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1* Music/ThreeOhThree's "Don't Trust Me" originally had the line "don't trust a ho" in the chorus, which became something like "don't trust her". Also, "I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fuckin' scared of him" became "I'm a vegetarian and I ain't [MUTE]in' scared of him". Furthermore, a 'super clean' edit is aired by some radio stations, censoring the controversial lyric "do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips" so that the mention of Helen Keller is replaced by the previous line with a stutter effect added.
2* The popular English hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Frances Alexander usually now has its third verse omitted, due to its now-controversial endorsement of the British class system as divinely ordained.
3-->The rich man in his castle
4-->The poor man at his gate
5-->God made them high and lowly
6-->And ordered their estate
7* The common Scouting campfire song "Do Your Ears Hang Low" was bowdlerised from a WWI-era British soldiers' song called "Do Your Balls Hang Low".
8* Music/{{Adele}}: "Rolling in the Deep" officially has a line that goes, "Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your '''''ship''''' bare." Except the "ship" sounds more like "[[PrecisionFStrike shit]]" (which, knowing Adele, was probably the intended word in the first place.) In any case, when the song appears on radio, the possibly-offending word is played backwards, and when Adele sang it at the Grammys in 2012 she replaced "ship" with "stuff."
9* The soundtracks for the live action ''Film/AlvinAndTheChipmunks'' movie series change some lyrics to the songs they cover. For instance, the Chipettes' version of "Single Ladies" leaves out the lyrics in the middle of the song, "Trouble" removes references to drugs, and "We'll Be Alright" changes "Our middle fingers in the air" to "We wave our tails in the air".
10* The radio edit of Music/BlackEyedPeas' "Boom Boom Pow" replaces the swear words with jittered versions of the words said previously, or replaces them with new words entirely.
11** A bizarre one is the line "Here we go, here we go, satellite radio" has the word '''''satellite''''' blanked and replaced with some audio distortion. Apparently terrestrial radio doesn't want you to know about [=SiriusXM=].
12* The chorus of Black Grape's "Kelly's Heroes" was originally written as "Don't talk to me about heroes / most of these men snort cocaine" - it ultimately got recorded as "Don't talk to me about heroes / most of these men sing like serfs"[[note]]originally it was going to be "most of these men sing like ''Smurfs''", but was changed for legal reasons[[/note]]. The band sang "most of these men snort cocaine" whenever they played it live, even on television performances where this was censored via cutting out audio anyway.
13* Music/BlakeShelton:
14** "Drink on It" changes "Man, he sounds like such a prick" to "Man, I'd like to bust his lip".
15** A year later, "Boys 'Round Here" changed "backwoods legit, don't take no shit" to "...don't take no lip".
16** And in 2016, an edit of "She's Got a Way with Words" emerged that changed "[[YouPutTheXInXY She put a big F.U. in my future]]" to "She put the SOL in solo" (a baffling choice since "SOL" typically stands for "shit outta luck", meaning that they just traded one implied profanity for another), while also changing "words like 'lying', 'cheating', and 'screwed'" to "...and 'truth'". Other stations just edit out the line "She put a big F.U. in my future" entirely. One wonders why he didn't have any trouble with this when he put out "Some Beach"[[note]]a StealthPun on "som'bitch"[[/note]] over a decade prior...
17* Bob Carlisle's album ''Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace)'' has a song called "It Is Well with My Soul" (not the hymn), that borrowed a few lines from a well-known Music/JamesBrown song for the bridge. Problem: Carlisle's mostly Christian audience (at the time) likely wouldn't have appreciated the term "sex machine". So the lyric becomes: "Get up (get on up)/Stay on the scene/Aww, [[LampshadedDoubleEntendre you know what I mean]]."
18* Brazilian comedy group Casseta & Planeta has a song that the chorus roughly translates to [[LyricalDissonance "I am so sad/I am a fucking wreck/I'm in the shit/Became a card out of the deck"]]. The G-rated version featured on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9sjR1I6Xcw this televised performance]] has an impressively funny array of bowdlerization. Said chorus is translated first to a quite risqué version (I am a goddamn wreck/I [[BlackComedyRape got down to pick up]] [[SlipperySoap the soap]]), another alludes the original line "eu me fudi" ("I've fucked myself") with "I've made a fondue", and the final one is a StealthPun lampshading that they're running out of words to replace the cuss word "caralho" ("I bought a dictionary, couldn't find a word that rhymes with baralho").
19* Also from Brazil, Raimundos was heavy on VulgarHumor and IntercourseWithYou lyrics. Yet if live versions are any indication, one line in a song suffered this to be recorded: in the album, right after a boy [[{{Fingore}} has his fingers trapped in a car door]], his father is laughing silly, "thinking his son is partying, it was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cosmas_and_Damian Cosme and Damião day"]]). On stage, the line was frequently changed to "you're now gonna have to jack off with the other hand!"
20* Whenever Music/{{Busted}}'s "Series/{{Thunderbirds}} Are Go" was played on the Big Toe Radio Show on [=BBC7=] in the UK, the first 2 lines of the second verse were cut out, presumably to remove the word "ass".
21* The animatronic shows at Creator/ChuckECheese often altered lyrics to song covers to remove sex and drug references. For instance, during their cover of Music/RunDMC's "It's Tricky" "These girls are really sleazy/All they say is please me" was changed to "My name is Chuck E. Cheesy/You're all right here to please me" and "They offer coke and lots of dope/But we just leave it alone" became "[[DrugsAreBad We will take hugs, instead of drugs/And that is fine with me]]". Changes to Music/BowlingForSoup's "1985" included turning "One Prozac a day" to "One workout a day" and "She's gonna shake her ass" to "[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything She's gonna shake it right]]." The "1985" changes may be due to the lyrics being based off of the radio edit of the song.
22** Ironically, Jaret Reddick, the lead singer of Bowling for Soup, is the current voice of Chuck E. Cheese.
23* The radio edit of Music/{{Disturbed}}'s "Down With the Sickness" cuts out most if not all of the "Every night I dream..." part because of implied child abuse and [[ClusterFBomb massive use of the F-word]]. In ''VideoGame/RockBand 2'', the solo is left intact, but the lyrics are removed.
24* Early pressings of Music/TheDoors' self-titled debut omit the word "high" from "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" and Morrison's ClusterFBomb from "The End". Subverted during their performance on ''Series/TheEdSullivanShow'', which, like the Rolling Stones example above, tried to alter the lyrics to "Light My Fire" - specifically the "girl we couldn't get much higher" line. The band refused and kept the line intact, leading Sullivan to sever the deal for the Doors to perform on the show again.
25* Creator/DrDemento has been known to use [[SoundEffectBleep duck calls and other funny noises]] to drown out obscene words in some songs, such as over the repeated refrain of "What the fuck?" in The Fools' "Psycho Chicken".
26** He has also been known to cut-n-paste parts of songs to remove "offensive" material. The version of Dr. Hook's "Freaking at the Freaker's Ball" broadcast on the program, for instance, had the line "All the fags and the dykes are boogyin' together" electronically replaced with a copy of "White ones, black ones, yellow ones, red ones" from later in the song.
27** He also took out a brief snippet from "Ti Kwan Leep/Boot to the Head" where [[ButtMonkey Ed Gruberman]] complains, "All this faggy stuff is starting to piss me off!"
28** The funniest Dr. Demento version is Music/FrankZappa's "Titties and Beer," in which most of the song is bleeped out, including the title, which Dr. D introduces as "Beepers and Beer." This hasn't kept the song from being a perennial Funny Five favorite.
29* Music/EazyE's "Boyz-n-the-Hood" has clean radio edit lyrics, changing "Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said shit" to "Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said nothin' yet."
30** In the same song, "Jockin' the bitches, slappin' the hoes" got changed to "Jockin' the freaks, clockin' the dough", among other obligatory changes (despite that, in black slang [at least in the 1990s], a "freak" is a misogynistic -- yet more acceptable than "bitch," somehow -- term for a woman who is into sexually deviant acts [read: anything that's not the missionary position]. However, kudos to the radios for not keeping in the "slappin' the hoes" line and finding a substitute line that actually fits with the GangstaRap aesthetic).
31* In the UK, Eliza Doolittle had an issue with her song "Pack Up" where the original lyrics were "And I like to tiptoe 'round the '''''ship''''' goin' down", but on BBC Radio 1 and ''Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 77'', the lyric was "And I like to tiptoe 'round the '''''tiff''''' goin' down". Apparently, the Brits just can't differentiate "ship" from "shit" for some reason, so they play it safe on the Beeb.
32* Some radio edits of "Oliver's Army" by Music/ElvisCostello cut the one NWordPrivileges-averting verse. When the UK's BBC Radio 6 Music used one of these edits in March 2013, it was met with condemnation from listeners who claimed the aversion was justified due to the intended anti-racist and anti-war theme of the song (while other complaints blamed PoliticalOvercorrectness).
33* The Clear Channel version of "What It's Like" by Everlast, replaces all "objectionable" words -- including "Chrome '45"[[note]]which is a type of gun[[/note]] -- with humorous sounds, for example editing "I'm cuttin' off his balls" to "I'm cuttin' off his- [pruning shear sound effect]."
34** There are actually six different official radio edits of the song. The less heavily censored versions are dubbed "No Curses", while the more heavily edited ones are labeled "No Curses, No Drugs, No Guns". And for each level of censorship, stations could choose either a version with {{Sound Effect Bleep}}s, or one that simply silences the words.
35* Music/FatboySlim's "Fucking in Heaven" is titled "Illing in Heaven" for "radio-friendly" releases. The lyrics are also changed from "Fatboy Slim is fucking in heaven" to "Fatboy Slim is illing in heaven".
36* Music/FleetwoodMac's 2003 song, "Peacekeeper", changes the line "Take no prisoners, only kill" to "Take no prisoners, break their will".
37* Music/FosterThePeople's "Pumped Up Kicks" has all the gun references (mostly the words "bullet" and "gun") removed from American radio edits and the rare times it appears on a music video channel.
38* Defied in the Music/GreenDay album ''Music/TwentyFirstCenturyBreakdown''. Wal-Mart attempted to get Green Day to record a censored version of the album, as the store does not sell explicit albums. The band refused.
39* Music/HarveyDanger's "Flagpole Sitta" contains the lyric "now I'm an amputee, God damn you!" The radio edit partially mutes the line, turning it into "now I'm an amputee!" (awkward pause) "You!"
40* The radio version of Music/HouseOfPain's "Jump Around" is heavily censored due to the large amount of expletives and violence references; e.g. "If your bitch steps up I'm smackin' the ho" becomes "If your girl steps up I'm smackin' her" [[note]]though the edited line still implies violence against women, whether or not said woman is called a "girl" or a "bitch"[[/note]] and many words or phrases were silenced.
41* The official music video for Creator/IdinaMenzel and Music/MichaelBuble's cover of "Baby It's Cold Outside", seen on [=YouTube=], cleans up some lyrics since it features two kids lip syncing. E.g. "What's in this drink?" is changed to "Was that a wink?". Averted for the album version.
42* Music/JakeOwen's "Made for You" has a line "2:00 AM was made for pissed-off dads." On the radio, "pissed-off" is changed to "ticked-off".
43* Music/JimmyBuffett's "Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes" has the line "Good times and riches, and son-of-a-bitches, I've seen more than I can recall!" A rarely heard radio version has a very obvious edit where Jimmy rerecords that entire line, changing "son-of-a-bitches" to "bruises and stitches".
44* One of the first ever official "radio-friendly" versions of a song was of Jimmy Dean's famous country song "Big Bad John", where the radio version replaces the last line "At the bottom of this hole lies a hell of a man" with "... lies a big, big man".
45* Music/KanyeWest:
46** "Power" originally had a second verse that started with a TakeThat against ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' and then a bit of SelfDeprecation against Kanye himself:
47---> "Fuck SNL and the whole cast
48--->Tell ‘em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass
49--->More specifically, they can kiss my asshole
50--->I’m an asshole? You niggas got jokes
51--->You short-minded niggas’ thoughts is Napoleon
52--->My furs is Mongolian, my ice brought the goalies in
53--->Now I embody every characteristic of the egotistic
54--->He know, he so, fuckin’ gifted
55--->I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts
56--->Got treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault
57--->My childlike creativity, purity and honesty
58--->Is honestly being prodded by these grown thoughts
59--->Reality is catchin’ up with me
60--->Takin’ my inner child, I’m fighting for it, custody
61--->With these responsibilities that they entrusted me
62--->As I look down at my dia-mond-encrusted piece"
63** Naturally, when Kanye West was chosen as the musical guest for the season 36 episode hosted by Bryan Cranston, the entire second verse had to be changed. One would expect the ''SNL'' TakeThat to be altered and some of the profanity to be replaced with euphemisms, but instead a completely new verse was written. The new second verse goes like this:
64--->"The brown hero, live from Ground Zero
65--->Machine gun flow, made her get a Ross Perot
66--->And this is disestablishmentarianism
67--->With my night goggles on, got military vision
68--->And it’s still a very Christian way to think about livin’
69--->When you prayin’ for freedom ’cause your mind been in prison
70--->‘Cause they tryin’ to control every single big decision
71--->You ain’t effin’ the system, then why the eff is you livin’?
72--->Look, dawg, you can cop whatever suits you on
73--->Three-piece, cuff links and the accoutrements
74--->They been feedin’ us ish without the nutrients
75--->So I’m back with another hit to let the truth be known
76--->And your boy still fresh with the Gucci on
77--->Them Italians sure know how to make what the moodies want
78--->And they really can’t take what Doobie on
79--->But I be on the same thing ’til you prove me wrong."
80** "Gold Digger" replaces "She ain't messin' with no broke niggas" to "She ain't messin' with no broke broke". It ends up becoming a {{subverted rhyme|every occasion}}.
81** The music video version of "All Falls Down" censors "white" in the line "And a white man get paid off of all of that" due to racist connotations.
82** The album version of "Life of the Party" (on the deluxe version of ''Donda'') bleeps out some words said by André 3000. The standalone single version of the song is uncensored.
83* The Keri Hilson song "Knock You Down" had the "ship" in the line "I'm the commander-in-chief of my pimp '''''ship''''' flyin' high" blanked out on the radio. Apparently, Ne-Yo mentioning "flying" immediately after the word didn't clue censors into the context.
84* The band Kick Axe contributed two songs to ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie'' - because executives deemed their band name inappropriate for young audiences, the soundtrack album credited them as Spectre General instead.
85* Music/KidRock:
86** Kid Rock and Music/SherylCrow's "Picture": "''I've been fueling up on cocaine and whiskey''" has several edits to the word "cocaine": it's either muted, reversed, or replaced with "water" depending on the station.
87** The song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOQE_LUESs "Cowboy"]] has two lines featuring the word "dick" censored even on the explicit album. One of them becomes the following:
88-->"Curse like a sailor/Drink like a mick/My only words of wisdom are to <''RADIO EDIT''>."
89** Speaking of ''that song'', many stations blank out some or all of the second part of the line "lock me up and snort away my key", as well as the word "white"[[note]]as "white" in this context refers to semen[[/note]] in the phrase "I'mma paint his town red, then paint his wife white!"
90** The [=YouTube=] version of the official music video for Kid Rock's "I Am the Bullgod" censors anything even tangentially related to alcohol or drug consumption by distorting the vocals. This includes brand names and descriptions of symptoms (i.e. the name 'Jim Beam' and the phrase 'bloodshot eyes' are censored). Close to half the song, and almost the entire second verse, is incomprehensible.
91** The songs "Fuck Off", "Black Chick, White Guy", "Fuck U Blind" and "WCSR" are omitted entirely from the clean albums. Also, on the clean version of ''Music/DevilWithoutACause'', the song "Welcome 2 the Party" is shortened to remove some of the strong sexual references.
92** The clean version of his version of Monster Truck's "Don't Tell Me How To Live" changes some words and replaces others with sound effects. For example, the beginning of the second verse originally says, "Years ago, we all thought it was a joke, see?/That every kid got a motherfucking trophy/But yo homie, here's the situation/A nation of pussies is our next generation". The clean version changes "motherfucking" to "last place" and replaces "pussies" with a "meow".
93** The "radio edit" voice heard in "Cowboy" originated from a [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=emS_xMxBEfs radio edit of his first single]], "Yo-Da-Lin in the Valley". The full sentence is, "This is a radio edit."
94* Music/KidzBop is a series of cover albums sung by little kids. The lyrics are changed to be more kid-friendly:
95** An egregious example is the cover of Music/LadyGaga's "Born This Way", which [[GetBackInTheCloset edits out all references to people in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community]], as well as reference to race and ethnicity; making the song utterly meaningless.
96** Some of the edits actually make the songs sound dirtier than before, like "Wrap it up / Can't stop 'cause it feels like it's really close" (Wrap it up / Can't stop 'cause it feels like an overdose," from Music{{Cascada}}'s "Evacuate The Dancefloor") or make no sense in the context of the song, like "And you out when you ain't got anyone" ("And you wild when you ain't got nothin' on / haha," from [[Music/BoBRapper B.o.B. ]] and Music/BrunoMars' "Nothin' On You").
97** In Kids Bop 23, "[[Music/{{Psy}} Gangnam Style]]" was edited to change "Hey, sexy lady..." to "Hey, pretty lady..."
98** Averted possibly by accident on the same Kidz Bop "Gangnam Style" was on. In their cover of "[[Music/{{Train}} 50 Ways to Say Goodbye]]", they keep the word "crappy". Crap isn't really considered a swear word anymore (though there are times it will get edited like one because it's still considered rude, similar to how "sucks" and "screwed" can be edited if used in the rude or mildly risque sense) at least in America, however.
99** The Kidz Bop version of Music/AlessiaCara's "Scars to Your Beautiful" removes the references to self-harm and eating disorders in the song, which similarly to "Born This Way" strips meaning from the song.
100** The Kidz Bop version of "Friends" by Music/{{Marshmello}} and Anne-Marie changes "you're not my lover" to "you're not my other" - "lover" was presumably censored due to sexual connotations, and "other" can be taken as short for "significant other" (it also happens to be less of a slant rhyme for "brother")
101** In their cover of "Photograph" by Music/{{Nickelback}}, "What the hell is on Joey's head?" is changed to "What the [[GoshDangItToHeck heck]] is on Joey's head?".
102* Downplayed weirdly with the Music/{{Kongos}} song "I'm Only Joking". The chorus contains this couplet: "What are you smoking?/I'm just fucking with your head." Probably because alternative radio tends to be more lenient, the drugs are kept intact while the F-word becomes f(silence)cking.
103* Some radio edits of Music/{{Korn}}'s "Here To Stay" replace the lyric "This shit's gone way too far" with "This crap's gone way too far".
104** When "A.D.I.D.A.S." was released as a single, the radio edit changed "all day I dream about fucking" to "all day I dream about humpin'".
105* Some editions of The Lemonheads' ''It's a Shame About Ray'' change the title of "My Drug Buddy" to "Buddy". The ''lyrics'' receive no editing whatsoever though.
106* Music/LilyAllen:
107** According to Website/{{Wikipedia}}, while performing the song "Not Fair" on The Graham Norton Show in 2009, she changed the lyric "I spent ages giving head", to instead "I spent ages kneading bread". Another censored version played on radio simply blanks out that entire line, while a second censors only the word "head".
108** For her song "Fuck You", the radio edit quite creatively censors all instances of the word "fuck" with various animal noises. They only appear after the initial "f-" sound, so it's still quite clear what word's being censored.
109* "No News" by country music band Music/{{Lonestar}}: "Joined a cult, joined TheKlan" became "Playing guitar with Music/TheBand", which incidentally goes much better with the next line of "on the road with Music/PearlJam".
110* After Lee Hazelwood threatened to sue them over their lyric changes, the only way Music/{{Megadeth}} could include their cover of "These Boots" on subsequent releases of ''Killing is My Business... and Business is Good!'' was to censor every changed lyric, resulting in a remastered version with about half the words being bleeped out, which makes their version seem much filthier than it actually was.
111* Machine's "There But For The Grace Of God Go I" is a song about a bigoted pair of parents who try to protect their daughter from people and things they consider bad influences. This is driven home hard by the lyric ""Let's find a place", they say, "somewhere far away! With no blacks! No Jews! And no gays!'" The radio edit (and a later cover by The Gories) changes the last part to the less biting "Where only upper-class people stay!"
112* When Music/{{Moby}} covered Music/MissionOfBurma's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver", it was changed to "That's When I Realize It's Over" for MTV due to MTV's rules against mentioning anything associated with guns, gunfire, and gun violence (and, yes, that rule applies to most rap songs).
113* Canadian music video channel Creator/MuchMusic has a history of censoring references to suicide. While it is unsurprising that the word "suicide" was removed from Papa Roach's "Last Resort," more surprising was the removal of the word "resort", despite being ''part of the title!'' Guess the censors didn't like the expression "last resort" in association with suicide.
114** On a related note, in the past, when they did outright ''ban'' a video, they aired it as part of a late-night special called ''Too Much 4 Much'', which also featured panel discussions on why it should or should not have been banned.
115* Music/NickiMinaj:
116** "Superbass" is a victim of this. However, no two stations can seem to agree on what is and isn't acceptable to air on the radio, resulting in no two stations airing the same cut of the song. You might as well listen to the uncut version and save yourself the headache.
117** "Starships" had "We're higher than a motherfucker!" in its chorus, which actually went uncensored for a while because, if anything, it sounded more so like she was saying "mother......ker!" (because of the large amount of pitch-shifting during said vocal), until stations began to catch on, blurring it out so the line sounds like, "We're higher than a (record scratch)!" Many stations also censor "Onika", Nicki's real name, in the line "My name is Onika, you can call me Nicki", due to complaints that it sounds like "nigga".
118*** "Fuck who you are and fuck what you like" is censored by making the two F-bombs lower in pitch. "Fuck" is usually written as "That's" when referring to the clean version.
119* Music/TheNotoriousBIG's "Gimme the Loot" had two lines censored before its parent album ''Ready to Die'' was released: "I don't give a fuck if you're pregnant" and "Bitches get strangled for their earrings and bangles". It's somewhat bizarre to listen to a song that's full of cursing and violence and realize you've just heard the words "pregnant" and "strangled" reversed.
120** "Machine Gun Funk" also {{Sound Effect Bleep}}s out the phrase "the blue suits" (referring to police officers) with police sirens for unknown reasons, though the line is so relatively innocuous that this might have even just been done [[RuleOfCool because it sounded cool]].
121* A radio edit for Music/PanicAtTheDisco's song "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" censored "god" but not "damn" from "goddamn" (a word frequently used in the song). In fact, the music video also lampshades the need to censor it by having Brendon Urie cover his mouth on "god".
122* Music/EdwardElgar set ''The Dream of Gerontius'', a poem by St. Creator/JohnHenryNewman, to music, but years after the choral work's premiere, a number of Anglican clerics forced him to modify the text so that all references to Catholic eschatology, like Purgatory, are removed.
123* Music/DollyParton, Music/LindaRonstadt and Emmylou Harris released a CoverVersion of [[Music/NeilYoung "After the Gold Rush"]] in 1999, and slightly altered the lyrics in two places: one change was simply updating the setting of the song ("in the nineteen-seventies' becomes "in the twentieth century"), but the other was removing a drug reference ("I felt like getting high" becomes "I felt like I ''could cry''").
124* One radio edit of Music/RageAgainstTheMachine's "Killing in the Name" removes the entire "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" part and immediately cuts to the end. Other radio edits also exist, including one that simply mutes the word "fuck". The cover in ''VideoGame/GuitarHero 2'' changes the lyrics to "Now you're under control, I won't do what you tell me!" and "UNDER CONTROLLLLLLL!!!".
125* {{Invoked}} in the video for Raghav's "Top of the World", in which he covers his mouth in the line "you would think that I'm fucked, but I'm not" (the offending word is blurbed out as well, and only the edited version is available on iTunes).
126* Rock and roll songs from the 1950s were considered menacing enough by the (non-teenage) audiences of the day [[note]](mostly because rock and roll songs were sung by black people, meaning the so-called claims of rock and roll -- or, as it was called back then, "race music" -- being a bad influence on the youth could just be a thinly-veiled excuse to cover up the fact that most people protesting rock music were, in fact, prejudiced against black people)[[/note]] that, for a while, Pat Boone was able to become very successful by recording bowdlerised covers of popular songs.
127** Boone wasn't alone. Music/{{Elvis|Presley}} recorded a notably toned-down version of Big Mama Thornton's raunchy "Hound Dog", and Music/BillHaleyAndHisComets adjusted the lyrics to Joe Turner's "Shake Rattle and Roll" to be more palatable to mainstream listeners (though they kept the song's most sexually explicit line intact: "I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store").
128** There's also Elvis' cover of Smiley Lewis' "One Night", which substituted "One night with you is what I'm now praying for" (itself a fairly racy line for 1959) for the original's "One night of sin is what I'm now paying for".
129* [[Music/{{Pavement}} Stephen Malkmus]] and the Jicks held a contest on their website to determine how their single "Senator" would be bowdlerized: The original line was "what the senator wants is a blow job" and the winning entry was "what the senator wants is a corn dog".
130* Some stations edited the reggae-rap bridge from Music/{{Sugarland}}'s "Stuck Like Glue", either because it was mildly suggestive ("Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, feelin' kinda sick / Just a spoonful of sugar make it better real quick"), because it was so bizarre sounding, or both. Many also take out the part near the end in which Jennifer Nettles sings with AutoTune.
131* NWOBHM band Tank have an odd subversion. The booklet in the 2005 reissue of ''Honour and Blood'' blatantly changes the lyrics of many of the songs to remove violent or controversial content. However, the actual audio remains unaltered aside from the remastering, leading to numerous situations where what the booklet says is clearly not what Algy is actually singing. While some of the changes may well be a case of the people making the booklet trying to write out the lyrics by ear instead of looking them up and ending up with a mondegreen, others definitely seem to be deliberate, such as the removal of all references to Islam in "The War Drags Ever On" (which plays the "all Muslims are terrorists" card so hard that many people would be shocked to learn that it was written over a decade and a half before 9/11). For example, the lyrics for the first verse of the song are actually:
132--> A war is raging that we don't understand
133--> And I doubt that we can
134--> There's no mistaking the mad sons of Islam
135--> As they spill blood on the sand
136--> A strange religion that destroys through the Koran
137--> Freedom's lost in this land
138--> Hades or Heaven, they're under its command
139--> Whatever rights had a man
140** But according to the booklet, what he's singing should be heard as:
141--> A war is raging but we don't understand
142--> And I doubt that we can
143--> There's no mistaking the terms of this land
144--> As they spill blood on the ground
145--> A strange religion spreads through the crowd
146--> Put them out of this land
147--> Hades or Heaven, they're under their command
148--> Whatever rights have a man
149* Music/TobyKeith has apparently gotten less leeway on the word "ass" over the years: it was untouched on "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)" in 2002, but 2009's "American Ride" turned "Daddy works his ass off" to "Daddy works his can off"; 2011's "Red Solo Cup" muted the last word of "Freddie Mac can kiss my ass"; and 2014's "Drunk Americans" originally just muted "We don't give a rat's ass" in the chorus, but a later edit changed it to "We don't care, we don't ask" on the first and third iterations, and "We don't judge, we don't laugh" on the second. "Red Solo Cup" also altered "And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles / If you prefer drinkin' from glass" to "And you, sir, do not have a pair of ''vegetables''", possibly for RuleOfFunny.
150* "Alright Guy" by Todd Snider. In the official music video, the line "''Now maybe I'm dirty, and maybe I smoke a little dope / Hey, it ain't like I'm goin' on TV and tearin' up pictures of the Pope''" muted the word "dope", while the lyric "''Hey, I was only kidding when I called them a couple of dicks''" (which works as a DoubleEntendre, as "dick" [[HaveAGayOldTime used to mean a police officer or a police detective]], and now means either "penis" or "someone who is mean or morally repugnant") reverses the word "dicks".
151** And when Music/GaryAllan covered the song in 2001, the "pope" line was changed to "''This one time for medicinal purposes, they forced me to smoke some dope / I'm pretty sure I can still be the President, but I don't think I'll ever get to be the Pope''". Changing the second half is at least justifiable to remove the then-dated reference to Music/SineadOConnor's controversial performance on a 1992 episode of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' (similarly, "''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_(book) that new book]] with pictures of Music/{{Madonna}} naked''" becomes "''that old book''"), but that first half is rather egregious. Even more bizarre is that Gary did ''not'' change the "dicks" line.
152* Music/TraceAdkins' "Rough & Ready" had two edits for the radio: "Got a 'what are you lookin' at, asshole' smirk" to "got a 'what are you lookin' at, pretty boy' smirk" and "Work boots, one blue suit / Size too small, don't wear at all / Unless somebody kicks, gets hitched / That's a bitch, it makes me itch" to "...don't fit, it makes me itch".
153* Oddly, the lyric sheet to the self-titled album by Music/{{OKGO}} has a line in "Don't Ask Me" listed as "Don't waste my blasted time" instead of "Don't waste my ''fucking'' time". The actual song isn't censored though.
154** OKGO have covered "Oliver's Army" by Music/ElvisCostello live - instead of singing its one NWordPrivileges-averting section ("All it takes is one itchy trigger / one more widow, one less white nigger"), they repeat a line from a previous verse ("If you're out of luck or out of work / we can take you to Johannesburg").
155* Again {{invoked}} in the video for the clean version of Music/MarianasTrench's "Desperate Measures", in which Josh Ramsay covers his mouth in the blurbed portion of the line "payback is a motherfucker".
156* When Music/{{Weezer}} covered Music/GreenDay's "Worry Rock" for a tribute album, they changed the line "fucked without a kiss again" to "''hugged'' without a kiss again". Their cover wasn't released as a single, so this was apparently just an issue of the band themselves not wanting to use that kind of language.
157* Some radio edits of [[Music/RobZombie White Zombie]]'s "More Human Than Human" play all the swears in reverse and edit out the intro with the pornographic moaning entirely.
158** The cover art of [[Music/RobZombie White Zombie]] remix album ''Supersexy Swingin' Sounds'' is a pin-up-style photo of a nude Sheri Moon Zombie on a hammock: She's [[HandOrObjectUnderwear strategicially posed in a way that you don't actually see anything]], but nonetheless a "clean" version sold at K-Mart and Walmart gave her a blue airbrushed bikini.
159*** A similar but more extreme case involving Sheri and a racy cover for a remix album happened with Rob Zombie's ''Mondo Sex Head'. The originally intended cover was a photo of Sheri showing her bare bottom; this time so many retail outlets objected that he replaced the art with a photo of a kitten on all formats except vinyl, which retained the image of Sheri. The kitten was apparently meant as a VisualPun - Rob would joke about having "removed the ass shot and replaced it with a pussy shot".
160* The UK's [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Radio 1]] did an absolute slaughter job of Music/{{Rihanna}}'s "S&M". The words "sex", "chains", and "whips" in the pre-chorus were erased, the latter two replaced with audio distortion. The portions of the song where she sings "S-S-S-and / M-M-M" simply have no vocals on them. The icing on the cake? The song was officially referred to as '''''"Come On"''''' whenever it was played, including The Official Charts show. She was not happy and complained about the change on Twitter. Stateside and in Australia, it aired uncensored.
161* The concert film ''Larger Than Life'' was released with the intention of being all-ages friendly, in spite of the fact that one of the songs performed by Gogol Bordello in the film is "Think Locally Fuck Globally." In addition to being part of the title, the word "fuck" is featured heavily in the lyrics. This leads to awkward moments when the band members are clearly saying something but there's no sound coming out (not even a bleep). Even more confusing is that the song is one of two chosen from what was clearly a full set performed by the band. Why didn't the editors simply choose to include a different song?
162* Bad Ronald's single "Let's Begin" had several lines censored or altered in the radio edit. "Smoke good weed get a long lasting high" became "Smoke good ''trees'' get a long lasting ''vibe''"[[note]]not much of an improvement since "trees" and "weed" are euphemisms for marijuana -- and "vibe" means the same thing as "high"[[/note]], "pass the shit around" became "pass it around", and a line about "lickin' Larry's johnson" was cut off after "lickin'". The chorus also had an incidence of 'weed' changed to 'trees', and shortened 'shit' to 'shh'.
163* The version of "My Old Kentucky Home" sung at the Kentucky Derby changes "darkies" to "people". Either way, the lyrics "the darkies/people are gay" [[HaveAGayOldTime still sounds funny to modern ears]].
164* Subverted by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Rather than change references to "Ol' Massa whippin' the darkies" in "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," the legislature retired the old state song and held a contest for a new one.
165* Several Music/ColePorter songs are frequently subjected to this:
166** "I Get a Kick Out of You" is commonly performed in one of two {{Bowdlerise}}d versions, which remove the reference to cocaine and replace it with "perfume from Spain" or "a bop-type refrain."
167** It's unlikely you'll hear singers nowadays launch into the first chorus of "Let's Do It" as it was originally written: "Chinks do it, Japs do it / Up in Lapland little Lapps do it..." (The replacement lyrics about birds, bees and educated fleas were taken from one of Porter's later choruses, but they spoil the nationality theme of the first refrain.) Likewise, the line "Roosters with a doodle and a cock do it" was changed to "Even little cuckoos in their clocks do it".
168** The original verse of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" included the lines, "But now I tell/Each young gazelle/To go to hell--/I mean Hades." This was replaced with more innocuous lines in the published version, ending on "duties" to rhyme with "cuties" (instead of "ladies"). The lines following "he treats it so well" and the entire second chorus were also removed, perhaps because they add even more DoubleEntendre to an already risqué song.
169* "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is often sung using the standard edition with all the {{Double Entendre}}s removed when not performed as part of ''Pal Joey''. One would need to {{Bowdlerise}} far, far more than this song to make a clean version of ''Pal Joey'', a feat which ''was'' accomplished in the film version.
170* Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} had to record a special version of "Let's Spend The Night Together" to play it on BBC radio because it implied sex. The bowdlerised version was called "Let's Spend Some Time Together". They were also forced to play this version when they appeared on ''Series/TheEdSullivanShow'' in the United States, but Mick expressed his displeasure with this by rolling his eyes and giving the camera exaggerated looks of disgust while singing.
171* D12's "Purple Pills", a song about drug use, was rewritten to "Purple Hills", a song about travelling while engaging in drug use. ("Blue and yellow purple hills?" ''Yeah'', they're high either way.) Strangely enough, an ''even cleaner'' version of the edited version was made, blanking out some of the substitute words from the original clean version, names of laxatives, as well as the word "guy" at one point.
172* After the 9/11 terror attacks, several songs that mentioned bombs and war were censored -- among them was Music/ElectricSix's "Gay Bar", which included the lyrics, "Let's start a war, start a nuclear war!" In the United Kingdom, the offending words were replaced by the sound of whips cracking. In the American radio edit for alternative and college radio, however, the lyrics were replaced entirely with [[LampshadeHanging "Let's do an edit, do a radio edit!"]]
173* Rapper Styles P's song "Good Times Pt. 2 (I Get High)" has two versions, a milder version with slightly different lyrics that goes with the music video and the more explicit version on the CD (the drug use remains constant throughout both versions). The mild version is arguably of higher quality, as the hardcore version uses profanity and references to violence [[DarkerAndEdgier to sound 'gangster']] but the music video version flows better with more assonance and consonance. (For example, "I get high 'cuz I ride, what's better to do/ and I'ma always stay live, 'cuz I'm better than you" rhymes better than replacing the second line with the explicit version's "and I never give a fuck, 'cuz I'm better than you".)
174* The song "Closer" by Music/NineInchNails is a complete subversion. Aside from removing the word "fuck" 4 times, the song is left completely unedited when played on the radio. This may be because most MoralGuardians are scared shitless of Trent Reznor. There is an occasionally aired version that also cuts out "penetrate" (as in "you let me penetrate you"), though evidently "violate you" and "desecrate you" are still okay.
175* Music/JohnnyCash's cover of fellow Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" changed "I wear this crown of shit" to "I wear this crown of thorns", a nod to the fact that [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools he was a devout Christian]].
176* Music/{{Tool}}'s "Stinkfist" has no individual profane words in it, but it is frequently referred to as "Track #1". The line "[=finger/knuckle/elbow/shoulder=] deep within the borderline" is also often edited to remove the body part.
177* Music/TheBlackEyedPeas re-wrote "Let's Get Retarded" as "Let's Get It Started" to be Creator/{{ABC}}'s theme song for the 2004 [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation NBA playoffs]]. A few months later, it became a BreakawayPopHit when it was released as a single and as a bonus track on a re-release of ''Elephunk''. It significantly overtook the original in popularity and awareness; many people aren't aware [[SelfCensoredRelease that there was a "dirty" version of the song to begin with]].
178* The radio version edit of Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" changes "I told you once, you son-of-a-bitch" to "son-of-a-gun."
179** Even better, when this song was put in ''VideoGame/GuitarHero III'', it was censored... even though the '''official soundtrack CD''' has the line as "son of a bitch".
180** This particular edit seems to completely change the tone of the song. "Son of a Bitch" in the correct tone shows complete contempt, but no matter how you say "Son of a Gun", there's a feeling of affectation in it.
181** Then there's Charlie's song "Long Haired Country Boy" where the line "but I will take another toke" is replaced by "but I will tell another joke". It also replaced "I get stoned in the morning, and get drunk in the afternoon" with "I get up in the morning, and lay down in the afternoon".
182** Charlie Daniels bowdlerized many of his own songs after becoming a born-again Christian.
183* Radio/RadioDisney edits many of the songs they play. Some of the edits are rewrites, and others have lines ''completely removed''.
184** Music/KellyClarkson's "Walk Away" had the line "So before you point your finger, Get your hands off of my trigger" removed as well as an entire verse between the last two choruses for sexual connotations.
185** Music/AllstarWeekend's "Not Your Birthday" had "Quit your bitching" changed to "Stop complaining", "Before the drinks are gone" changed to "Before the night is gone," and "Nobody gives a damn" was changed to "Nobody really cares."
186** Music/DestinysChild's "Jumpin' Jumpin'" changed from a song about clubbing at 11:30 PM to a song about partying on Friday night.
187** The original second verse of Hot Chelle Rae's "Tonight Tonight" describes waking up from a hangover with a strange tattoo which he doesn't know how he got, that "kinda looks just like you/mixed with Zach Galifianakis". The Radio Disney Edit has it so the narrator is on a plane with a pilot looking "just like you/Zach Galifianakis" instead. Interestingly, "my girlfriend went and cheated on me" from the song's beginning is left intact.
188** Music/SelenaGomez' "Hit The Lights" has two separate verses ending in with [[PrecisionFStrike Precision D Strikes]]. The edited version replaces "too damn scared to fly" and "too damn scared to try" with "toooooo...scared to try/fly".
189** Music/{{Weezer}}'s "Beverly Hills" changes "my automobile is a piece of crap" to "my automobile isn't all that great" and replaces "my friends are just as cruel as me" with "got nothing in my pocket," which appears later in the verse. It is very strange to listen to.
190** In the Radio Disney version of Music/AshleyTisdale's "He Said She Said," the lyrics "Baby I can see us movin' like that (like that)/Baby I can see us touchin' like that (like that)/Baby I can see us kissin' like that (like that)" become "Baby I can see us bein' like that, (like that)/Baby I can see us dancin' like that (like that)/Baby I can see us chillin' like that (like that)." Furthermore, the vocals were entirely re-recorded, with the breathy background vocals removed from the instrumental, removing any trace of IntercourseWithYou from the original.
191*** And though the girl the boy falls for in the same song remains "so Creator/JessicaAlba fantastic," she goes from "blowin' your mind with her asset" to having "got everything, you can't pass it."
192** In the Radio Disney edit of Music/{{Pink}}'s song "Get the Party Started", the line "I'll be burning rubber, you'll be kissing my ass" is removed (whereas other radio edits would replace "kissing my ass" with "kissing my ends", "watching me pass" or cover "ass" with a SoundEffectBleep[[note]]like a car horn or the sound of tires screeching as a car peels out into traffic[[/note]], "KBIG 104" (for a Los Angeles radio station) or a computerized voice saying, "Radio Edit").
193*** The Radio Disney edit also removes the line "I can go for miles, if you know what I mean".
194** The edit for Creator/EmilyOsment's "Lovesick" goes from, "You look so low, low/Together we can get high/Hi-fi/St-st-st-stereo" in the first verse to "You look so low, low/Together we can get ''hi-fi''/Hi-fi/St-st-st-stereo."
195** Weird Al's "The Saga Begins" (which details the plot of the Phantom Menace) has a line change on that station too (that Al recorded to avoid a bad-sounding edit): "Do you see him hitting on the queen?" is changed to "Do you see him talking to the queen?"
196** As "All About That Bass" was gaining traction, Radio Disney approached Music/MeghanTrainor about making a sanitized version of the song for their station. She complied, re-writing some of the lyrics and removing any references to body parts. "I got that boom-boom that all the boys chase, and all the right junk, in all the right places" becomes "I got them smooth moves, they say I look great. Yeah, I'll be the star on all them big stages", and "Boys like a little more booty to hold at night" becomes "[[TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside Boys like the girls for the beauty they hold inside]]".
197*** This version of the song is also played on some adult contemporary stations and in retail establishments such as Kohl's and Walgreens and has since become known as the "AC Version". It also appears in [[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance 2016]], part of a video game series that is infamous for censoring their songs almost to Radio Disney levels to avoid a Teen rating from the ESRB.
198** Their edit of Music/TheChainsmokers' "Closer" changes "I drink too much and that's an issue" to "I ''think'' too much and that's an issue", as well as blanking "Now I'm looking pretty in a hotel [[spoiler:bar]]", "So baby pull me closer, [[spoiler:in the backseat of your Rover]]", and "Play that Blink-182 song [[spoiler:that we beat to death in Tucson]]". However, on a very rare occasion for Radio Disney, they undid the last two edits after being mocked on the Internet and letting the same lyrics go through in a country cover of the song.
199** Radio Disney's edit of Music/ShawnMendes' "Mercy" blanks out "I'm prepared to sacrifice [[spoiler:my life]]".
200** Music/HeyViolet's "Guys My Age" isn't exactly appropriate thematically for Radio Disney, but they sure did try their hardest. "Now I'm out and wearing something low-cut/'Bout to get attention from a grownup" became "Now I'm out and wearing something so fun/'Bout to get attention from a new one". "Smoking weed, he'd never want to leave the house" was also changed to "''Making beans'', he'd never want to leave the house".
201** Music/DuaLipa's "New Rules" has a large chunk of the chorus blanked out/replaced with an echo in the Radio Disney edit.
202-->One, don't pick up the phone
203-->You know he's only calling 'cause he's [[spoiler:drunk and alone]]
204-->Two, don't let him in
205-->You have to kick him out again
206-->Three, don't be his friend
207-->You know you're gonna wake up [[spoiler:in his bed in the morning]]
208-->[[spoiler:And if you're under him,]] you ain't getting over him
209** Also by Dua Lipa, "IDGAF" plays with the phrase implied in the title replaced with "I don't need your love", though the original title can still be seen on car radios that display the titles of songs as well as Radio Disney's website.
210** Music/DemiLovato's "Cool for the Summer" plays with the verse that most implies a same-sex fling ("Got a taste for the cherry, I just need to take a bite") removed, as well as the lyrics "Kiss one another/Die for each other". (Oddly enough, the blatantly sexual "Got my mind on your body and your body on my mind" is left intact, and even ''repeated'' over the removed "cherry" verse.)
211** Radio Disney's edit of Music/{{DNCE}}'s "Kissing Strangers" is excessively repetitive, removing Nicki Minaj's verse and replacing the line "Can't quit/Take sips" with an additional "Language/Use lips". "Wanna taste you" is also oddly changed to "Wanna taste ''ooooh''", considering how similar they sound.
212** On Radio Disney, Music/HilaryDuff's "All About You" changed from a song about a dirty secret in the backseat to a little secret at the sunset.
213** OSTON's "Shrug" had several Kidz Bop-like changes (the only difference being the artist re-recording it herself): "What the hell" was changed to "What's the deal", "I can't relate to all your bullshit" to "I can't relate to what you're saying", "Rip the dress off my body" to "[[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Skip the rest of the party]]", and "vodka soda" to "cherry soda".
214** Music/{{Akon}}'s "Lonely" was edited to remove the "took all the bullshit" line, and changed "And I noticed that my girl wasn't by my side" to "Wondering why she had to go and take that flight".
215** JP Saxe and Julia Michaels' "If The World Was Ending" has the verse "You'd come over and you'd stay the night" (a fairly tame line in and of itself) changed to the completely chaste "You'd come over and we'd talk all night". "Would you love me for the hell of it?" was also tweaked to "for the ''thrill'' of it".
216** Goldo's "Boom Da Boom" was [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WLD9D_whi6Q completely rewritten]] for Radio Disney, because it mentions, among other things, [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JtiWlaRMmPo having sex with celebrities, a high-speed chase, a toke, and an AK-47]]. This radio edit was also featured in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse''.
217** Similarly, Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" was rewritten to be about Lou hanging out with Disney characters at a candy store instead of buying some liquor and picking up women. Strangely enough, an instance of "Lord" and the closing verse about falling in love were left alone.
218** Music/CarlyRaeJepsen's "Tonight I'm Getting Over You" had the repeated refrain of "We're not lovers, but more than friends" changed to "We're not [echo] ''not, not, not, not'', but more than friends".
219** When Radio Disney played "[[Music/TheSimpsonsSingTheBlues Do the Bartman]]" in the late 90s, Bart's instance of "damn" was censored.
220*** That's nothing compared to the kid-oriented [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_AAHS Radio AAHS]] network earlier in the decade, which played a completely butchered "Do the Bartman" that edited out ''all'' references to Bart's delinquent behavior!
221** "C'est La Vie" by the Irish GirlGroup B*Witched had both its lines of "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" replaced by "I'll be the queen, and you'll be the king". This resulted in [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the latter line being heard three times]]: once in the first verse and twice in the second. Considering what the song is about, it's a wonder that Radio Disney was allowed to play the song in the first place.
222** "Oops!... I Did It Again" by Music/BritneySpears had every instance of "I'm not that innocent" silenced or replaced by Britney singing "Yeah!"
223** "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" by Music/BackstreetBoys had "Am I sexual?" from the pre-chorus removed.
224* In "NOW That's What I call Polka" Music/WeirdAlYankovic covers "Thrift Shop" and changes the lines "I'm in this big ass coat" to "I'm in this big 'ole coat" and "this is fucking awesome" to "this is super awesome."
225** When he performed his song, "Couch Potato" on Nickelodeon, he had to make a couple of changes, such as removing the reference to the Playboy channel, and slightly alter the lyric, "But I only saw ''Series/WillAndGrace'' one time, one day. Wish I hadn't, 'cause Tivo now thinks I'm gay!" He had his band shout "Hey!" when he got to the last word.
226* When the Music/{{Eels}} album ''Daisies of the Galaxy'' was released, Creator/DreamWorksRecords requested they record bowdlerized lyrics to "It's a Motherfucker" for an edited version of the album to be sold at Wal-Mart. E complied, in a tongue in cheek WriterRevolt sort of way, by changing it to "It's a ''Monster Trucker''", complete with unintelligible CB radio speak during instrumental breaks.
227* Songs with potentially offensive references to Jesus in their title frequently have it omitted. For example, "Trip with Jesus" by The Union Underground is frequently just referred to as "Trip...", and some playings shorten the line "trip with Jesus" to "trip...". Not so bad? British metal band Orange Goblin has a song called "Jesus Beater" (it isn't actually as offensive as the name would make you think). It got bowdlerised, though... into "Wife Beater". Sure, that's also another term for a tank top shirt, but it's easy to take the wrong way - and, in their homeland, means ''exactly'' what it says.
228* The official edited version of Music/BeastieBoys' album ''Ill Communication'' has some rather perplexing Bowdlerizations. (Many would also find the very concept of an "edited version" perplexing, but that's beside the point.) Aside from being poorly done in general -- portions of the entire finished mixdown are reversed instead of just altering the vocal track -- there are edits to completely innocuous words such as "shifting" and "funky". But the most humorously misguided edit on the album would have to be in "Get It Together", when the word "crack" is edited out of the line "Never ever ever smoking crack." So instead of getting a nice anti-drug message, the hypothetical listener of this family-friendly album now has to wonder exactly what it is that the Beasties will ''never ever ever'' smoke. (The same song has the word "shit" unedited in one lone instance.) A later song also has the word "Cheeba" (a slang term for marijuana) edited out of the line "I stopped smoking Cheeba, that was part of the key."
229** The later ''To the Five Boroughs'' also has an edited version, but it's ''much'' less of a hack job, as almost all of the songs actually have alternate vocals recorded to mask the offending words. Hearing the edited version of "Ch-Check It Out" on the radio, for example, you would never guess just how profane the song really is. "Wait a minute, all you Klingons in the ''fucking'' house? Turn this ''motherfucking'' party out? Where'd all this come from?"
230* "Tubthumping" by Music/{{Chumbawamba}} goes from "pissing the night away" to "KISSING the night away."
231* In ''Karaoke Revolution 2'', the Boys II Men song "I'll Make Love to You" is edited to say, "Throw your rose on the floor / I'm gonna take my rose off too," which makes absolutely no sense in a song that's about having sex.
232* Spoofed in "Oh Susie" by German singer/comedian Frank Zander, in which ''all'' the (still quite obvious) "dirty" words are replaced with random noises ostensibly due to ExecutiveMeddling.
233* Some radio stations completely remove the second verse of the Music/DireStraits song "Money for Nothing" because of the repeated use of the word "faggot". Their greatest hits CD also has the edited version. OZ FM, a radio station in St. John's, Newfoundland, got in trouble for playing the unedited version in 2010 after a listener complaint.
234** In at least one airing on the simulcasted Canadian radio show ''Rock of the West'', the word was played in reverse.
235** Mark Knopfler himself changed the word to the slightly less offensive "queenie" in an MTV concert performance and on the ''On the Night'' live album.
236** Mark Knopfler has said that he originally wanted the aforementioned verse to also include the word "motherfucker", but back when the song was released, it would have been very shocking to hear that in a pop song. He has sang the verse with this word in certain live performances, while in others he has sang "mother trucker".
237* The Creator/MontyPython song "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio" is a joke about this, being a very pretty song about bowdlerization which features more and more elaborate and bizarre bleep sounds to cover up its supposedly offensive words. It has frequently been played on the radio, because the result (although very suggestive) is not technically obscene:
238-->I bet they won't play this song on the radio
239-->I bet you they won't play this new [''bleep''] song.
240-->It's not that it's [''buzzer''] or [''parp-parp''] controversial
241-->Just that the [''pinging bell'']ing words are awfully strong.
242-->You can't say [''buzzer''] on the radio
243-->Or [''arrow swish''] or [''thunk of arrow in target''] or [''agonised scream'']
244-->You can't even say I'd like to [''football rattle''] you one day
245-->Unless you're a doctor with a very large [''flexatone boing'']
246-->So I bet you they won't play this song on the radio
247-->I bet you they daren't [''record scratch'']ing well programme it.
248-->I bet you their [''cash register shing-ching'']ing old Programme Directors
249-->Will think it's a load of horse [''fart noise'']
250** They also faced this with "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", whose radio version replaced "shit" with "spit" in the line "Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it". However, when member Eric Idle performed it at the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, he performed the original version uncensored.
251* The song "Seasons in the Sun" is a highly bowdlerised version of a French song "Le Moribund" ("The Dying Man") by Music/JacquesBrel. Both are about a dying man saying goodbye to his friends and family, but in the original, it becomes pretty clear that all the people that the narrator is saying goodbye to were people his wife was having an affair with.
252* When Music/VanMorrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" was originally released in 1967, a lot of radio stations objected to the line "Making love in the green grass" because of the sexual connotations, so the record company issued a version that poorly edited in the line "Laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey" (from earlier in the song) over the other line. That version was quickly forgotten and the uncensored version became the standard one over the years. Then, for reasons unknown, the censored version was included on the popular 1990 ''Best of Van Morrison'' comp.
253** Incidentally, both versions are available on iTunes, and not marked as "clean" or "uncensored". So, best of luck...
254*** The song was also originally called "Brown-''Skinned'' Girl", [[ValuesDissonance but radio stations refused to play it like that.]] Morrison had to change all references to brown skin to brown eyes instead.
255* The song "Almost" by Music/BowlingForSoup, a title quite appropriate in that after the edits it's [[{{Pun}} almost]] a different song. For example:
256-->I almost got drunk at school at fourteen
257-->Where I almost made out with the homecoming queen
258-->Who almost went on to be Miss Texas
259-->But lost to a slut with much bigger breastses
260** ...became...
261-->I almost got punked at school at fourteen
262-->Where I almost got a hug from the homecoming queen
263-->Who almost went on to be Miss Texas
264-->But lost to a girl who sewed her own dresses
265** Then we have this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNbOr0ylYZk little number]]. Note the omission of "Drunk" and "fourteen" but the distinct presence of "slut with much bigger breatses". Seems like a stupid place to draw the line. Two Radio Disney edits exist, one that keeps "made out" and changes "slut" to "chick," and the one above. The second verse in the RD edit also goes from this:
266-->I almost held up a grocery store
267-->Where I almost did five years and then seven more
268-->Cause I almost got popped for a fight with a thug
269-->Cause he almost made off with a bunch of the drugs
270to this:
271-->I almost worked at a grocery store
272-->Where I almost did five years of sweeping the floor
273-->And I almost got popped for a fight, it's a shame
274-->Cause he almost made off with my video game
275* The Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk" originally had the line "(Under the boardwalk) We'll be making love" in the chorus, but radio stations objected, so it was changed to "(Under the boardwalk) We'll be falling in love." The Bowdlerized version has become the standard, although some oldies stations have started playing the original.
276* Mocked in Desorden Público's song "El día que prohibieron la violencia y el sexo en la tele" ("The day where sex and violence were banned from TV"), which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin about what the title says]]. The result: all the programming is screwed, since everything Newscasts to {{Soap Opera}}s is damaged when not outright off air, people stops watching TV at all since there is nothing to watch; and to appeal to those yearning for the lost things producers use those media not affected by the ban, so now people "can hear [[BangBangBANG gunshots]] and [[TheImmodestOrgasm moans]] on the radio".
277* Music/{{Eminem}}:
278** The single version of "My Name Is" featured substantially rewritten lyrics. They're generally either just slightly toned down or so intentionally ridiculous that you can easily figure out the original content anyway ("I just drank a fifth of ''kool-aid'', dare me to drive?"), but a couple of lyrical substitutions are different enough for the real words to be a little surprising when you're used to the radio version. Even knowing his reputation, it can be kind of jarring to find out "If you see my dad, ask him if he's bought a porno mag and seen my ad" is actually "If you see my dad, tell him ''I slit his throat in this dream I had''". More crazy censored lines include "Well, since age twelve, I've felt like a caged elf who stayed to himself in one space chasing his tail" (which was originally "Well, since age twelve, I've felt like I'm someone else because I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt") and "I'm about to pass out in the garage and fall in the grass faster than a fat man who sat down too fast" (which was originally "I smoke a fat pound of grass and fall on my ass faster than a fat bitch who sat down too fast").
279*** Even the unedited version of this track is still more edited than the original. The original version of this track had "My English teacher wanted to have sex in junior high / the only problem was, my English teacher was a guy" in the place of "My English teacher wanted to flunk me in junior high / Thanks a lot, next semester I'll be 35" Then later in that verse, "Extraterrestrial, killin' pedestrians, rapin' lesbians" was replaced by "Extraterrestrial, running over pedestrians in a spaceship". In both cases, the lyrics that follow these changes make more sense with the original lyrics. Especially with the latter, where "while they're screaming (at me) 'let's just be friends!'" it's the only way it makes sense at all.
280** Other Eminem songs, such as "Stan", were censored simply by muting half the song's lyrics, including the entire verse in which Stan throws his girlfriend in the trunk of the car and drives it into a river (most of the misogynistic insults and the references to violence against his girlfriend [tossing her in the trunk, not slitting her throat, and binding and gagging her] have been edited).
281** The edit of "My Fault" replaced references to with {{Magic Mushroom}}s with mushroom pizza.
282** Some songs, like "Fack" and "Drips", don't even ''get'' censored versions on the clean album, replaced by 4 seconds of silence.
283** Similarly to "Stan", Capital FM in the UK edited "Love the Way You Lie" by completely removing any lyrics related to violence and abuse, leading to several moments where the chorus suddenly cuts into the middle of a verse. The word "knife" was also censored from the lyric "steel knife in my windpipe", with it being reversed to sound like "gun".
284* The version of Music/AliceInChains' "Man in the Box" played on MTV contains the altered line "buried in my ''pit''" (and later "shove my nose in spit"). Radio stations, which had actually been playing it uncensored previously, also switching to this version post-Nipplegate. Thankfully, they've now started just cutting the word short rather than using the rather silly alternative. Presumably for the sake of the singers among us, ''Rock Band 2'' uses the version that replaces the instances of "shit" rather than removing them. The censorship of this song is extremely ironic, considering that the song is about censorship in mass media.
285** And let's not forget the edit of "Heaven Beside You", which included the line "that's ''fracked'' up". Some stations remove the offending line completely, messing up the flow of the chorus.
286* The MTV version of Music/TomPetty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" censored the line "Let's roll another joint" in an odd way, by just playing the offending word backwards (it sounded something like "let's roll another t'nohj"). Amusingly, when Tom Petty accepted an MTV video music award for the video, he couldn't help noting that whenever he saw his video on TV, there was one word of the song he could never make out.
287** Some radio stations present the lyric as "let's '''''hit''''' another joint," which could still mean what Petty wanted it to mean and isn't an improvement over "roll".
288* In the Music/{{Nickelback}} song "Rockstar", the radio version bleeps out the word "drugs" in the line "The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap." The bleep, of course, only makes it sound [[CensoredForComedy worse]] (and redundant, because the bleep in the second line in relation to the "girls come easy" line that came before it could translate to either "whores" or "pussy"). However, many Canadian stations air the song uncensored, while at least one only mutes the word "assholes".
289** The radio edit of "Burn It to the Ground" not only mutes out the three uses of "shit", but also mutes the "s" sound in "ass". It's also worth noting that when the third "shit" is muted, the "n" sound before it (which is short for "and") is muted as well, presumably so that listeners won't think that the censored word starts with the letter N. This edited version is featured on the album ''The Score Rocks''.
290** The clean album version of "San Quentin" only mutes the one use of "shit". However, there is a version available to radio stations and Internet jukeboxes that also mutes every instance of "hell" as well as the first half of "goddamn" (including the "d" sound).
291* The "clean" version of "[[Music/SirMixALot Baby Got Back]]" has the infamous intro removed (with the {{Valley Girl}}s talking about a black girl's butt and saying she looks like a rapper's girlfriend), and "walking like hoes" changed to "walking like Flo Jo"[[note]]The nickname of Florence Joyner, a famous black female runner who died at an early age of an epileptic seizure[[/note]]. (Which makes no sense, since he's now making fun of the very women he wants to keep his like.)
292* Music/TaylorSwift has had this happen twice. "That's fine, I'll tell mine you're gay" in "Picture to Burn" became "That's fine, you won't mind what I say." "Teardrops on My Guitar" also changed "'cause it's so damn funny" to "'cause it's just so funny", even though "damn" is usually considered acceptable in country music.
293* When Music/JimmyBuffett plays "all ages" shows, his staple "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)" gets bowdlerised. Most noticeably the title line gets changed to "Why don't we get lunch in school?", though a number of other "family friendly" changes are present.
294* When Da Vinci's Notebook sang "Another Irish Drinking Song" in concert, a line about a Catholic priest who dropped dead "underneath the altar boy" was abandoned. Instead, they sang, "In respect to all our Catholic friends, we won't sing this line tonight."
295* Music/{{Radiohead}}'s song, "Creep," has a radio edit in which the line, "I wish I was special/You're so fucking special" is replaced with "I wish I was special/You're so very special." This is retained in the ''Videogame/RockBand'' version of the song. In one acoustic version performed for a radio session, Thom Yorke lampshaded it by deliberately croaking out "very" in a very different tone of voice from the rest of the song every time the line came up. A large number of covers use the radio edit line.
296* An example where the title was bowdlerized, but the song remained intact, involved {{Music/Nirvana}}'s ''In Utero.'' Wal-Mart would not stock the CD until the cover art was changed (because, to them, medical drawings of the female body are offensive) and the title of "Rape Me" was changed on the cover to "Waif Me." No attempt was made to censor the song itself.
297* Another case that only changed the packaging was the Music/BloodhoundGang album ''Hooray for Boobies'', which has a version called just ''Hooray'', [[https://img.discogs.com/SJS2C7MEGXFXn3odSrkEsMr4Awg=/fit-in/424x411/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-5913861-1406169592-4004.jpeg.jpg with only one image from the original cover.]]
298* In a subversion, The [[Music/AmandaPalmer Dresden Dolls]]' song "Coin-Operated Boy" has two versions:
299--> "I can even fuck him in the ass!"
300vs.
301--> "I can even take him in the bath!"
302** The original line is actually the second line. "I can even fuck him in the ass" was a mid-performance ad lib by Music/AmandaPalmer -- though it's now well-known enough that people regularly mistake the original line as Bowdlerisation.
303* One band name that was bowdlerized was the Music/ButtholeSurfers. When they hit the Top 40 with "Pepper," many radio stations called them the "BH Surfers." Their name is even rendered as "B***h*** Surfers" on the clean version of the album ''Electriclarryland''.
304** Speaking of "Pepper," three words were censored from the radio edit: "bullet", "shot", and "rapist".
305** Christian parody band [=ApologetiX=] did a parody of "Pepper" (titled "People") - because the band name wasn't appropriate for their audience, they credited the original to "The Buttonhole Surfers". This name was also used in advertising when they played the Newport Centre, at the insistence of the venue and to the annoyance of the organisers.
306** In one of the SNES "Play it Loud" commercials, they played their song "Who Was in My Bed Last Night", but bleeped the "hell" part of the song. "Who the *bleep* was in my bed?"
307*** Another ad in the same campaign featured another Butthole Surfers song, "Goofy's Concern", which was a particularly baffling choice because nearly every line of the song starts with "I don't give a fuck about...". However, the censorship was more seamless this time: they mainly used instrumental portions of the song, with Gibby Haynes' vocals being cut down to "I don't care what you want me to be / I don't care what you want me to see" and a couple of inarticulate {{Metal Scream}}s.
308* When Music/AliceCooper had a Top 40 hit with "Only Women Bleed," Casey Kasem introduced the song on ''American Top 40'' simply as "Only Women."
309* When Sawyer Brown covered Dave Dudley's SignatureSong "Six Days on the Road," "I'm taking little white pills" became "I'm passing little white lines" because the CountryMusic audience of the late 1990s was presumably less accepting of a drug reference. Although it was likely meant to indicate the white divider lines on a highway, it also ends up sounding more like a reference to cocaine, arguably making it an inversion.
310* When it first became a hit, Music/{{Bush}}'s "Everything Zen" generally got the line "Should I fly to Los Angeles, find my asshole brother?" by uncensored, but now more often it's replaced by "...find my ''in-law's'' brother", or else the word "asshole" is just played in reverse.
311* Music/{{Weezer}} had to re-record "We Are All on Drugs" as "We Are All in Love" in order for it to get played on MTV. Despite the fact that it wasn't a pro-drug song, and in fact wasn't even about taking drugs in the literal sense. Oddly, in the video itself, Rivers Cuomo is seen reading a newspaper with the headline clearly reading "WE ARE ALL ON DRUGS", and this goes completely uncensored.
312** That wouldn't be Weezer's first experience with censoring on MTV. Their 2001 hit "Hash Pipe" had the first word edited out from the song and the title, referred to on the network as "H*** Pipe" or just "Pipe". The same was done with radio airplay of the song on some stations, as well.
313* The 1979 Music/DavidBowie song "Boys Keep Swinging" has the lines "When you're a boy/Other boys check you out" in the first chorus. When Bowie performed the song on ''Saturday Night Live'' later that year, censors muted that second line, and the vocal remains muted on the Season 5 [=DVD=] release. At least he got to perform the song -- [=RCA=] chose [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Keep_Swinging not to release it as a single in the U.S.]] (also counts as ValuesDissonance, as it was not subjected to this in the U.K.).
314* The song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a supreme example of this, in its original form it was about a hobo convincing a young boy to follow him with tales of mountains made of candy, who he then forced to "[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything sit on his peg]]". The original ending of the song even went like this:
315-->I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
316-->And I'll be damned if I hike any more
317-->To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
318-->In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
319** In that same song, the chorus once contained the line "Oh the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees." After smoking became less socially acceptable, the line was changed to say "sycamore trees" (or "[insert any type of stick-like candy here] trees") instead.
320* On some radio stations the line "Praying to a God that I don't believe in" in the song "Breakeven" by Music/TheScript was changed to "Praying to a God that I barely believe in", changing it from an atheist reference to merely agnostic. Other stations will repeat the line from later in the song, "But no wise words gonna stop the bleeding."
321* Music/GreenDay's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," has three edited versions for the line that says "Read between the lines, what's fucked up and everything's alright". One says "what's messed up" which makes sense, one substitutes it with "what's freaked up" which just sounds absolutely ridiculous in the context of the song, and a third version just removes the word entirely.
322** When most terrestrial radio stations in North America air "Holiday", the word "fags" is either reversed or muted out during the speech from "the representative from California". Some stations also mute out the phrase "Sieg Heil" at the beginning of the same speech.
323* The radio edit of "In One Ear" by Music/CageTheElephant naturally cuts short the refrain's repeated references to "people talking shit", but more interestingly the line "the crowd will only like me if they're really fuckin' drunk" becomes "the crowd will only like me if they're all smacked up". That's right, the band got rid of the F-bomb, but also turned a reference to alcohol into a reference to heroin.
324* The single version of Music/MarilynManson's song "The Beautiful People" changes one line to "There's no time to discriminate/Hate every other hater that's in your way." The phrase "other hater" replaces "motherfucker". This version also mutes the word "shit".
325** For their performance of "Dope Show" at the Video Music Awards, MTV insisted they alter a lyric mentioning "cops and queers" (which MTV also censored out when playing the music video itself). The band complied... by changing it to "the pigs and the fags", which was apparently okay (even though it means the same thing as the objectionable line, and these days, "fag" is considered so objectionable as a homophobic slur that it's subject to being bleeped on television. "Queer" isn't as strong a homophobic slur as it once was, but no one really uses the word much anymore because it's fallen out of favor).
326*** In fact this does make it more offensive, as "queer" is used affectionately by many gay people and their straight friends to refer to themselves. It's very rare for "fag" to be anything other than self-deprecating, if not always an insult.
327** The song "White Trash", which is sung by tour bus driver Tony F. Wiggins, has a couple of racial references bleeped out in all releases.
328* It was of course completely inevitable for this to happen with Music/CeeLoGreen's "Fuck You". There are actually two different radio edits, "Forget You" and "F You" - the latter at least has the same amount of syllables. Some versions even have "Fuck You" changed to "Fox News". "Forget You" has some awkward editing such as simply blanking out the N-word and using "Ain't that some shhh-".
329* Some editions of Music/LadyGaga's "The Fame Monster" have all instances of the word "bitch" truncated into "bit".
330** Temporarily averted in the case of her breakout hit "Poker Face" -- Gaga herself admitted to being amused that nearly no one noticed that the exact words in the chorus were "P-p-p-poker face, F-f-fuck her face" except for someone at KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. It's hit-or-miss on stations that leave it censored and those who didn't get the memo.
331* ''Theatre/TheMikado'''s "Punishment Fits the Crime" used to have a vain lady "blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice". These days, she is more usually "painted with vigour".
332* The title of Music/SnoopDogg's "Sexual Eruption" is changed to [[CensoredTitle "Sensual Seduction"]] for radio and MTV versions. The words, however, are not changed.
333* Sean Kingston's song "Beautiful Girls" has the word "suicidal" blanked out of the chorus when it plays on more family friendly stations such as Radio Disney, which makes the chorus incomprehensible, because instead of going "You'll have me suicidal, suicidal/when you say it's over" it is "You'll have me ''(silence)'', ''(silence)''/when you say it's over". Other times, it may be substituted with "in denial".
334* Music/AlanJackson's "I'll Try" opens with the line "Here we are, talkin' bout forever / Both know damn well it's not easy together". Even though it wasn't his first time swearing in song, and "damn" usually goes uncensored even in country, the "damn" became a "too" on the radio edit.
335* In "Runaway Love" by Music/{{Ludacris}}, the word "high" in the line "Momma's on drugs, gettin' high up in the kitchen" is cut out, but that whole verse is about a girl who is being molested by her mother's boyfriend, and in general the song is about runaway teens.
336* Comedian Creator/BillyConnolly's parody version of the song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." contained a line about the singer's wife calling him "an F-ing C". This was beeped out on the single.
337* P!nk's song "F**kin' Perfect" was changed for the radio, obviously. The lyrics change from
338--> Pretty pretty please, don't you you ever ever feel
339--> Like you're less than, fuckin' perfect
340--> Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel
341--> Like you're nothing, you're fuckin' perfect, to me
342to
343--> Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel
344--> Like you're less than, less than perfect
345--> Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel
346--> Like you're nothing, you are perfect, to me
347** In addition to that, the title was shortened to "Perfect".
348** The version on Now That's What I Call Music 38 sounds like the original with the F word removed, but no gap between words because of it. Strangely the track listing lists the song as "F**kin' Perfect". Coincidentally, this was the same Now Album to feature both "Tonight I'm Loving You"[[note]]"Tonight I'm Fucking You"[[/note]], and "Forget You"[[note]]"Fuck You"[[/note]].
349* On the subject of P!nk, "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" mutes the word "shit" out of the chorus for the radio and leaves it as "I've had a...day, you've had a...day, we've had a...day". Earlier in the chorus, the line "I think you're full of shit," is changed to "I think you're full of it." Oddly, the line "No more sick whiskey dick," in the second verse isn't censored on the clean version of the album, but the word "dick" ''is'' muted in the "Squeaky [Clean] Radio Edit".
350* The cover of Music/RoxyMusic's ''Music/CountryLife'' features two women in transparent underwear standing in front of a forest. A version made for stores that otherwise wouldn't carry it cuts the girls out altogether, leaving a picture of a forest.
351* Music/EricChurch:
352** "Smoke a Little Smoke" contains the line "Dig down deep, [[TheStoner find my stash]] / Light it up, take me back" twice. To skirt the drug reference, the first one becomes "Dig down deep, find my glass / Fill it up, take me back" (which fits nicely with the previous line, "break out the wine, forget again") and the second becomes "Dig down deep, strike my match".
353** This struck again with "Creepin'", which changes "Your cocaine kiss and caffeine love" to "caffeine kiss and nicotine love".
354* The ''Series/YoGabbaGabba'' performance of [[Music/TheAquabats Pool Party]] changed the verse "Girls so cute! / In their swimming suits!" to "Wear your swimming suits! / They're a hoot!" This was most likely because ''Yo Gabba Gabba'' is a toddler's show, and parents probably would have thought the original lyrics were risque.
355* Music/KennyChesney:
356** "Reality" changed the line "Yeah, some days it's a bitch, it's a bummer" to "…it's just bad, it's a bummer" for the radio edit.
357** For the radio edit of "All the Pretty Girls", "All the lost boys say 'I wanna get laid'" becomes "All the lost boys wanna stay out late".
358* Speaking of Chesney… when Music/MontgomeryGentry CoveredUp his "Some People Change", they turned "Can't trust that colored fella" to "that other fella". Although the line is reflecting the opinion of a narrow-minded individual who changes his mind, the original line still probably wouldn't have gone over well on radio.
359* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzL2sJKnAaM clean version]] of Music/AsapRocky's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZm1im2erU Fuckin' Problems]]" has so much cut out that it makes absolutely no sense.
360* From the song "Bye Bye Babylon" by former ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' promoter band Music/{{Cryoshell}}, the line "Or you can wish me hell" was replaced by "Be sure I will be there" (from a later verse) when Franchise/{{LEGO}} released the song on their site and on one of their DVD animated movies.
361* The radio edit of "I Love It" by Music/IconaPop changes "You're from the 70's, but I'm a 90's bitch" to "...but I'm a 90's chick". Which ''just'' barely manages to still rhyme with "we gotta kill this switch". The word "shit" in "I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs" is also changed to "stuff", which stands out a little less because the offending word isn't rhymed with anything.
362* "Redneck Crazy" by Tyler Farr changes "I'm gonna get my pissed off on" to "…my redneck on" for the radio edit.
363* Music/ThirtySecondsToMars' "Up in the Air" has a lyric-swapped version with "fucked up our life" replaced with "This is my life". Interestingly enough, all instances of "I'll wrap my hands around your neck" in that version were replaced with "I'll wrap my hands around ''your heart'', which is arguably just as bad if not worse than your garden variety neck strangulation and made even more glaring when compared to the other edited version of the song. That version just takes out "fucked" and doesn't censor the neck bit at all.
364* The album version of "I Like My Bike" by Chicken Damage has [[LoopedLyrics a single verse that gets repeated three times]] and a TitleOnlyChorus. The radio version bowdlerizes the last line of its lone verse a bit differently on each repetition: "Here's my dick, why don't you suck it?" becomes "Here's my toe why don't you suck it?", "Here's a gun, why don't you cock it?" and finally "Here's my love, why don't you hock it?".
365* Music/JakeOwen's "Eight Second Ride" has a rather egregious and inexplicable one: "Climb on up, but honey, watch the cup that I'll be spittin' my dip inside" became "…my dip tonight" on the radio edit, thus causing "tonight" to rhyme with itself. Exactly what was wrong with "spittin' my dip inside", besides the dodgy grammar, remains unknown.
366* Another inexplicable one in Music/LadyA's "Lookin' for a Good Time" changes "Would you get the wrong impression if I called us a cab right now" to "if I asked you to dance right now." To prevent "dance" from appearing twice, "you shouldn't dance like that" in an earlier line becomes "move like that." This change is particularly baffling, as the whole song is about a one-night stand, and many of the lyrics are far more suggestive.
367* When the original ''Music/JesusChristSuperstar'' RockOpera was released in 1970, Judas's first song, "Heaven on Their Minds," was released as a single. On the album, the song is Judas's critique of Jesus's growing role as Messiah. In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVqfZ4KH1I8 single,]] seemingly half of the words are changed ("If you strip away the myth from the man" becomes "If you strip away the sleep from your eyes," for example). It also adds background singers for some reason. May or may not be deliberate Bowdlerization, when you take into account the pattern of {{Rewritten Pop Version}}s of songs from other shows by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
368* A version of Music/TheBeatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko" distributed to American radio stations in 1969 blipped the word "Christ" from the line, "Christ, you know it ain't easy."
369** Chicago radio personality Bob Stroud recalls his former radio station in Michigan replacing the word "Christ" with a matching musical note lifted from the song. Pity the poor staffer who had to go into the production studio and splice that note into ''every instance of the "offending" word coming up in the song''.
370* Subverted in Music/{{MIA}}'s "Paper Planes". What initially seems to be SoundEffectBleep is, in fact, the official, er, lyrics, to the song. Those noises (a gun shooting then cocking and a cash register noise) have themselves been censored into less offensive noises, like a dull popping sound.
371* In the U.K., [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Radio 1]] played a censored version of Music/ThePogues' "Fairytale of New York" during Christmas 2007, blanking the words "slut" and "faggot". Cue angry listeners, the Pogues, and the late Kirsty [=MacColl=]'s mother [[PoliticalOvercorrectness accusing the BBC of trying to censor a character's POV]] and demanding an apology. The [=BBC=] quickly apologized and played it unaltered later the same day.
372** Music/CelticThunder's cover of the song on their Christmas Voices album was heavily Bowdlerized:
373*** "You're an old slut on junk" was replaced with, "You're an old cut-up drunk."
374*** "You cheap lousy faggot" was replaced with, "You're cheap and you're haggard."
375*** "Happy Christmas your arse" became "Happy Christmas me lass."
376** There's an alternate version of the song by the Pogues and Kirsty [=MacColl=] themselves which uses the "cheap and you're haggard" line.
377** By 2020, the Pogues had mellowed on the issue, as a now-deleted tweet by UK Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox complaining that the BBC had "cancelled" them by playing the censored version led to a public response, on the band's official Twitter account, reading simply "[[PrecisionFStrike Fuck off]] you little herrenvolk shite".
378* Music/PinkFloyd's "Money". Heard on the radio in New York, "do goody good bullshit". Heard on the radio in North Carolina, "do goody, good, bull".
379** Earlier in their career, they performed a song called "Let's Roll Another One" on stage, but when they wanted to release it as a single B-side, the record company forced them to take out all drug references. It became "Candy and a Currant Bun" instead, but they also changed the lyric "please just walk with me" to "please just fuck with me".
380* Music/SteveMiller's song "Jet Airliner" removes the offensive word from the line "funky shit going down in the city" for radio airplay; most stations use an edit that shortens the intro and replaces "shit" with "kicks".
381* The Stories' "Brother Louie", a song about the joy and pain of an interracial love affair turned marriage proposal, lost its unique punch when a brief spoken word interlude representing the fathers of the fated couple was cut out from the original Hot Chocolate version that it was a cover of. White voice: "No spook in the family." Black voice: "No honk in the family."
382* Music/{{Wheatus}}' song "Teenage Dirtbag" was censored on UK radio by blanking words out of one verse:
383-->Her boyfriend's a [[spoiler:dick]]
384-->He brings a [[spoiler:gun]] to school
385-->And he'd simply kick
386-->My [[spoiler:ass]] if he knew the truth
387** On MTV in America, "dick" and "ass" were left in, but not "gun." Either this was because of the Columbine shooting, or the fact that MTV has a rule against showing guns (even going as far as to edit out words associated with guns, like "bullet" or "shot"). Or both.
388** The song was released on a music CD tie-in for the anime ''[[Anime/BakutenShootBeyblade Beyblade: V-Force]]'' in the UK - the only word edited from that release was 'gun'.
389** To celebrate their 40th anniversary, BBC Radio 1 got 40 musical acts to cover a song from each year of its life, with each act given a year. Music/GirlsAloud were given 2001 and chose "Teenage Dirtbag". The uncensored version was played on the radio and included on the CD containing all 40 covers.
390** The compilation album ''Sommer Pop Hits'' has uncensored profanity but, in "Teenage Dirtbag", the phrase "gun to school" is muted out.
391* NWA -- ''Boyz In The Hood'': "Jockin' the bitches, slappin' the hoes" changed to "Jockin' the freaks, clockin' the dough", among other obligatory changes (despite that, in black slang [at least in the 1990s], a "freak" is a misogynistic -- yet more acceptable than "bitch," somehow -- term for a woman who is into sexually deviant acts [read: anything that's not the missionary position]. However, kudos to the radios for not keeping in the "slappin' the hoes" line and finding a substitute line that actually fits with the GangstaRap aesthetic).
392* The BBC edit of "Respectable Street" by Music/{{XTC}} censored out all off-color references, which makes the song incomprehensible. In the line about "which sex positions pleases her old man", "sex position" is replaced by "preposition", while "Saturday I saw him retching over our fence" becomes "...''stretching'' over our fence".
393* The band James subverted this with the video for their biggest hit, "Laid". The third line of the song, for both the radio and album version of the song, is "She only [[TheImmodestOrgasm comes]] when she's on top." In the video, the line is changed to "She only ''sings'' when she's on top" -- except the singer is quite obviously singing the original lyric, and the word "hums" appears on screen. Also, it's not quite clear why mention of a female orgasm had to be edited on MTV when the radio didn't bother editing it at all.
394* The song "Baby Shark" was originally a rather gory campfire song where the sharks actually eat people, and is also OlderThanTheyThink, but the version that became popular in the late '10s through Website/YouTube is one that removes all of the violent lyrics to be appropriate for young children.
395* "Toes" by Music/ZacBrownBand was hit hard with this. The first line in the chorus get changed from "I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand..." to "...toes in the sand" and "ass in the lawn chair, toes in the clay" at the end of the song to "toes in the water, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment toes in the clay]]" on the radio edit. The line "roll a big fat one" also had "fat one" silenced. Other edits just silence the occurrences of "ass"; still others use "toes" for "ass" but leave in "fat one"; still ''other'' stations just play the song uncensored.
396** Interestingly, the countdown show ''Radio/BobKingsleysCountryTop40'' always played it completely uncensored when it was climbing the charts, but now censors it to "toes in the sand" whenever it's used for a retrospective.
397* Another odd example from ''Country Top 40''. When it was on the charts, Jerrod Niemann's "One More Drinkin' Song" had the line "[[NinjaPirateZombieRobot marga-daiquiri-screw-olada on the beach]]" censored to "…chill-olada" for no real reason, even though the "screw" is clearly referring to the alcoholic drink known as the screwdriver. This is even more egregious in that the more profane uses of "screw" in "Crying on a Suitcase" by Casey James or "Neon Light" by Music/BlakeShelton never got censored.
398* Music/JasonAldean's "Johnny Cash" has several edits as well. The album version has a spoken "screw you, man" in one verse; depending on the station, this was changed to "I'm outta here," silenced, or played as-is. Some versions also delete "Hear that train a-comin', rollin' around the bend / The man in black gonna rock your ass again" at the end.
399* Speaking of Music/JohnnyCash, "A Boy Named Sue" notoriously beeps "'cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you Sue." At the end, he says "And if I ever have a boy, I think I'm gonna name him... [[SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion Bill or George, any damn thing but Sue]]!" The "Damn" is just snipped out of the radio version.
400* Music/TheyMightBeGiants' "Become a Robot" has the lyric "here's hoping you don't harbor a death wish", which the lyric sheet to ''Then: The Earlier Years'' lists as "here's hoping you don't harbor a wishnik" - after some confusion among fans about what the actual lyric was, it turned out that the band themselves censored the printed lyric out of concern that it might be disturbing to children.
401** Sometimes during live shows (usually their "all ages" shows), the band would censor the song "Damn Good Times" to "[[GoshDangItToHeck Dang Good Times]]" and replace all of the "damns" with "dangs".
402* Music/SteveEarle's "Guitar Town" changed "Everybody told me you can't get far / On $37 and a Jap guitar" to "…cheap guitar" for the radio edit.
403* Akon's "I Wanna Fuck You" replaces "Fuck" with "Love" in radio plays for obvious reasons.
404* "[[Music/WizKhalifa Young]], [[Music/BrunoMars Wild]], and [[Music/SnoopDogg Free]]": The line in the chorus "So what we smoke weed" is changed to "So what we don't sleep" on radio broadcast. Oddly, all other marijuana references are left mostly intact.
405* Music/MaroonFive's "Payphone" changes "full of shit" to "full of it" and "one more fucking love song" to "one more stupid love song" in its chorus for radio airplay. Wiz Khalifa's "Man, fuck that shit!" distorts the two swear words. When it is played on AC stations, on Radio Disney, and in its appearance on ''Now That's What I Call Music!'' Volume 43, the rap bridge is replaced with a new one that has a few instrumental seconds before Adam Levine sings "now baby don't hang up, so I can tell you what you need to know, baby I'm begging you just please don't go, so I can tell you what you need to know."
406* Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)". The entire chorus is a ClusterFBomb. It was heavily censored for radio airplay, in which all uses of "Fuck" and "ho" were left silenced, making the entire chorus incomprehensible.
407* Some radio stations, such as KDWB, censor the words "skeet blanket" (a blanket males use to masturbate) from Music/{{Macklemore}} & Ryan Lewis' "Thrift Shop".
408** "Cock" is invariably replaced with a rooster crowing.
409** "Fucking awesome" is censored as [[BleepDammit "____ing awesome"]].
410** The line "probably should've washed this, it smells like Music/RKelly's sheets. ''<Pissssssss>'' But shit, it was 99 cents!" not only censors the "shit", but also the "pissssss" to make it sound more like a hiss. Some stations remove the bit about R. Kelly altogether, given that it's a reference to his sex scandal.
411** The line "damn, that's a cold-ass honky" inevitably gets censored in some mixture of three ways; different stations tend to drop the "damn", "ass", and "honky" as they see fit.
412* The clean version of Bruno Mars' "Treasure" completely takes out the opening computer voice saying "Baby squirrel, you're a sexy motherfucker." The MTV version of the video keeps the opening line but blanks out "fucker".
413** There are at least two different edits of "Gorilla": one that changes "Give it to me motherfucker" to "Give it to me like you wanna" and one that concludes the line with the sound of a hollering gorilla.
414* The KDWB version of Olly Murs' "Troublemaker" removes the words "damn" and "hell" from Flo Rida's rap. Oddly, other songs get the green light for saying those words. [[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance 2014]] also does this with the song, even though Flo Rida ad-libbing "The same damn thing" in the background near the end of the song is left unaltered.
415* Some radio stations edit out the word "hell" from the first verse of Kelly Clarkson's "Heartbeat Song" by skipping it rather than muting it so that the line sounds like "Where the did you come from?".
416* The official clean version of Music/WillIAm's song "Scream & Shout" (featuring Music/BritneySpears) has the line "Britney, [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch bitch!]]" censored by adding an echo to the word "Britney" to fill in the gap caused by removing the word "bitch". On some radio stations, the line as a whole is replaced with the line "Bring the action" from earlier. [[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance 2016]] replaces the word/echo with a loud clap sound. Also, the line "You're gonna turn the shit up" is changed to "You're gonna turn-turn it up".
417* When Lloyd Price performed his version of the song ''Stagger Lee'' on ''Series/AmericanBandstand'' in 1958, Creator/DickClark had him change the entire song. It went from being a story of Stagger Lee arguing over the roll of the dice while gambling with a man named Billy, so he goes home, gets his .44, comes back to the bar, and shoots Billy (while he begs for his life), to a story about Billy stealing Stagger Lee's girlfriend then feeling guilty about it so he gives her back to him and they remain friends. Compare: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPutYaGFlE Original Version]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bk_dUPKKKY Bandstand version]].
418* When Music/LyleLovett's "If I Had a Boat" was released as a single, the line "Kiss my ass/I bought a boat" was changed to "Adios/I bought a boat".
419* "Moves Like Jagger" by Music/MaroonFive often has the lines in "My ego is big/I don't give a shit" altered in one of two ways: either the "shit" will be cut short so it sounds like "sh-", or the lines from the second verse ("I'll make you believe/That I've got the key") will replace them. Two music video games [[TakeAThirdOption took a third option]]; ''VideoGame/{{RockBand}}'' just blanked the word entirely, while ''[[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance 4]]'' changed it to "I don't give a ''spit''". Later ''Just Dance'' games change it to an edit that says "I don't give a ''damn''" instead (ironically, ''Just Dance'' usually censors the word "damn" in other songs despite using it as a censor itself here).
420* One of the best subversions came from VisualKei. The original version of "Stab Me In The Back" by Music/XJapan was about oral and anal IntercourseWithYou between men. This obviously wouldn't fly on the radio in the late 1980s or even on the major label album ''Jealousy'' in its production in 1990, so Music/YoshikiHayashi rewrote the lyrics... to be something even more taboo in Japanese society, ''doing drugs.'' The RefugeInAudacity worked, and the drug version of "Stab Me In The Back" became a track on ''Jealousy'' at its 1991 release.
421** Some ''fans'' did bowdlerize the lyrics of the original version when they posted them online (either out of prudery or trying to avoid trouble with their [=ISPs=] or spammers), leading to a short-lived fandom meme about "lick pens erect."
422* Music/VioletUK's "Blind Dance," as mentioned in its entry on the SelfCensoredRelease page. One version is GothicMetal IntercourseWithYou BDSM. The version most people have heard is the commercial/radio edit, which is ''much'' shorter and an ambient sound pastiche ApocalypticLog.
423* One radio edit of "We Can't Stop" by Music/MileyCyrus censors "Everyone in line in the bathroom / trying to get a line in the bathroom" by cutting off the second use of the word "line" (since it's a double entendre about cocaine use). But oddly enough, this same edit leaves in "dancing with molly", with the last word in that phrase being a slang term for MDMA.
424** During Miley Cyrus' infamous 2013 [=VMAs=] performance, the word "molly" was replaced by a brief moment of DeadAir.
425** The "Director's Cut" of her (in)famous "Wrecking Ball" video has ''all'' the scenes of Miley naked (or near naked) and writhing in the construction set and on the wrecking ball replaced with a close-up of Miley singing (making the entire video play out like a modern version of Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" video).
426* "Shakin' the Blues Away" by Music/IrvingBerlin. The original version (popularized by Ruth Etting) contains the lyrics "Every darkie" and "Do as the darkies do", which are changed to "Everybody" and "Do as the voodoos do" in later versions, such as the JukeboxMusical ''Easter Parade'' and Doris Day and Ann Miller's versions from TheFifties. Irving Berlin's "Abraham" had its lyrics altered similarly.
427* Similarly, the lyrics of ''Theatre/{{Showboat}}'' (written by Jerome Kern and [[Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein Oscar Hammerstein II]] in 1927) have also been changed multiple times due to ValuesDissonance. The (even at the time, deliberately shocking) opening line "niggers all work on the Mississippi" was changed to "darkies all work" in the 1936 film. Other versions change it to "colored folks all work" (in TheForties) or "here we all work", or cut the opening number completely. Some versions of Joe's song "Ol' Man River" change the line "white boss" to "rich boss", and the lyrics that mention getting drunk and being sick of living were also changed in one of singer Paul Robeson's versions.
428* Similar to the above two paragraphs, there's the song "The Sun Has Got His Hat On". The original 1932 recordings have a lyric that says that the sun has been "tanning niggers out in Timbuktu". The 1971 recording (which got a remix in 2020 titled "The Lockdown Is Over") changes the line to "tanning Negroes". Later on, other alternate lyrics were used, such as "roasting peanuts" (as used in the 1984 revival of the musical ''Me and My Girl'') and "shining brightly". There's also a [[Series/SharonLoisAndBramsElephantShow Sharon, Lois & Bram]] version of the song, which changes even more lyrics to appeal to young children.
429* Certain edits of "Rock Your Body" by Music/JustinTimberlake cut out the line "Bet I'll have you naked by the end of this song", replacing it with an earlier part of the refrain. Thus: "No disrespect, I don't mean no harm / I can't wait to have you in my arms / Hurry up 'cause you're takin' too long / I can't wait to have you in my arms". A little repetitive perhaps, but at least "long" and "arms" come somewhat close to still rhyming.
430* Music/KatyPerry's "Hot N Cold" has three possible radio edits due to the line in the first verse, "Yeah you PMS like a bitch I would know":
431** On some stations, "Like a bitch" is replaced with a repetition of "like a girl" from earlier in the verse.
432** Other stations and the [[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance]] game use the song with the line re-recorded to replace "bitch" with "chick". Just Dance even refers to the song as "Hot N Cold (Chick Version)".
433** Other stations will simply mute "bitch".
434* "Follow Your Arrow" by Music/KaceyMusgraves censors the word "joint" in the line "Roll up a joint, or don't / Just follow your arrow wherever it points". The line was also censored when she sang it at the Country Music Association awards in November 2013.
435* When it was first recorded in 1982, "Here I Go Again" by Music/{{Whitesnake}} had the line "Like a hobo, I was born to walk alone." The much more famous 1987 recordings (yes, there are two of them) replaced "hobo" with "drifter", to avoid the inevitable mondegreen "Like a homo".
436* Near the end of "Look It Up", Ashton Shepherd says the word "asshole". The radio version and the album both have it edited out, but the standalone single on iTunes has it uncensored. The uncensored version is also a bonus track on early pressings, as well as both the standard and deluxe iTunes versions, of the album.
437* The 7" single version of Music/{{Marillion}}'s "Garden Party" replaced the PrecisionFStrike with "I'm miming," breaking rhyme with the preceding "I'm rucking." When performing this version on ''Series/TopOfThePops'', Fish shut his mouth for the edited bit, pointed towards his shut mouth and winked at the audience.
438* Another victim of MTV's 90s policy of censoring drug references was "Scooby Snacks" by Music/FunLovinCriminals. The chorus is "Running around robbing banks all wacked off of Scooby Snacks", with Scooby Snacks as a slang term for Valium. The MTV version cut out "wacked" and just left a pause there, which if you weren't familiar with the song led you to think they were censoring a more profane word.
439* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Plato's Stepchildren," the music Alexander Courage wrote for Spock's flamenco dance is called "Spick ''(sic)'' Spock" ("spic," if you're wondering, is an American derogatory term for people of Hispanic descent). When La-La Land issued their 15-disc set of music from the series, this track was understandably renamed "Dancing Spock" (thankfully, this was the only title to have to be changed).
440* "Carry On" by Pat Green changed the line "Billboards and bullshit got her down" to "Billboards and BS got her down" for the radio edit.
441* Hilariously, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsSEI2Le-so the censored version of "Jizz In My Pants"]] by Music/TheLonelyIsland replaces the word "jizz" with... [[CrossesTheLineTwice orgasm sounds]].
442* The CountryMusic song "What a Way to Go", recorded by both Bobby Borchers and Ray Kennedy, changed the line "I got hogtied by a hooker in Ohio" for both artists' radio edits. Borchers' version changed it to "looker", and Kennedy's to "redhead".
443* "Ready Set Roll" by Chase Rice. The radio edit changes the first lines of the chorus ("Ready set let's roll, ready set let's ride / Get your little fine ass on the step, shimmy up inside") to "little fine ''self''".
444* Music/SarahMcLachlan's "Building a Mystery" includes the lyric "You're so beautiful / a beautiful, fucked up man" - the radio version either changes it to "a beautiful, but strange man" or just renders that line incomprehensible, and in on-air performances for TV or radio, she has sung the lyric as "a beautiful, messed up man".
445* Music/DierksBentley:
446** "Drunk on a Plane" sometimes has the line "I'll call her up and tell her kiss my ass" censored near the end, usually to "Kiss my… yeah, you know".
447** "Different for Girls" changes "gotta get laid tonight" to "Gotta get some tonight".
448* Surprisingly averted with "Here for the Party" by Gretchen Wilson, which somehow snuck the line "I'm here for the beer and the ball-bustin' band" past the notoriously conservative mainstream country audience.
449* Many versions of the folk ballad "Frankie and Johnny" contain Bowdlerized replacements for the line about Johnny "finger-fucking Alice Fry" (or any other rhyming name).
450* The 1941 Polydor recording of Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart's Requiem Mass uses an altered Latin text in accordance with UsefulNotes/NaziGermany's anti-Semitic theological revisionism, eliminating references to Zion, Jerusalem and Abraham.
451** Some of Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart's original lyrics were also sanitized. One example is "Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber" ("Lick my arse right well and clean"), Köchel catalog number 233/382d, was published as "Nichts labt mich mehr als Wein" ("Nothing pleases me more than wine")[[note]]It is nowadays assumed that the music was not written by Mozart, but the lyrics were definitely Mozart's work[[/note]]. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_nox Bona Nox]] is another example. Mozart was really fond of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology scatology]], in both music and written correspondence. Much to the dismay of many modern aesthetes.
452* Music/DavidByrne's song "Like Humans Do", off the album ''Look into the Eyeball'', includes the line "I never watch TV except when I'm stoned." The song was included as one of the stock song files on [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows Windows XP]]--but this version replaced the drug reference with another lyric: "We're eating off plates and we kiss with our tongues." The overall song is so surreal that the altered line doesn't sound out of place at all. Most people don't even know the original lyrics.
453* Music/FloridaGeorgiaLine's "Sun Daze" changes a reference to "getting laid" to "getting paid" on the radio edit. The infamous "Set you up on a kitchen sink / [[DoubleEntendre Stick a pink umbrella in your drink]]" line, however, was untouched.
454* Music/BillyCurrington's "Like My Dog" bleeped "bitch" in the line "When I say his sister is a bitch".
455* A favorite song for grade school choruses and children's church choirs is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVs_s1IbrU "The Rhythm of Life."]] This version is perfectly fine for children and some mainstream religious organizations, but it differs greatly from the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOS9RK0JOPg original non-bowdlerised version]] from the musical ''Theatre/SweetCharity''. It can cause confusion for children or parents searching for the song.
456** For example, there are clear differences between
457->And the voice said "Neighbor, there's a million reasons
458->Why you should be glad in all four seasons.
459->Hit the road Neighbor; leave your worries and strife.
460->And spread the religion of the rhythm of life." (choral version)
461vs
462->And the voice said "Daddy there's a million pigeons
463->Waiting to be hooked on new religions.
464->Hit the road Daddy; leave your common-law wife
465->Spread the religion of the rhythm of life." (musical version).
466* There are two slightly different radio edits of "Time Of Our Lives" by Music/{{Pitbull}} and Music/NeYo: One changes part of the refrain from "I work my ass off" to "I work my tail off", and the other [[BleepDammit simply chops the word "ass" in half]], leaving something like "I work my aah off".
467* In Music/LilJon's "Get Low", the line "To all skeet skeet motherfucker, to all skeet skeet goddamn" replaced the swears with just a continued repeated "skeet skeet skeet skeet". As Creator/DaveChappelle [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKTqHsMqkb0 pointed out]], this arguably makes the song even filthier, putting the focus of the lyrics straight on the uncensored reference to semen.
468-->"You know what's so dope about 'skeet'? White people don't know what it means yet! When they figure it out, they're gonna be like '[[MyGodWhatHaveIDone my God, what have we done?]]'"
469* Many radio edits of Music/LimpBizkit's "Break Stuff" bleep out the word "skin" in the line "I've got a chainsaw/I'll skin your ass raw", turning it into "I've got a chainsaw/I'll [[BleepDammit [bleep] your ass raw]]". Again, a case where censorship makes a song even dirtier, turning Fred Durst's threat of violence with a power tool into [[ItMakesSenseInContext a threat of being sodomized with a power tool]].
470* The radio edit of "Addicted to a Dollar" by Music/DougStone took out all instances of "hell" ("The more money that I'm making, hell, the less I can call mine"), which is unusual since "hell" is usually considered mild enough for CountryMusic audiences.
471* The album version of "Trouble" by Gloriana contains a combination LyricSwap and PrecisionFStrike, as the line "If you're runing around, you better run from me / Pack up your bags and get gone, get gone" becomes "pack up your ''shit''" on the third chorus. Obviously, the radio edit loops "pack up your bags" from one of the earlier choruses to cover the radio-unfriendly word.
472* Music/LittleRichard's hit "Tutti Frutti" [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutti_Frutti_%28song%29 was originally about gay sex]]. The lyrics were rewritten so it could be sold as a retail recording.
473* The radio edit of "Jealous" by Music/NickJonas changes "She's so fucking beautiful and everybody wants her sex" to "She's so sexy beautiful and everyone wants a taste". The original version created a BrokenBase from people who are [[{{squick}} grossed by Nick]] being so explicit, despite the fact [[ContractualPurity he is an adult]].
474* "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)" by Music/EnriqueIglesias is a radio edit of "Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You)". More people are familiar with the radio edit so the more graphic version can come off as jarring.
475* Music/{{Cimorelli}}, due to starting out as singing covers (and still do), applies this trope only on songs that have questionable lyrics. One example being their take on Meghan Trainor's "Lips are Movin'"- changing Trainor's "You give me bass" to the sisters' own "You give me love". Another would be their take on Justin Bieber's "Sorry"- "Missing more than just your body" is now "Missing more than just your ''memory''", which still rhymes. This trope applies due to their Catholic upbringing and maintaining the good role model status.
476* A few months before the release of Music/FranzFerdinand's [[Music/FranzFerdinand2004 self-titled debut]], the band rerecorded the homoerotic single "Michael" to be about a guy and girl fighting over the same man. The band eventually scrapped this and released the track as is, along with a video that seems to overlap with APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy.
477* Music/PearlJam's "Leash" from the 1993 album ''Vs'' is one of the band's most [[ClusterFBomb profanity-riddled songs]], with the chorus consisting of the lines "Drop the leash, drop the leash/get out of my fuckin' face." In the lyric sheet, the profane line is written as "get out of my lucky face."
478* Filipino rock band Eraserheads' 1993 song "Pare Ko" ("My friend") became a hit with fans, owing largely to the surprising mentions of the words "'tang-ina" ("son of a bitch," or in the song's context, "fuck it"), and "nabuburat" ("pissed-off," with root word "burat" being Filipino slang for the male sexual organ -- "dicked-off," anyone?). Even in 1993, this was still unusual in the Philippines, a traditionally conservative country. When local moral guardians complained about the cuss words, the Eraserheads released a clean version for radio, with "'tang-ina" replaced with "walang hiya" ("shameless," though a Filipino equivalent of "dammit" or "darn it" in English), and "nabuburat" replaced with "naiinis" ("annoyed," though also applicable for "pissed-off.").
479* "7 Years" by Lukas Graham often has the line "By eleven, smoking herb and drinking burning liquor" censored when played on radio: Usually the line is either skipped altogether or almost entirely blanked out, leaving awkward pauses where the words "smoking herb", "drinking", and "liquor" were. Alcohol references usually aren't censored on top 40 radio, but an exception was probably made because it's specifically a mention of ''underage'' drinking.
480* "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las is played in Germany without the big crash, because, that could confuse drivers when they hear it via the car radio. Outside Germany this probably would be filed under InsaneTrollLogic.
481* The clean version and radio edit of "Cake By The Ocean" by [=DNCE=] changes the "Goddamn" to "Hot damn" and the line "Let's lose our minds and go fuckin' crazy" to "Let's lose our minds and go crazy-crazy".
482* Music/SickPuppies' song "You're Going Down" originally contained the lines "Define your meaning of fun. Is it fucking, druggin', or guns?" and "When my fist hits your face and your face hits the floor." The more common cleaner version (which is featured on the album ''The Score Rocks'') replaces the lines with "Define your meaning of fun. To me it's when we're getting it done" and "With my fist in your face and your face on the floor" (which is barely different but is ''somewhat'' less graphic). The "little petty shit" is also edited so that "shit" is masked by a guitar sound, though not completely. The "cry like a bitch" part is left perfectly intact.
483* Many rock and metal songs contain two versions of their song: with growls and without. It's likely often to make the song more mainstream sounding or less frightening. Music/{{Skillet}}'s "Monster" is an example of a song which comes with a growl-less version.
484* The radio edit of Music/JustinTimberlake's "Not A Bad Thing" changes the line "You might fuck around and find your dreams come true" into "You might look around and find your dreams come true".
485* In the radio edit of gnash and Olivia Brien's "I Hate U, I Love U", "fucked around" is changed to "messed around".
486* Creator/DoveCameron's cover of Music/ChristinaAguilera's song "Genie In a Bottle" changes some of the more [[IntercourseWithYou innuendo-laced]] lyrics, in particular "[[DoubleEntendre You gotta rub me the right way]]" is changed to "You gotta ask me the right way". Then again, it's to promote the ''Film/{{Descendants}}'' series and the cover was commissioned by Disney...
487* iHeartRadio has several family-targeted stations in its "Kids & Family" section which play Top 40 music, even if it's inappropriate for children. The ones that fall under that criteria are ''heavily'' altered. Some examples:
488** Music/DavidGuetta's "Hey Mama" plays with almost the entirety of Nicki Minaj's verse blanked out, despite the fact that the swearing was already censored in all versions.
489** Natalie La Rose's "Somebody" plays with "I wanna take [[spoiler:shots]] with somebody" in the chorus blanked out, along with the background shouts immediately afterward of "shots, shots, shots!", leaving a weird silent hole in the chorus.
490** Rihanna's "Needed Me" plays with every single curse word, sexual reference, or allusion to drugs blanked out...which doesn't leave much song. YG's opening "Mustard on the beat, ho!" even has the "ho" blanked out, something even the most prudish radio stations typically let go.
491** Music/MajorLazer and DJ Snake's "Lean On", rather then using the 'into the sun' Radio Disney/super clean edit, blanks out the word 'gun', making the refrain "Blow a kiss/fire a ''[awkward silence]''".
492** Music/FifthHarmony's "Work From Home" originally blanked out "turn the bed into the ocean", "I just need your [[spoiler:body]]", "nothing but [[spoiler:sheets in between us]]", and "I [[spoiler:pipe up]], she take that". This edit was switched out sometime in 2020, with only the line "I pipe up, she take that" being cut entirely.
493** Music/CharliePuth's "We Don't Talk Anymore" ''attempts'' to remove "I overdosed", however the editing is quite sloppy, making the line "I over ''(sudden cut)'' should've known your love was a game..."
494** "Blame it on [[spoiler:Jesus]]" is blanked out from Bruno Mars' "24K Magic", something that even Radio Disney let go. (Interestingly, the clear erection reference to "pretty girls waking up the rocket" is left intact.)
495** Several verses are cut entirely from Music/DJKhaled's "Wild Thoughts", making the wild thoughts in question Rihanna is singing about rather hard to interpret.
496** Maroon 5's "This Summer" has the clean version played with the slight implication of swearing removed from the chorus (making it "This summer's gonna hurt [[spoiler:like a mother]] a-ha, a-ha") as well as the words "smoking" and "champagne" blanked out.
497** Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" plays with "You said the gun was mine" cut, again something that Radio Disney leaves intact.
498** Shawn Mendes' "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back" has the word 'naked' reversed, despite it being used in one of the most innocent contexts possible ("She says that she's never afraid/just picture everybody ''dekan''"). The edit was later redone to cut the line entirely.
499** Music/ArianaGrande's "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" has anything vaguely suggestive removed, including the line "Practically on my knees" (despite the line clearly referring to her begging for him to leave his girlfriend, not oral sex). The theme of homewrecking stays fully intact.
500** Also from Grande, "7 rings" has completely innocent lines such as "Think retail therapy my new [[spoiler:addiction]]" and "Nothing but net when we [[spoiler:shoot]]" blanked out due to the ''very slight'' possibility they could be interpreted as drug/violence references (despite the latter clearly referring to shooting in ''basketball'').
501** Dua Lipa's "New Rules" has the suggestive bits/references to alcohol in the chorus cut entirely, as opposed to the Radio Disney version which simply replaced them with an echo.
502** Music/CherLloyd's "Want U Back" has the self-censorship of "I don't give a (shh)" additionally censored, blanking out the "shh".
503** Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off" has the word "God" blanked out of "oh my God", even though it was frequently said on Nick's sitcoms as late as 2014.
504** Music/TheJonasBrothers' "Sucker" has the word "medicine" distorted/removed out of the line "You're the medicine and the pain", something Radio Disney leaves intact.[[note]]This edit was only present on the now-defunct Nick Radio; iHeart's other family-friendly stations leave the word intact.[[/note]]
505*** Oddly, when [[Series/AllThat an actual Nickelodeon show]] had the band perform the song, the medicine line was kept intact. However, "stumbling out of bars" was changed to "looking for where you are."
506** Music/BillieEilish's "bad guy" is edited to the point of the second verse being reduced to ''two lines''.
507** Music/EllieGoulding's "Close to Me" has part of the chorus changed from "And I don't wanna be somebody without your body close to me" to "And I don't wanna be somebody with anybody close to me", completely changing the meaning of the song. (The chorus was also left intact by Radio Disney, though they opted for the solo version while Nick Radio plays the rap with blanked words.)
508 ** Another song by Goulding, "Worry About Me" uses the copy-and-paste method to cover up an offending word, without caring if the line makes sense or not: "Been jumping through hoops to get under you" in the chorus became "Been jumping through hoops to get ''been having'' you" (with 'been having' taken from "Been havin' good times" in the first verse).
509** Music/EdSheeran's "South of the Border" is made into an absolute ''mess'' with all the copy-and-pasting of different parts of the song, leading to nonsensical (and still suggestive!) lyrics such as "So join me in this put my time in/I won't stop until you sweat, darling". At one point, the word "kiss" is muted. Cardi B's verse is also cut entirely, despite being labeled as the version with Cardi B by iHeart.
510* Some radio station single edits abridge the Music/{{Eagles}}' "Life in the Fast Lane" to exclude the line "We've been up and down this highway/Haven't seen a Goddamned thing".
511* When the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings the Christmas song "Sleigh Ride," they alter the lyrics "....when they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie," substituting the word "cider" for "coffee." Members of the LDS Church generally abstain from drinking coffee (and tea), [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} as it goes against the doctrine called the Word of Wisdom]].
512* The Music/MiracleOfSound song "Brothers of the Creed" had the line "And I kill for good/Under my white hood" changed to "Signal's out of range/I was forced to change" after Gavin Dunne (the Irish songwriter) realised that it could be taken to refer to the KKK rather than Assassin's Creed.
513* The chorus for the song Black Swan from [[Music/{{Radiohead}} Thom Yorke]]'s first solo album consists of the line "This is fucked up, fucked up" sung repeatedly. Apparently, for a joke, Yorke attempted to make a censored edit of this song by replacing all the swear words with various brass instruments. Sadly this edit has never been released to the general public.
514* The Music/DukeEllington-penned jazz standard "(In My) Solitude" was originally recorded with lyrics in one of the later verses: "My man and me, we gin some, / and pray some, and sin some." Other musicians would sometimes replace those with alternate lyrics (which also make it easier to gender-flip the song): "I end up like I started / just cryin' my heart out."
515* ChristianRock band Music/The77s tried to put out an album named ''Pray Naked''. Their record label, fearing backlash from the church crowd, released it under the title ''The Seventy Sevens'' instead--ignoring the fact that they already had another SelfTitledAlbum. Also, the name of the title track was blacked out on the album artwork. Amusingly, the song itself wasn't censored at all, and the phrase "pray naked" pops up a bunch--and there's even a bit of phone chatter specifying that it's the album name. Members of The 77s have also been known to write the real title on the cover any time they're asked to autograph a copy. All in all, hardly ''anyone'' actually refers to the album by the label-mandated title.
516* Creator/NeilCicierega does this occasionally in his music mashups, purely for comedic purposes.
517** "Rollercloser" is basically a funk remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer", which originally had the repeated line "I wanna fuck you like an animal," in the chorus. But he replaces the offending word with funk vocal samples--either suggestive grunts, or phrases like "Boogie!" or "Get down!".
518** "Annoyed Grunt" uses the chorus of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes", which was originally a celebration of robbery: "All I wanna do is ''[gunshot sounds]'', and ''[cash register sounds]'', and take your money!" Neil's version turns the chorus into nonsense by substituting other random sound effects: ''VideoGame/MarioPaint'' sounds, [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] saying "D'oh!", Film/AustinPowers saying "Oh yeah, baby!" and so on.
519** And he's just as likely to invert this and make a song ''more'' offensive than it originally was. On "Bustin'", he edits the ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' theme to make "bustin'" a pretty blatant UnusualEuphemism. And on "Piss", he turns Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper" into a song about literally drinking piss, and uses the word more times than the original did.
520* [=LoCash=] went for a StealthPun in the bridge to "Ring on Every Finger", which contains the line "Droppin' little F-bombs like 'forever'". Apparently this was too much for some listeners, because it became "love bombs" on the radio edit. ''Radio/BobKingsleysCountryTop40'' interestingly zig-zags this, as the show alternates between playing "F-bombs" or just omitting the bridge entirely.
521* The censored version of Music/{{Saliva}}'s "Always" changes the lyrics "The pistol's shaking in my hands" to "The anger's shaking in my hand".
522* Creator/{{MTV}} censors references to suicide or SelfHarm. This doesn't work so well for songs like "Last Resort" like Music/PapaRoach, which is all about someone being DrivenToSuicide.
523* "When It Rains It Pours" by Music/LukeCombs. The first line is "Sunday morning, man, she woke up fighting mad / Bitching and moaning on and on 'bout the time I had". For the radio edit, "Bitching and" is muted, resulting in a surprisingly seamless edit.
524* When Music/{{Alabama}} covered "[[Music/LynyrdSkynyrd Sweet Home Alabama]]" for the tribute album ''Skynyrd Frynds'', they replaced the verse about [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Watergate]] and George Wallace with a new lyric praising Alabama football.
525* The edit of [[Music/OneDirection Zayn]]'s "Pillowtalk" that plays on Macy's "mstyle" radio station, in addition to blanking out the word 'piss' in the chorus (which isn't censored in the traditional radio edit), blanks out any words that even slightly allude to sex, such as "bodies together" and "dirty and raw".
526* While rap music from the 90's and early 2000's fell victim to this trope as often as you'd expect, the song "Ride Wit Me" by Music/{{Nelly}} became unintentionally amusing this way. In the chorus, the line "If you wanna go and get high with me" is censored into the ''much'' more suggestive "If you want to go and ________ me." Some networks turned it into "If you want to go and get ____ with me" instead, which makes the censorship a bit [[BleepDammit pointless]] but at least it doesn't sound like it's implying sex. Another Nelly song from the same album, "Country Grammar," replaces "street-sweeper, baby" with "boom-boom, baby" because "street-sweeper" is a slang term for a type of gun. It also replaces "hot shit!" with "hot-ish!"
527* Music/OldDominion had this happen with ''all three'' singles off their second album ''Happy Endings''. "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart" muted the second half of the offending word in the line "All of this bullshit that goes down on TV"; "Written in the Sand" changed "Let's cut through the shit" to "Let's cut to the quick", and "Hotel Key" swapped out "Smokin' a little from a half-an-ounce" to "Stuck in the middle, loving every ounce".
528* The VEVO version of Music/FiftyCent's "Candy Shop" goes as far as to mute things like "I let you [[spoiler:lick]] the lollipop", "If you be a [[spoiler:nympho]], I'll be a [[spoiler:nympho]]" and "I melt in your [[spoiler:mouth]], girl, not in your hand", leaving the listener to likely fill in ''much'' worse words than what's actually being blanked.
529* The Irish folk song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" has a line in the chorus that goes 'Oh darlin, dear, you look so queer.' The Music/DropkickMurphys version omits this line entirely.
530* The VEVO version of Petey Pablo's "Freek-a-Leek" is even more censored than the version that was featured in ''[[VideoGame/MidnightClub Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition]]'' (an E10+ game), blanking out words like "drink" and "headboard".
531* Music/MarenMorris's "Rich" has two examples. The line "I'd basically be sitting on a big-ass pile of dimes" loops in a second "big" to cover "ass", while the line "Shit, I'd be rich" censors "shit" with a [[SoundEffectBleep cash register ding]].
532* "Animal Fair":
533** The Fisher Price version removes the second verse, which goes "the monkey he got drunk and sat on the elephant's trunk, the elephant sneezed and fell on his knees and that was the end of the monkey."
534** The version used as the theme of Creator/TheBBC 1980s programme of the same name, which was a wildlife show for very young children, has "the monkey fell out of his bunk". And instead of that being the end of the monkey, it asks "What became of the..."
535* "Fix" by Chris Lane censored the line "that good shit" into "that good ish".
536* The Music/TwoLiveCrew album ''As Nasty as They Wanna Be'' (which was famously the subject of an Appeals Court ruling declaring that it ''wasn't'' obscene, since it had artistic merit) also had an edited version titled ''As Clean as They Wanna Be''. Despite the title, it still contained two songs (one of which new to the album) [[BlatantLies that had explicit lyrics]]. ''As Clean as They Wanna Be'' attracted legal controversy for a ''different'' reason, as it also contained a SampledUp parody of "Oh, Pretty Woman", that became the subject of a landmark Supreme Court copyright case over music parodies.
537* The music video of Music/LilKim's "How Many Licks?" is considerably more censored then the version of the song on the clean version of the album. "Imagine your [[spoiler:tongue]] in between my [[spoiler:thighs]]" is only censored in the music video, making it seem considerably more explicit then it actually is. The music video goes on to mute ''Kim's moans'', leaving a hole in the song with just the instrumental. Kim's reference to some infamous gangs ("Eses, Bloods, Crips") was also muted.
538* "Freaky Friday" by Music/LilDicky and Music/ChrisBrown, about the two of them having a FreakyFridayFlip, has the N-word censored (from "What up my nigga" to "What up my winna"). This makes the lyrics nonsensical, since Lil Dicky!Chris's lines before that are about how he has NWordPrivileges now that he's in a black man's body.
539** Another Lil Dicky song, "Earth," has an official [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2SMvfGe72U "clean version"]] to show kids. All the curse words and sexual references are replaced with goofy animal sounds or just plain silence, rendering most of the jokes completely senseless. Note the ''visuals'' don't change at all (except blurring out a brief scene where Lil Dicky's pants are down), and references to HPV and a monkey's anus remain intact.
540* Music/DrDre and Snoop Dogg's "The Next Episode" blanks out certain lyrics, but also has some parts re-recorded with alternate lyrics: Most prominently, the word "motherfuckin'" becomes "one and only" (as in "it's the one and only D-O double G" and "it's the one and only D-R-E"). Depending on the edit, Nate Dogg's verse either ends early due to the lyric "smoke weed every day", or there's just an awkward pause between the words "smoke" and "every day".
541* When {{Music/Beck|Musician}}'s "Dreams" was initially released as a single, it included the lyric "stop fuckin' with my dreams" in the bridge - aside from being TheNotRemix, the version on the album ''Colors'' replaces it with "stop draggin' down my dreams"... which does give it some AddedAlliterativeAppeal. Digital versions of the album still include the original single version as a bonus track.
542* Many lyrics sites transcribe the song "The Right Stuff" (originally by Music/{{Hawkwind}}, covered by Music/{{Monster Magnet}} among others) as having the lyrics 'not even if this sardine-can should shake itself apart.' The actual lyrics in every version go 'not even if this [[Music/{{Dixie Chicks}} dixie-chick]] should shake itself apart'. They're referring to a fighter jet - although 'sardine can' is a perfectly acceptable substitution given the context, it's unclear why they thought a substitution was necessary.
543* Despite foul language and drug references in the lyrics, the label wanted to release Music/TheKnack's "(She's So) Selfish" as a single. A Canadian promotional radio edit changed "the Quaalude scene" to "the lame-o scene" and changed all uses of "fuck" to "touch". Also, the word "shit" was muted. This edit accidentally ended up on a CD reissue of ''Get the Knack'' as well as an iTunes release of the album that's not an Apple Digital Master. (The song is uncensored on the Apple Digital Master copy as well as on a compilation album. The official upload on [=YouTube=] from the original album is censored, but the one from the compilation album is uncensored.)
544* The radio edit of "Truth Hurts" by Music/{{Lizzo}} blanks out the words "bitch" and "fuck". Amusingly, Wisconsin radio station WIXX Green Bay uses a custom-made edit that also censors the phrase "Minnesota Vikings" - The Minnesota Vikings are considered a rival football team to the Green Bay Packers, and that rivalry is considered to be SeriousBusiness for the local audience.
545** On all digital releases of "Hot Dish", the phrase "slower than dumb" is muted out. The uncensored version can be found on physical copies of the album.
546* Musical Youth's cover of the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Koutchie" replaces most of the marijuana references with food references, due to the age of the band members when it was recorded in 1982. Their "clean" version is called "Pass the Dutchie."[[note]]"Dutchie" being slang for a stewpot. Of course, many people who didn't know that assumed it was probably a drug reference anyway.[[/note]]
547* Christian rock band Music/BraveSaintSaturn wrote some mildly offensive lyrics for their second album, which got censored on the album itself. When Reese sings "When you hear this song, I hope it hurts like hell" (in "Enamel"), the word "hell" is obscured by a record scratch. Then on "Heart Still Beats", bursts of static cover up the phrases "pissed off" and "go to Hell". The band wasn't informed of these edits beforehand, and they weren't happy with the results. Afterwards, they distributed the uncensored versions of both songs to their fans online.
548* The radio edit of S'Express's "Theme from S'Express" removes the "Suck me off" sample, originally from Karen Finley's [[BawdySong "Tales of Taboo"]] (as was "Drop that ghetto blaster").
549* "Junior" musicals are often scripted versions of this (among other changes designed to make the show easier for younger actors). For example, ''Theatre/LegallyBlonde Jr.'' removes some of the most explicit sexual references (including an entire verse of "So Much Better"), while ''Theatre/OnceOnThisIsland Jr.'' omits [[spoiler:the protagonist's suicide]], instead simply saying that the gods "turned her into a tree".
550* Doug Supernaw's cover of the Dennis Linde composition "What'll You Do About Me" changed the lyric "And I'm on the porch with a two-by-two" to "...dinner for two" on the radio edit, due to concerns from listeners over the StalkerWithACrush lyrics.
551* The official clean version of Music/{{E40}}'s "U and Dat" censors the word "monkey" in the chorus. While it is being used as an UnusualEuphemism, it's in a way that couldn't possibly be fairly ruled as indecent or even picked up on as suggestive by young children.
552* The clean version of Music/CardiB's "WAP" (which stands for Wet Ass Pussy) changes the words to "Wet and Gushy". Which, really, is only marginally less explicit than the original. The initialism in the title remains the same, perhaps because calling it [[FunWithAcronyms "WAG"]] would be too silly.
553* The BBC refused to play "Lola" by Music/TheKinks not for any perceived obscenity (even though the song is about an encounter with a possible transvestite) but because it included a reference to Coca-Cola, which breached the Corporation's ban on advertising. The band were in the USA at the time and Ray Davies had to fly back to London to rerecord the offending line, changing it to "cherry cola".
554* The Music/MikePosner song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" is variously referred to as "In Ibiza" or the bizarre "I Took a Plane to Ibiza" - even if the version played contains the word "pill".
555* The Lloyd, [[Music/OutKast Andre 3000]] and Music/LilWayne song "Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)" has a clean version and an explicit version - the clean version swaps out "pussy" for "loving".
556* Ellie Goulding's "Close to Me" has a radio edit where Swae Lee's line "I had to cut my bitch off, she bein' stubborn" loops the "cut my" part to censor the word "bitch," leading to the nonsensical line "I had to cut my cut my off."
557* The radio edit of Music/DuaLipa's song "We're Good" changes the lines "We're not meant to be like sleeping and cocaine" to "We're not meant to be that's never gonna change".
558* Music/OliviaRodrigo's 2021 BreakthroughHit "drivers license". The lines changed from "But I still fucking love you babe" to "You know I still love you babe".
559* The Natural Born Hippies song "Best Looking Guy in Town" was used for the Disney/Pixar ''VideoGame/{{Cars}}'' video game because the song fits the main character's egocentric, braggart personality. However, as the lyrics mention the sexual phrases "gonna get laid" and "making you cum" the edited version replaces these lyrics with repeated ones, turning it into a completely clean song.
560* The "[[Music/EltonJohn Crocodile Rock]]" cover recorded for the kids' film ''WesternAnimation/GnomeoAndJuliet'' replaced a few names with the titular characters' names, but to remove sexual implications, the line "Oh Lawdy mama those Friday nights, when Suzie wore her dresses tight" was fully replaced with "Everybody is feeling right, 'cause we're gonna dance all night."
561* The song "Vintage" by High Dive Heart says "you can call me old-school, but I like to hear my music on that FM band" on the album, but on [=SiriusXM=], "that FM band" is changed to [[ProductPlacement SiriusXM]].
562* A retail edit of Music/JasonMraz's "I'm Yours" changes "open up your plans and damn, you're free" to "then you're free" and "god-forsaken right to be loved" to "god-intended right to be loved".
563* Music/LorrieMorgan's "I Just Might Be" removed the word "damn" from the line "I just might be the best damn thing you ever threw away" for the radio edit.
564* The music video for Music/{{Queen}}'s [[Music/Jazz1978 "Bicycle Race"]] features over 40 completely naked women performing in a bicycle race around an elliptical course, which was already controversial, but this ended up carrying over into promotional material, with one poster featuring the back of one of the naked women on a bicycle. Said image would become the cover for the single of "Bicycle Race"/"Fat Bottomed Girls", but it would be bowdlerized to include a thong over the visible crack. ...Meanwhile, there's no indication of [[FailedASpotCheck any bra covering the chest]].
565* Some stations censored the line "Lay my six-foot-four-inch ass out on the ground" out of Music/BrothersOsborne's "Shoot Me Straight".
566* In 2020, "The Breeze" radio stations in Canada started playing a censored version of "The Christmas Song" by Music/NatKingCole. This version replaces the line "and folks dressed up like Eskimos" with an instrumental portion from later in the song. Similarly, the Music/{{Eurythmics}} version of "Winter Wonderland" is edited to replace "We'll frolic and play the Eskimo way" with the earlier line, "to face unafraid the plans that we've made".
567* Music/{{Brentalfloss}}:
568** ''What If This CD... Had G-Rated Lyrics?'' is a version of his first album with all the songs rewritten with new, family-friendly lyrics.
569** The original 2010 upload of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76ley2v2s9w Contra With Lyrics]]" had a line about the game's difficulty being "harder than Mel Gibson hits Oksana Grigorieva". Brent came to regret these lyrics as tasteless, and changed the line on his 2013 album "Bits of Me". As explained in the video's updated description:
570--> Now, years later, it just feels like I'm making light of domestic abuse, which I don't think is funny at all. If you find this video to be nostalgic, that's fine, but just know that I don't think that's something to make light of, and that's why I changed the lyric in the album version.
571* In Music/{{Tesla}}'s live cover of "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band, a couple words were replaced with "fuckin'". However, there is a radio edit that changes them to the original words.
572* Many radio stations air a shortened version of the song "Lightning Crashes" by Music/{{Live}} that skips the first verse, presumably because of the word "placenta".
573* Ben Haenow - the winner of ''Series/TheXFactor'' in 2014 - covered Music/OneRepublic's "Something I Need" for his debut single. In the cover, the original's uses of "die" and "killing" were replaced with "here", "live" and "loving", presumably to make it more palatable to the show's younger audience.
574* GAYLE's "abcdefu" went through a heavy rewrite for radio, starting with the title (now "abc" or "abc (nicer)") and into the main chorus:
575--> A-B-C-D-E-F-U
576--> And your mom and your sister and your job
577--> And your broke-ass car and that shit you call art
578--> Fuck you and your friends that I'll never see again
579--> Everybody but your dog, you can all fuck off
580to
581--> A-B-C-D-E-forget you [[note]]Some stations keep "F-U"[[/note]]
582--> And your mom and your sister and your job
583--> And your broke down car and the things you call art
584--> Forget you and your friends that I'll never see again
585--> Everybody but your dog, you can all get lost [[note]]The version that keeps "F-U" says "You can all F off"[[/note]]
586* Music/GeorgeEzra did this to his own song during the Platinum Party at the Palace (to mark UsefulNotes/ElizabethII's 70th anniversary of ascending to the throne): when performing "Green Green Grass", he only sang "You better throw a party" and removed "On the day that I die".
587* Music/GwenStefani's "Hollaback Girl" has two different radio edits; one which replaces its 38 uses of the word 'shit' with 'shh', and another for radio stations uncomfortable with even suggesting profanity, in which the instances become "this my ''uh''!", the sound of a whistle, and similar random grunts and sound effects.
588* Music/TheoryOfADeadman's "Bitch Came Back" has a radio edit called "The Chick Came Back" in which the title drops are altered accordingly and the two F-bombs are muted.
589* The second verse of Music/NewOrder's "[[Music/SubstanceNewOrderAlbum True Faith]]" was originally written with the lyric "[[DrugsAreBad they're all taking drugs with me]]", which was changed to "they're afraid of what they see" in the released version.
590* "The Duck Song" by Music/{{Songdrops}} is a more small-child-friendly version of an old joke about a duck repeatedly going into a bar (or in some versions a hardware store) and asking if they have grapes. The bartender/clerk gets fed up and says that if he comes back again, he'll nail his feet (or beak) to the floor. The duck comes back and asks if they have any nails, the bartender says that they don't, and then the duck asks for grapes again, the joke ending there. "The Duck Song" changes the setting to a lemonade stand, and the threat is changed to being glued to a tree. Also, the song ends with the two becoming friends and the worker buying grapes for the duck.
591* On Music/{{Creed|band}}'s GreatestHitsAlbum and on ''With Arms Wide Open: A Retrospective'', the "god" is muted out of "goddamn" in the song "What's This Life For". The song is also shortened by half a minute to entirely remove the first instance of the word. When an alternate recording of the song was released on the latter album, the word was muted out in the same way.
592* The radio edit of "Give Up the Grudge" by Music/{{Gob}} changes every instance of "Shut your fucking mouth," to "Better shut your mouth."
593* The radio edit of "Hardwired" by Music/{{Metallica}} uses static sounds to bleep out the words "fucked" and "shit".
594* In 2022, two artists changed the word "spaz" in their songs after receiving online criticism. Music/{{Lizzo}} changed "Imma spaz," to "Hold me back," in her song "Grrrls" before the release of the album ''Special'', and Music/{{Beyonce}} changed "Spazzin' on that ass, spaz on that ass," to "Blastin' on that ass, blast on that ass," in her song "Heated".
595* The clean version of Mylo's "Drop The Pressure" changes the ClusterFBomb to something unintelligible.
596* The British group Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine were also known as "Carter USM" or just "Carter".
597* Ludacris' "Move Bitch" is censored on the radio to "Move", then the sound of glass breaking.
598* Music/TheOffspring:
599** The clean version of "O.C. Guns" replaces every instance of the Spanish cussing line with a stuttered/record-scratched version of the previous line, "What up, holmes?"
600** The censored version of "Let the Bad Times Roll" first mutes the word "bitch". Then, when it gets to the "fuck it" parts, the one from the lead singer is distorted while the background ones are muted. The first instance of muting the background voices causes the lead singer's voice to get cut off.
601* In the [=iHeartRadio=] edit of "Cubically Contained" by Headstones, the "f" sound from "fuckers" is looped long enough to replace the word and its echo. The looping kind of makes it sound like a cymbal.
602* The remix for Music/HollywoodUndead’s “Heart of a Champion” (featuring [[Music/PapaRoach Jacoby Shaddix]] and [[Music/IceNineKills Spencer Charnas]]) has Charlie Scene’s verse re-recorded to have less swears for unknown reasons.
603** Original lyrics:
604-->Bitch, these streets ain’t no sesame.
605-->That’s something I fucking promise.
606-->Spotless is my fucking conscious.
607-->God, this is so fucking pompous.
608** Re-recorded lyrics:
609-->Man, these streets ain’t no sesame.
610-->That’s something I can promise.
611-->Spotless is my goddamn conscious.
612-->God, how’d I get so damn pompous?
613* The Disney version of "Little Bunny Foo Foo" changes all mentions of "bopping" field mice on the head to "kissing".
614* In a [[https://www.facebook.com/x929calgary/videos/10155180213626219 live performance]] of "Blood in the Cut" by Music/KFlay that was recorded exclusively for CFEX-FM (X92.9 Calgary), she changed the line, "He might be fucking her right now," to "He might be up with her right now."
615* The radio edit of "Don't Marry Her" by Music/TheBeautifulSouth changes the chorus from "Don't marry her, fuck me" to "Don't marry her, have me." It also changed "sweaty bollocks" to "Creator/{{Sandra Bullock}}s."
616* There are several radio edits of "Load Me Up" by Music/MatthewGood Band, because of the line, "Me fucking this up" in the second chorus. A couple versions mute out the F-word to different degrees, one version replaces the line with the TitleDrop, and one version replaces the line with, "So take me and take me and take me", so that the second chorus now sounds like the third chorus.
617* ''Chef Aid: The WesternAnimation/SouthPark Album'' had three versions released, rather than the standard two "clean" and "explicit" versions. The standard "explicit" version (which is what was released digitally in 2024) is only a bit uncensored, while the "extreme" version is completely uncensored. The most unique censorship occurs in the VoiceClipSong set to "Mentally Dull" by Vitro. Rather than merely bleeping the F-bombs that are present in the "extreme" version, the censored version replaces those clips with other clips, a couple of which are permanently censored due to the uncensored audio not being archived for most of the earliest episodes. As a result of these changes, the Jesus clip is longer in the censored version.
618* A radio edit of "Who's Gonna Love You" by Tebey changes "Nobody's gonna put up with your shit" to "Nobody's gonna put up with you".
619* When the entire Music/RedHotChiliPeppers album Music/BloodSugarSexMagik made its way to the VideoGame/RockBand series as downloadable content, the very raunchy Sir Psycho Sexy has some entire lines nixed completely, leading to some very awkward bouts of silence. The third verse is especially mangled, with well over half the verse missing entirely. With such lines like "She stuck my butt with her big black stick, I said 'What's up? Now suck my dick'", and "On her crotch, so very warm, I could feel her getting wet through her uniform", it's not hard to see why.
620--> I got stopped by a lady cop in my automobile
621--> [...]
622--> That cop she was all dressed in blue
623--> Was she pretty? Boy I'm tellin' you
624--> [...]
625--> Like a ram getting ready to jam [...]
626--> She whimpered just a little when she felt my hand
627--> [...]
628--> Proppin' her up on the black and white
629--> [...]
630--> [...]

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