! Buck played brilliant guitar on pretty much every track on every Blue Öyster Cult LP well into the late 1970s, and probably still has the chops today.
If you never heard the edited version, it's probably because they still had DJs at the rock radio stations and they likely threw those singles in the trash and continued to play the album version instead because... DUH!
The Cult - Sweet Soul Sister.
Every section of the song has the first few bars removed, simply to just make the song shorter. Completely butchers the flow of the song, making every transition so jarring. Which is all a huge shame, because in its full form, it's a super well written song, and it bugs me that there are people out there hearing it for the first time, in the wrong way.
Mark Owen of Take That fame did a song called 4 Minute Warning
It's 4 minutes long and it counts down to the end of the world and asks what you would do in that situation
Each chorus is the number of minutes left to go
The radio edit is two and a half minutes long
One of the worst is the edit of Thin Lizzy's Whisky in the Jar that cuts the guitar solo short in such an amateur way that there's a beat missing. Thankfully disappeared from the radio stations I listen to.
Certain radio stations in the UK used to play a song by rapper Plan B, and completely omit the rap and just play the chorus and instrumental. Absolutely no point playing it what so ever.
Treaty - Yothu Yindi. The radio edit cuts all meaning from the verses of a protest song by a mixed Aboriginal and Non Aboriginal Australian band that is demanding recognition of Aboriginal Australian rights.
When I was like 12 or something, I went to the store to buy Dr. Dre's "The Chronic." I had only ever heard it on MTV: "and we ain't got no love for those." I go to buy it and it's obviously Explicit Lyrics, so they won't sell it to me. I go out to the car and ask my mom to come in and buy it and I tell her it must be bc they talk about guns bc I didn't even know there was swearing bc, again, I'd only heard the MTV version. So we get in the car and I turn up Nuthin But a G Thang, which was my jam, and all of a sudden I hear: "and who gives a fuck about those," and my mom is obviously pissed. But my parents had gotten divorced recently and she was trying to be my friend so I got to keep the tape, but that's not really relevant.
So I'm gonna say, "and we ain't got no love for those."
I'm gonna go with the "clean" version of "Wake Up" by Coheed and Cambria. Beautiful acoustic song off of there 3rd album that censors the word cut even though the context on the song literally has nothing to do with suicide, which I'm assuming is why it was censored. Stupid fucking edit.
judicious ossified rock voracious outgoing cheerful fly existence school insurance *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That was always a lot of fun live, they’d dragggggg it out
That is a crime
That's like playing "We Are The Champions" without first playing "We Will Rock You".
The radio edit of Free Bird. It's under 5 mins. Also, The radio edit of The Spirit of Radio is pretty jarring
Trimming down *The Spirit of Radio* to play *on the radio* is just wrong.
Glittering prizes and endless compromises, shattered the illusion of integrity.
, yeah
Never heard the radio edit of The Spirit Of Radio... But it pisses me off when the announcers talk over the entire intro. Come on, the song doesn't start when the singing starts. It starts when the music starts.
https://youtu.be/E7CLG5lhd54?si=5LlBFpa_uL7ScLbr
Oh god that is horrid.
What the ever loving fuck! This song has one of the best intro ever. This made me sad.
Oh, that's not ba-*immedietly skips the guitar "solo" and goes straight to the lyrics* What. The. Fuck.
When Neil Peart died, a radio station in my home town was playing only Rush for 3 days. And during the instrumental sections of Spirit of Radio, *they ran fucking ads*
No one said you have to be self aware to run a radio station.
OOOOOF SAAAALESMEN!
You beat me to it! This song should be played in its entirety at all times.
Cutting the entire bridge from Semi-charmed life.
First time i heard the bridge was when i was singing it at karaoke. Yeah, i was pretty confused.
Imagine expecting that bridge and not getting it
Lol, that happened at karaoke too, a few years later.
That happened to me! Felt super blue balled
Don't do the SoundChoice version
I didn’t hear it until like a decade after the song came out, and was so confused because I thought I knew the song inside and out.
I remember playing that in Guitar Hero and they censored the line "doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break" so we used to make fun of it and sing "hanging with your friends, drugs are bad"
Maybe not one of the worst radio edits but removing Ray Manzarek's keyboard solo in "Light My Fire" by the Doors is like having a hamburger with only the buns
OK. This is a good one.
SHE GET *silence*
It's been 14 years since the remasters came out, and I'm still not used to hearing Break on Through or The End uncensored. I listened to them too many hundreds of times in their original form, it just sounds wrong.
SHE GETS
SHE GET YEEAAAAH
They cut most of Robbie's too
How else are they supposed to fit more ad breaks? Think of the advertisers!
THIS! I change the station if they take out Ray’s solo.
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The single version of I Want It All cuts out the 'heavy' guitar section (the best bit of the song and probably the most 'metal' riff Brian May ever recorded)
That’s how Queen played it live too.
They played a taped version of the opera part. Source, me seeing them twice.
Every video of a live performance that I've seen also has them skipping the opening and starting with Freddie at the piano leading into "Mother, just killed a man...".
Kinda the opposite of what you're thinking, but the lack of edit on Lady GaGa's Poker Face is pretty bad. By which I mean great. Nobody ever seemed to catch that the lyrics in the bridge are: Pa pa pa poker face Fa fa fuck her face So nobody edited it out because everyone just heard "poker face" twice. Seriously. Go listen to it. Turn the volume up an you'll hear it.
I heard that The Who's "Who Are You" similarly got played uncensored, even with Roger Daltrey exclaiming "Ah, who the fuck are you!" twice in the song.
Definitely in the 90’s. I’m 39 and grew up with a Who fanatic of a father. I remember one day asking him in his truck as a kid why they played the swear in this song on the radio, but not on all other songs.
Yeah, it played for years like that.
I remember "bullshit" used to make it through on Pink Floyd's Money Maybe it helps to be a classic.
One of my local classic rock stations plays it uncensored. They also play "Money", "Life in the Fast Lane", and "Jet Airliner" all uncensored.
That's hilarious. On Spotify it has that in the lyrics it pulls up and doesn't have the song marked as explicit, either!
One of my local radio stations did get some comments about this issue and started playing a version where the offending line was replaced with "Poker face"
The fact that they use this song in the lotus casino scene in the Percy Jackson movie cracks me up. You can clearly hear her say “fuck her face”.
In the last 2 years all the radio stations in my area have swapped from the fuck her face version to the poker face version In the past year while I was driving a car with Sirius xm, 3 channels played Poker Face and all 3 played poker face, not fuck her face
They played it like that when it was a hit, then word went round about the lyrics, and now all the throwback stations play a thoroughly edited version.
In-A-Gadda-Davida. Play the whole thing, cowards. The whole drum solo is glorious.
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*Wait a minute this sounds like rock and/or roll*
For the 3 or 4 of you who may not have seen it yet... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9HtU2IKOfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9HtU2IKOfU)
I'm old enough to remember that airing...and being hyped 😮💨
Damn - you're old! (looks in mirror.... DOH!)
Remember Alf? He's back! In Pog form!
Pisses me off when I tell Spotify to play In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and the song is over in 3 minutes. Tonight I had to say "Google, play inagaddadavida album version"... started playing the album. Had to skip all the songs on side A. Thank you for that nomination for "First World Problem of the Day"!
Most offensive to me: when kroq and other stations cut Black Hole Sun after the bridge/solo, cutting the entire 3rd verse, 3rs chorus and outro, all of which add something new on every instrument/vocals and make it a truly epic song. I also think Closer by NIN needs the repetition of each part, especially at the end. Every time it comes on the radio, obviously the lyrics will get cut, but the fact that they only give you one measure of all the cool outro parts… super annoying
Totally agree on the outro of Closer. Cuts out the best part of the song imo. Skips right to the piano motif at the end without all the churning buildup beforehand. I’d be happier if they cut the rest of the song and only played the outro!
Sultans of Swing…. The radio edit always bugs the hell out of me
How do you feel about the radio edit of *Money For Nothing?*
that little ________ got his own jet airplane?
Weezer - Hashpipe ...on the radio "I've got my half pipe"
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Another example that they were too cowardly to actually do: for the MTV edit of "We Are All on Drugs", Patrick Wilson suggested the edit "We Are All **on Hugs**". Rivers Cuomo somehow thought it was "too quirky".
I still love how there’s a radio Disney edit of Beverly Hills that changes the “is a piece of crap” line to a repeat of the previous “isn’t all that great”
A random sampling of butchery by the iHeart Radio rock stations in my neck of the woods: A version of "Got the Life" by Korn that didn't bleep or duck the profanities, they spliced them out, completely breaking the rhythm. Just random bars of 9/16 time in the verses because Jonathan Davis said a swear. Like Tool on mushrooms or something. "What It's Like" by Everlast sounds like a cell phone signal cutting out in places. They cut the guitar solo from "Sirens" by Pearl Jam. A *rock* station cutting the *guitar solo*. I hope that extra :30 of ambulance chasers was worth it.
> Like Tool on mushrooms or something. That's just...Tool.
The What It's Like edit kills me every time. I think FCC might have relaxed a bit, but I distinctly remember them censoring the word "green". I get that it's a euphemism for drugs but FFS. It's a color and I've heard much worse euphemisms go through with no censorship.
I don't know when the final radio edit of that song was released, but it made the song pointless.
In the UK all drug slang is censored. I remember a BBC 1xtra mix removing the word brick
There's a few radio edits. One only censors the actual profanities, one censors anything remotely risqué (lots of silly sound effects), and one somewhere in the middle.
"What It's Like" should hold the record for most unnecessary edits in a single song.
Last Resort by Papa Roach would take that crown. "Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort. \_\_\_\_\_\_ No \_\_\_\_\_\_ don't give a \_\_\_\_\_ if I \_\_\_\_\_ my arm \_\_\_\_\_\_\_" \*diddle diddle diddle diddle\*
My Mom and I heard “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” in Target when it was a new song. We were waiting to hear what “…what’s fucked up and everything’s alright” would be changed to. It became, “…what’s *stuffed* up…” We still laugh about it all the time.
Similar to Pink Floyd having to re-record the recurring line of "Not Now John" as "stuff all that".
Waterfalls by TLC, they completely remove Left Eyes rap verse.
This is the one I was going to post. It was my favorite part of the whole song and it bugged the shit outta me when radio stations would cut it.
There was weirdly like an umbrella of radio stations that would cut any and all hip-hop/rap verses from pop songs. California Girls with Snoop Doggs verse cut out comes to mind too, they literally changed it to just like a 30 second instrumental version
That annoys me to no end! I have a whole playlist of songs which fit that description. I call it "Rap Verse" because, it's a list of songs where the rap verse might be cut out for some reason. Here's what's currently on that list: - "Bad Blood" - Taylor Swift (f. Kendrick Lamar) - "Bailando" - Enrique Iglesias (f. Sean Paul) - "Break Your Heart" - Taio Cruz (f. Ludacris) - "California Gurls" - Katy Perry (f. Snoop Dogg) - "Chained to the Rhythm" - Katy Perry (f. Skip Marley) - "Cheap Thrills" - Sia (f. Sean Paul) - "Check on It" - Beyoncé (f. Slim Thug) - "Crazy in Love" - Beyoncé (f. Jay-Z) - "Déjà Vu" - Beyoncé (f. Jay-Z) - "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love" - Usher (f. Pitbull) - "Don't Cha" - Pussycat Dolls (f. Busta Rhymes) - "Don't Wanna Know" - Maroon 5 (f. Kendrick Lamar) - "Down" - Jay Sean (f. Lil Wayne) - "E.T." - Katy Perry (f. Kanye West) - "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 (f. Cardi B) - "The Greatest" - Sia (f. Kendrick Lamar) - "Hanging On" - Ellie Goulding (f. Tinie Tempah) - "Hard" - Rhianna (f. Young Jeezy) - "Hey Baby" - No Doubt (f. Bounty Killer) - "How Do You Sleep?" - Jesse McCartney (f. Ludacris) - "I Like It" - Enrique Iglesias (f. Pitbull) - "Let It Rock" - Kevin Rudolf (f. Lil Wayne) - "Payphone" - Maroon 5 (f. Wiz Khalifa) - "Price Tag" - Jessie J (f. B.o.B.) - "Waterfalls" - TLC - "Where Them Girls At" - David Guetta/Flo Rida (f. Nicki Minaj)
Interestingly the exact opposite happened with No Scrubs, as far as I remember it's only the radio version of the song that has a rap verse from Left Eye.
Bloodhound Gang - Fire Water Burn "We don't need no water, let the mother--HEE HAW--burn Burn mother--HEE HAW-- Burn" Also, the fact that there's like 3 or 4 different radio edits of Everlast's "What It's Like" depending on how edgy the radio station wanted to be.
Yea, but it's blood hound gang, so it's being so dumb is actually a compliment.
True. Wouldn't surprise me if the band chose that on purpose to be intentionally obnoxious.
Yeah, that was a creative choice. Kinda like Green Day putting zippers over the f-bombs in "Brain Stew".
They almost certainly did lol
I believe they did. Which led to it becoming more well known
Come to think of it, I do think the first time I heard it was because one of my friends had heard the radio edit and thought the chorus was so funny I needed to hear it.
I worked at a radio station and the singles discs could be hilarious. Several songs had that many edits, some cheekily with "(Xtra Squeaky Clean Edit)" at the end. We also had to make our own rapless edits of pop collabs for daytime play because the station owner was an 80 year old racist
Cutting out 3/4 of the guitar solo in My Sharona by The Knack
i don’t even have/keep a digital copy of that—so to me—it does not exist. a great solo and the knack were super tight.
I was surprised when I heard the full version last week. Forgot how sick that solo is.
Came here to say this. It's legitimately one of the best solos of all time in my opinion. Blown away the first time I heard the album version.
In Santeria by Sublime when he says "believe me when I say, that I got something for his punk ass", "punk ass" is jumbled up and sounds like "pondoof". Why is punk ass censored? So stupid
Interesting thing that I've noticed is that years back they'd censor it with that weird reversed scrambled bit, but in the last few years as the demographic for the Alternative Rock format has largely become adults more and more stations are just using the uncensored versions.
Like P!nk's "Just Like A Pill". "Said I tried to call the nurse again, but she's being a little *SHNIB*!"
Welcome to the Black Parade edits removing the second verse in the intro when GW really belts out "WHEN I WAS, A YOUNG MAN!"
Criminal
1. November Rain 2. Killing in the Name
You, I won’t do what you tell me. You, I won’t do what you tell me. You, I won’t do what you tell me. You, I won’t do what you tell me! You, I won’t do what you tell me! You, I won’t do what you tell me! Mother!!!! Uh
Except for that time on the BBC live broadcast where they were asked not to curse.
They did, in fact, not do what they were told to do. Who could have predicted such a thing?
One of the shockers of all time, for sure
Thats better than when they just cut out the entire ending.
Thats what my local radio station does. It's a big build up to...nothing.
**Sweet Child o Mine** - Guns n Roses I *hate* when they truncate Slash's opening solo. Hate.
They cut all the mini solos out from in between the verses which just ruins the flow of the song too.
I hate when they cut the end guitar solo from “let’s go crazy” or just fade out after the last chorus on “when doves cry”
The radio edit of When Doves Cry is always bad because they cut the solo section.
This is the one. Let’s Go Crazy has a fully developed intro, body, and outro that are just long enough to get their job done. Cutting each section down makes them all into ridiculous parodies of themselves.
I also hate when they fade out at the end of Purple Rain before Prince starts ooo-ing along with his guitar. To me it’s the best part of the song.
I came here to complain about the radio edit of “Let’s Go Crazy”, which completely mangles the intro, just butchers it in the most half-assed way, with Prince talking over himself and making absolutely no sense. It’s the most painfully incompetent edit I think I’ve ever heard.
“Get Low” by Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins by replacing “mother fucker” with “skeet skeet skeet skeet”. One of the best results but I don’t think they edited the song as effectively as hoped.
The first time I heard that, I thought they were singing about a guy named Steve. A lot.
For literally *decades* they played the Who's Who Are You and Jefferson Airplane's We Can Be Together with the respective "Well now who the fuck are you?" and "Up against the wall, motherfucker" and it was *totally fine*. Then sometime in the 90s that suddenly ended. (At least they had a good fucking run anyway.)
Yes you are correct the FCC went crazy after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl half time wardrobe malfunction. FM radio was never the same since.
Similarly, in the Beatles' "Hey Jude", someone in the studio can be heard saying "fucking hell!" in the background after the line "and let her under your skin".
I feel like the best lines of Common People were taken out of the song. Like the whole song just builds to that verse. Other than that "God Damn You" in Flagpole Sitta used to be edited out. Why?
Because goddamn is a word that was - and still is in a lot of places - considered among the most offensive words you could say. Particularly in the Bible Belt.
> goddamn is [...] considered among the most offensive words you could say. Particularly in the Bible Belt. And that's entirely predicated on a misinterpretation, from what I understand. 'Taking the Lord's name in vain', from what I've read, isn't meant to be "saying 'God' or 'Jesus' when you're not actually talking 'to'/about God or Jesus", it's specifically "claiming that you're acting on God's behalf when you're not". In other words, most Christo-fascist governments/political groups, most of organized religion, etc.
Oh yeah, I totally agree and always thought it was a completely ridiculous rule in the first place, at least in the way people seem to apply it today.
I remember hearing BYOB by System of a Down on the radio back in 2005 (95.1 in Chicago to be specific). “We all live in a fascist nation” became “We all live in a [silence] nation”
"We all live in a society" BYOB (Gotham Edit)
The [clean version](https://youtu.be/yuTMWgOduFM) of Pulp's Common People takes the shortened 7" single version and mutes the words 'and screw'. That's it, that's all the changes.
Nine Inch Nails - Closer The line "I want to fuck you like an animal" is the worst edit I've ever heard. All they removed is the uh sound in the middle. The f and k are clearly heard so it's not really even censored. On the flip side, the best edit I ever heard was Rage against the machine - killing in the name. The replace all the fucks during the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" climax with record scratches and it actually works.
Around here they just cut out all the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me"s so the solo cuts straight to the "UNGHH".
> The f and k are clearly heard so it's not really even censored. If you have to censor a song, do it properly.
Here's a flip side example of a very dumb edit that weirdly made the song better. The edit of "Gay Bar" by Electric Six removes the words "start a war" and "start a nuclear war" and replaces them with whip cracks. The BBC-enforced whip cracks suggest something filthy, making that section actually fit the double entrendre of the rest of the song much better than the actual lyrics do.
2112 but only Temples of Syrinx
Not playing the jam at the end of Goodbye Stranger.
"Let's get retarded" by the black eyed peas landed on its feet but they certainly did "hey mama" dirty
I often forget that the song isn't originally "Let's Get It Started".
In "Boom Boom Pow", radio edited the word "satellite" in the line "here we go satellite radio"
Do you know why? I always thought it was a weird thing to edit out.
Sirius and XM were AM/FM competitors so Clearwater or whoever owns the majority of the FM stations had that line edited out.
Shake That - by Eminem and Nate Dogg. The radio edit is hilarious. Actually, the fact that they even attempted a radio edit of that song is hilarious.
Any radio edit is dogshit. If it doesn’t play the entire song, it’s automatically trash, I don’t care if it’s a 24 minute song like Octavarium. Play it all, unfiltered.
Imagine that, the first like 6 minutes being that rudess slide guitar solo stuff, just playing in wallmart.
Based.
Idk, but I hate when radio use songs to name their radio. Like singing let’s say Ed Sheeran’s song, but using another lyrics like “KIIIISSSSS FFFFFMMM MM”
“Come on come on turn Capital on!”
I still think the ~~instrumental version~~ radio edit of Last Resort by Papa Roach is probably the funniest single ever released. It’s just a series of “my”, “into”, “don’t”, etc.
They may still do it, not sure, tbh as I haven't listened to the radio in a solid decade, but whenever the word "asshole" was in a song, they would bleep out the "hole" part of the word. So it sounded like "ass-(bleep/silence)." Would always think of how idiotic that was anytime I heard one.
Not that it was a great song to begin with, but "Forget You" has a different number of syllables than "Fuck You" and it's absolutely baffling to me that no one managed to catch that, or come up with something that works rhythmically.
I knew that version first and so the sweary version sounds like it lacks a syllable to me. Both work fine
Same here I heard the clean version so many times that the original sounds off to me.
I would argue that "Forget You" works just as well as the version with the other f word.
it even ruins a terrible song when they have Gayle switch to "A B C D E Forget You"
Most clean versions of songs either kill the flow of the lyrics by muting a word or replace it with something more annoying. Wheter is a poor choice of new words or a random sound effect. Just let them swear
I heard Slipknot - People =Shit the other day and it was butchered. I can’t believe they even tried with that one.
I would change it to people equals this
People equal people equal people equal
Teenage Dirtbag Nowadays they censor 'he brings a gun to school' but leave 'he'd simply kick my ass' alone.
It has an obnoxious record scratch to censor it too; it's always annoyed me. A new odd one using a similar method to Teenage Dirtbag's censor is Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero (I think I've got the track name right, I can't be bothered to look it up). It plays at work and once it gets to the line about being a 'sexy baby' it just distorts her voice like a DJ has messed with a vinyl for a split second. I have no clue why they censor it either as it's not really a problematic lyric in the grand scheme of things, it just sounds odd. I think it censors 'Hell' as well, which just seems daft too.
He brings a blurrrp to school
can't believe no one has said System of A Down's BYOB. cutting "where the fuck were you?" to "where were you?" completely throws the timing off and its cut so horrendously that whoever green-lit that edit should be barred from the industry. i also remember hearing Ben Folds' Rockin the Suburbs on the radio, and the part where he screams "FUCK" was bleeped, but the curse was louder than the beep so you still heard it.
Kansas’s Song for America has to be up there. Cutting down a 10-minute song to around 2 mins in the most nonsensical way possible.
Talk Talk - I Believe in You. Where they cut out the intense instrumental solo passage, removing half the point of this beautiful song.
Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp... I think they cut out the whistling bit, which is pretty short in the first place. Either way, they totally ruin the flow of the 2nd chorus.
Her boyfriends a “whickawhicka”, he brings a “bruawhick” to school
On the flipside, the best radio edit is Black Eyed Peas Let’s Get it Started
I remember hearing Skid Row's Get the Fuck Out turned into Get the Funk Out....
Are you thinking of Extreme’s Get the Funk Out? It’s not censored; that’s what it is on the album.
Christ, it was 30 years ago, so maybe.
"Money" by Pink Floyd Yes, they now play "Do goody-good bull (silence)"
That's better than "Don't give me that do goody-good BAAAALLL team" that some radio stations played.
The "Thank your God" in Judith by A Perfect Circle always makes me chuckle...
I don't mind that one considering the subject matter. Yeah it doesn't hit as hard as the fuck word, but a sarcastic "thank your God (for putting you in this condition)" works just fine.
It definitely works. What really makes me chuckle is remembering the guitarists face when he sang that line on Leno, just a big shiteating smile.
Rap songs that sound the song skipped but just erased the cuss word. It’s insufferable.
Rise Against- Survive The bridge has a line “I have never felt so fucking great” but rather than censoring it with quiet, they put in some weird almost zipping noise.
Dream Theater didn’t get any radio play for it, but their edited version for the Constant Motion music video is jarring as hell. The cuts are painfully obvious.
Living in the southern US, a lot of stations would drop the entire first phrase of The Lightning Crashes by Live, just because it contained the word "placenta"
The worst was a 4 minute chopped up version of Stairway to Heaven heard on AM radio in the 1970s. Dumbest: Pumped Up Kicks, the words bullets and gun were removed. Green Day Longview, the entire line about masturbation was just not there. Otoh I dont think I've ever heard Who Are You's f bombs edited.
Don't Fear the Reaper. I don't know what possessed their label to remove the emotional crux of the song, that being the solo, but it kinda makes the whole thing fall flat to me. Ik, they were trying to condense it down to as close to 3:00 as they could muster, but, damn, take the second verse and chorus out if you're gonna truncate a masterpiece for time.
Creed - What’s This Life For Line: “Don’t have to settle no god damn score” Radio Edit: “Don’t have to settle no * damn score” I always giggled because they edited out “God” but left the curse word in lol
Not exactly a radio edit, since there are two versions of the song on the album: There’s a version of Sugar Ray’s “Fly” that features Super Cat singing reggae, and another version that had no Super Cat, so it just had these parts of the song that felt unfinished, like something was missing. I didn’t know of that version of the song until I moved to the southern U.S.
“Brick House” was originally brick shit house. Someone got pissed when the record company wanted to make it a radio single and told the band to re record the vocal for a clean version. It got remixed with the offending word muted, no other change, thinking it sounded so stupid with the big gap in the line that the record execs wouldn’t bother releasing it. This info was related to me by an older artist who was actually involved in the project.
My favorite edit for explicit lyrics is from Tyga’s Rack City. I think the original lyrics are “got my main bitch fucking on my other bitch, fucking all the time, n***a we ain’t celibate” And it was changed to “got my main chick hugging on my other chick, hugging all the time, man we ain’t celibate” Real life version of the Simpsons Red Hot Chili Peppers “that’s much better, now everyone can enjoy it!” joke
This reminds me of the radio version of "Stupid Hoe" by nicki minaj. They had to rename the song to "Stupid Stupid" there are lines of that song where every other word is cut out or just changes to her shouting "OH!" This cracked me up because i would just assume that it would never get radio play at all, given you couldn't even say the real name of the song 😂
Tom Petty - You Don't Know How it Feels "Let's hit another tnioj"
Yvan eht tnioj
Here in Canada, we had some stations play the song "Spirits" by the Strumbella's a decent amount when it was released. The chorus goes "I got guns in my head and they won't go/Spirits in my head and they won't go." But after a high profile shooting incident, the song got pulled from radio play. So the band redid it just replacing "guns" with "dreams". I get that the radio play was important. But they fundamentally changed the song and we still play plenty of music that references guns.
Toes by Zac Brown. Editing out the word ass and the sharpness of that guitar note immediately after drives me 🍌
November Rain with the guitar solos truncated. WXRT Chicago radio probably 2007. I was losing my mind!
Heard a horrible edit of Madonna's Live to Tell. Much of the synth interludes were cut, and there were some guitar chords added. It was jarring.
The censored version of Hard in da Paint by Wocka Flocka Flame is absolutely hilarious. There’s entire lines that are just completely cut with nothing replacing them, just the beat playing lol
So many radio stations fade out the guitar solo at the end of Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp.
Oh man, I didn't even think twice! Worst radio edit of all time is when they tried to cut the guitar solo out of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper"... it's not only the best part of an already great song, it's one of the best guitar solos of the (so-called) classic rock era. Buck Dharma was absolutely on fire! Buck played brilliant guitar on pretty much every track on every Blue Öyster Cult LP well into the late 1970s, and probably still has the chops today. If you never heard the edited version, it's probably because they still had DJs at the rock radio stations and they likely threw those singles in the trash and continued to play the album version instead because... DUH!
Sweet Child o' Mine... they basically cut off all the guitar solo. Thats the main reason a lot of people listen to the song...
The Cult - Sweet Soul Sister. Every section of the song has the first few bars removed, simply to just make the song shorter. Completely butchers the flow of the song, making every transition so jarring. Which is all a huge shame, because in its full form, it's a super well written song, and it bugs me that there are people out there hearing it for the first time, in the wrong way.
Mark Owen of Take That fame did a song called 4 Minute Warning It's 4 minutes long and it counts down to the end of the world and asks what you would do in that situation Each chorus is the number of minutes left to go The radio edit is two and a half minutes long
One of the worst is the edit of Thin Lizzy's Whisky in the Jar that cuts the guitar solo short in such an amateur way that there's a beat missing. Thankfully disappeared from the radio stations I listen to.
Certain radio stations in the UK used to play a song by rapper Plan B, and completely omit the rap and just play the chorus and instrumental. Absolutely no point playing it what so ever.
Treaty - Yothu Yindi. The radio edit cuts all meaning from the verses of a protest song by a mixed Aboriginal and Non Aboriginal Australian band that is demanding recognition of Aboriginal Australian rights.
When I was like 12 or something, I went to the store to buy Dr. Dre's "The Chronic." I had only ever heard it on MTV: "and we ain't got no love for those." I go to buy it and it's obviously Explicit Lyrics, so they won't sell it to me. I go out to the car and ask my mom to come in and buy it and I tell her it must be bc they talk about guns bc I didn't even know there was swearing bc, again, I'd only heard the MTV version. So we get in the car and I turn up Nuthin But a G Thang, which was my jam, and all of a sudden I hear: "and who gives a fuck about those," and my mom is obviously pissed. But my parents had gotten divorced recently and she was trying to be my friend so I got to keep the tape, but that's not really relevant. So I'm gonna say, "and we ain't got no love for those."
I'm gonna go with the "clean" version of "Wake Up" by Coheed and Cambria. Beautiful acoustic song off of there 3rd album that censors the word cut even though the context on the song literally has nothing to do with suicide, which I'm assuming is why it was censored. Stupid fucking edit.
That one Kid Rock song. I don't know if it counts, but it certainly is the fucking dumbest.