Censorship of music

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Censorship of music is the practice of restricting free access to musical works. This censorship may stem from a wide variety of motivations, including moral, political, military or religious reasons. Censorship can range from the complete government-enforced legal prohibition of a musical work, to private, voluntary removal of content when a musical work appears in a certain context. An example of this latter form of censorship is the radio edit.

Censorship of pop music

In order to allow songs to be played wherever possible, it is common to censor particular words, particularly profanity. Some music labels or artists produce censored versions themselves, sometimes with alternative lyrics, to comply with the rules set by various radio and television programs. Some stations decide to censor them themselves using one of several methods:

• Blanking; when the volume is muted for all or part of the word.
• Bleeping; playing a noise, usually a "beep", over all or part of the word.
• Resampling; using a like-sounding portion of vocals and music to override the offending word.
• Resinging; Replacing a word with a more appropriate word.
• Backmasking; taking the offending word and reversing the audio, sometimes the whole audio is reversed (often because it is a home-made job), but more usually only the vocal track is reversed.
• Repeating; repeating the word just said before the explicit word was used.
• Skipping; deleting the word from the song without a time delay.
• Echo; instead of saying a word, it echoes the last word(s) said in the line.
• Disc scratching; in hip hop, scratching on the word, making it sound like another word, or make the word said faster or slower.
• RoboVoicing; making the word totally non-understandable by overpowering a robovoice effect (usually used as a last resort for home-made jobs).
• Distorting; Usually in Hip-Hop, less offensive words such as "shit" or else is distorted. It is usually done by shifting down the pitch.

Airplay censorship

An early example of censorship of music on the radio is from the 1940s. George Formby's "When I'm Cleaning Windows" was banned from BBC radio due to the "smutty lyrics", though Formby's wife Beryl managed to change BBC's opinion.^[1] The ostensibly offending lyrics were:

The blushing bride she looks divine
The bridegroom he is doing fine
I'd rather have his job than mine
When I'm cleaning windows

Another example of censorship is when, in 1956, ABC radio refused to play Billie Holiday's "Love for Sale" because the lyrics are about prostitution, but "Love For Sale" would be on the radio again. ABC also made Cole Porter change the lyric of "I Get A Kick Out Of You", which was a hit for Frank Sinatra. Porter's original stated "I get no kick from cocaine". The cleaned-up version was "I get perfume from Spain".

Another example is when the Rolling Stones went on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan asked them to sing their hit song “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, but he asked them to change the lyrics to Let’s Spend Some Time Together so it would be considered more appropriate. (Napier)

Due to its position as a public broadcaster, BBC Radio has a policy of not playing songs that contain product placement; Ray Davies of the British rock band The Kinks was forced to travel back to the United Kingdom during an American tour in order to change references to Coca-Cola to "cherry cola" from their hit song "Lola" in order to allow it to be given airplay in the country.^[2]

BBC Radio was also involved in a controversy surrounding their play of the Sex Pistols single "God Save the Queen" released by Virgin Records on 27 May 1977 to coincide with the Queen's silver jubilee celebrations. Sales of the single were not prohibited, but BBC's Radio 1 banned it from airplay. It had reached number two in the BBC's own charts, but the public service broadcaster — at that time the BBCs most popular radio channel — pulled it because of its lyrics. In fact, the single reached number one on the chart.^[3] The band was harassed by police when it (loudly) performed the song from a boat on the Thames. (See the entry for Sid Vicious and God Save the Queen on the Sex Pistols page.)

"God save the queen! / The fascist regime."

In 1981, the International Year of Disabled People, saw the BBC pull airplay of Ian Dury's "Spasticus Autisticus" until after dark. Dury, who had suffered from polio, intended the song to be a positive message for people with disabilities. The chorus' refrain "I'm spasticus, autisticus" was inspired by the response of the rebelling gladiators of Rome, who — at least in the version of the story portrayed in the Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus — answered to the name of their leader, "I am Spartacus", to protect him.

Radio 1 in 1984 pulled the "Relax" single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Radio 1 had concluded that the lyric "when you're gonna come" referred to sexual climax. However, FGTH has refused that their song's lyrics were sexual. In a famous incident, Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read took the record off the turntable and broke it in two. After this, but without consulting Read, Radio 1 decided to pull the record — which sent the record straight to number one for a five week stay.

In Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels", the line usually censored from airplay is "Let's roll another joint". In MTV's airings and on many radio stations, the word "joint" was reversed, obscuring it.^[4]

On September 10, 2001, coinciding with the September 11, 2001 attacks, the video and single for the Rammstein song "Ich will" was released, portraying the band as terrorists who want to get a message across and receiving a kind of terrorist award for their "actions". After the attacks, the video clip was broadcast only late at night in the United States, although many media officials and politicians requested the video to be removed from television completely.^[5]

In Rage Against the Machine's 1992 song "Killing in the Name," towards the end of the song, the frontman, Zack De La Rocha, screams out "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" sixteen times before the screaming of "Motherfucker!". Some radio stations block out the whole part, some just censor the word "fuck", and others play a shortened version (clocking at 4:06) which removes this section (going straight from the end of the guitar solo to the outro) along with the intro. However, in the same year, BBC Radio 1 was flooded by 138 phone call complaints by offended listeners after DJ Bruno Brookes accidentally played the uncensored version of "Killing in the Name" on BBC Radio 1's Top Forty Countdown show on a Sunday afternoon.

Some words have also been mistaken for inappropriate ones. In The Black Eyed Peas's song, "My Humps", the word "brothers" is mistaken for "fuckers".

Censorship due to copyright infringement

In 1991, Grand Upright v. Warner clarified that sampling without permission from the original material's copyright holders is prohibited in the United States as copyright infringement. As a result, there are a few cases, particularly in hip hop music, where record labels are forced to reissue material with anything ruled to infringe on existing copyrights removed. An early example, before the 1991 US court case, is the recall of the Euro n?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. The album, full of unauthorized sampling, was recalled under the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society by a complaint from the band ABBA.

Political censorship

Although not common in most democratic societies, more authoritarian governments censor music deemed critical of the government, the military, stores, TV stations, or other authorities. In many societies without a well established free press, popular music is one of the few avenues to express and share ideas, even when those ideas are encoded in otherwise innocuous song lyrics.

After Fidel Castro established his communist dictatorship, Che Guevara suggested a ban on country music, jazz and rock & roll; which he saw as "imperialist music".^[6]

Religious censorship

A recent example is Lady Gaga's song "Judas" (from her album Born This Way) which was banned in Lebanon in April 2011 for being "offensive to Christianity", according to the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper.^[7] Moreover, VH1 India censored the word 'Jesus' itself from the track.^{[citation needed]}

Censorship of artwork

The original cover of nude Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper.^[8]

German heavy metal band Scorpions' 1970s album Virgin Killer's artwork had to be changed because the original cover art showed a nude prepubescent girl, with a glass crack obscuring her genitalia. Simply, the alternative cover art depicts the members of the band in various poses.

Self-censorship

Some artists or record labels choose to censor themselves in order to avoid negative publicity or a Parental Advisory label. This is sometimes due to the timing of events outside of their control, such as how the September 11, 2001 attacks affected audiovisual entertainment. The release and subsequent advertising of Michael Jackson's greatest hits album was delayed until after his 2005 trial; it is not known if a guilty verdict would have further changed the timing of the release.

Artists

Examples of artists who have had their work edited or censored:

• Fela Kuti, Nigeria - Imprisoned and harassed by Nigerian authorities
• Ferhat Tunc, Turkey - Censored and imprisoned by Turkish authorities
• Gorki Águila, Cuba - Censored by the Cuban Government. Imprisoned August 2003 ^[9]
• Judge Dread, England - The Guinness Book of World Records credits Judge Dread for having the most banned songs of all time on the BBC Radio.
• Madonna, USA - Several videos banned and attempted boycott (usually by religious groups) of several of her concerts (such as her visits in 1990 and 2006 to Rome, her visit in 2006 to Russia, her visits in 2009 to Poland and Bulgaria, etc.). When American television network NBC aired a concert from the artist's Confessions Tour, the part of the show where Madonna stages a crucifixion was censored and replaced with images of orphaned African children (images that were part of the live performance involving the crucifixion, but which were displayed on the on-stage screens behind the singer).
• Marilyn Manson, USA- His release of "(s)AINT" is banned in many countries due to its content including BDSM, cunnilingus and drug use along with masturbation.
• Miguel Angel Estrella, Argentina - Banned, imprisoned and tortured by the Argentine military junta ^[10]
• Matoub Lounès, Algeria - Assassinated in 1998
• Parissa, Iran - In the Islamic Republic of Iran, female singers often face severe restrictions
• Pink Floyd's album The Wall was banned in South Africa in 1980 after the song was adopted by supporters of a nationwide school boycott protesting racial inequities in education
• Rolling Stones When they were to perform the song "Let's Spend the Night Together", Ed Sullivan famously challenged the Rolling Stones to change the line to "let's spend some time together."
• Thomas Mapfumo, Zimbabwe - Several songs banned by Zimbabwean authorities

Criticism

The total censorship of a song is often reported in the mass media and often has the effect of drawing more attention to the song than it would have received had it not been banned. Equally, the censorship of a word can highlight it to such a degree that it makes it more obvious what the singer has said.

In 1993, when Nirvana's In Utero album was released, it was forced to be censored by their label as well as by distributors Walmart and Kmart. Nirvana's frontman, Kurt Cobain, responded by saying "I just feel bad for all the kids who are forced to buy their music from big chain stores and have to have the edited music". The name of the song "Rape Me" was changed to "Waif Me" for these stores. The name change only appears on the back cover. The original title is still stated in the liner notes and the album insert.

See also

• Degenerate music
• Censorship on MTV
• List of songs banned by the BBC
• List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks
• Music and politics

References

1. ^ "Free society still has limits". BBC News. 2006-02-10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4701758.stm. Retrieved 2010-04-28. 
2. ^ "Banning songs not a rare occurrence for the BBC". The New Zealand Herald. 19 December 2007. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/radio-industry/news/article.cfm?c_id=295&objectid=10483279&ref=rss. Retrieved 23 September 2011. 
3. ^ Ascherson, Neal (2002-06-02). "Is the UK OK?". The Guardian (London). http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,726093,00.html. Retrieved 2010-04-28. 
4. ^ Posted 7/3/96. "Video: "You Don't Know How It Feels"". MTV.com. http://www.mtv.com/videos/tom-petty/47566/you-dont-know-how-it-feels.jhtml#artist=1147. Retrieved 2011-05-16. 
5. ^ "Rammstein.com (Timeline)". Rammstein. Archived from the original on 2006-10-18. http://web.archive.org/web/20061018081901/http://www.rammstein.com/_Rosenrot/Band/Timeline/T2001/. Retrieved 2007-04-10. 
6. ^ "Hollywood's Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara". http://reason.tv/video/show/622.html. 
7. ^ Freemuse: American pop song banned by Lebanese radio
8. ^ Time magazine on Yoko Ono
9. ^ "Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco". Freemuse. http://www.freemuse.org/sw1534.asp. Retrieved 2011-05-16. 
10. ^ "Miguel Angel Estrella". Freemuse. http://www.freemuse.org/sw1557.asp. Retrieved 2011-05-16. 

Further reading

• Banned In The UK, Channel 4 TV series, 7 March 2005 – 10 March 2005.
• Hecox, M.J. "True Endeavors". Cover Your Ears! Censored Music Through

The Ages. True Endeavors, n.d. Web. 3 Nov 2010.

• Napier, Kristine, “Antidotes to Pop Culture”. Policy Review (1997): 12. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.

External links

• FreeMuse - Freedom of Musical Expression: the world's largest knowledge base on music censorship
  • Timeline of music censorship world-wide from ancient time up til 2000
  • MySpace.com/musiccensorship - Freemuse's MySpace profile about music censorship
• National Coalition Against Censorship - (from USA): Music
  • "A brief history of music censorship in the USA" infographic
• First Listing of Undesired Musical Works – German leaflet from 1939
• Frank Zappa - PMRC United States Senate Hearing 1 2 3 4. youtube.com