History Bowdlerise / Music

** In at least one airing on the simulcasted Canadian radio show ''Rock of the West'', the word was played in reverse.

** And he's just as likely to invert this and make a song ''more'' offensive than it originally was. On "Bustin'", he edits the ''Film/{{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.

* Music/VioletUK's "Blind Dance," as mentioned in its entry on the BleachedUnderpants 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.

* 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 [[BleachedUnderpants that there was a "dirty" version of the song to begin with]].

* ''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".

* 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.

* 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.

* 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." ** 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).

* 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.

* 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."

* When it first became a hit, 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.
* 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.

* ''Theatre/TheMikado's'' "Punishment Fits the crime" song used to have a vain lady "blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice". These days, she is more usually "painted with vigour".
* [[CensoredTitle The title of Snoop Dogg's "Sexual Eruption" is changed to "Sensual Seduction" for radio and MTV versions]]. The words, however, are not changed.

* In "Runaway Love" by 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.
* Comedian Billy Connolly'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.

* The cover of Music/RoxyMusic's ''Country Life'' 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.

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzL2sJKnAaM clean version]] of A$AP Rocky's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZm1im2erU Fuckin' Problems]]" has so much cut out that it makes absolutely no sense.
* 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.

* Another inexplicable one in Music/LadyAntebellum'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.
* 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.

* Subverted in M.I.A.'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.
* In the U.K., [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Radio 1]] played a censored version of the Pogues' "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.
** Celtic Thunder's cover of the song on their Christmas Voices album was heavily Bowdlerized:

* 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". Early 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".

* Wheatus' song "Teenage Dirtbag" was censored on UK radio by blanking words out of one verse:

* 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.

* Some radio stations, such as KDWB, censor the words "skeet blanket" (a blanket males use to masturbate) from Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Thrift Shop".

* The official clean version of will.i.am'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".

* When Lyle Lovett'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".

* 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 1980 s 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.

* Music/VioletUK's ''Blind Dance,'' as mentioned in its entry on the BleachedUnderpants 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.

* "Shakin' the Blues Away" (1927) 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.

* 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".

* 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".

* There are two slightly different radio edits of "Time Of Our Lives" by Pitbull and Ne-Yo: 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".

* The radio edit of "Addicted to a Dollar" by Doug Stone 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.

* A few months before the release of Music/FranzFerdinand's debut ''Music/FranzFerdinand2004'', 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.
* 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."

** David Guetta'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.

** Major Lazer 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]''".
** Fifth Harmony'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.

** Several verses are cut entirely from DJ Khaled's "Wild Thoughts", making the wild thoughts in question Rihanna is singing about rather hard to interpret.

** Ariana Grande'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.
** Ariana Grande's "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'').

** Jonas Brothers' "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]]

** Ellie Goulding'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.)
** Ed Sheeran'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.
** Ellie Goulding's "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).

* The Miracle of Sound 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.
* The chorus for the song Black Swan from 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.

* ChristianRock band The 77's 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 77's 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.

** "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: ''Mario Paint'' sounds, Homer Simpson saying "D'oh!", Austin Powers saying "Oh yeah, baby!" and so on.
** And he's just as likely to invert this and make a song ''more'' offensive than it originally was. On "Bustin'", he edits the ''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.
* [=LoCash=] wennt 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.

* 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.

* The radio edit of "Truth Hurts" by 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.

* The official clean version of E-40'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.

* The Mike Posner 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".
* The Music/{{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".

* 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".

** "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.

* George Ezra 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".

* 3OH3'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.

* Whenever 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".

* 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".

* The radio version of House of Pain'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.

* The band ''Music/KickAxe'' 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.

** 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 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 B.o.B. and Music/BrunoMars' "Nothin' On You").
** In Kids Bop 23, "Gangnam Style" was edited to change "Hey, sexy lady..." to "Hey, pretty lady..."
** Averted possibly by accident on the same Kidz Bop "Gangnam Style" was on. In their cover of "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.
** The Kidz Bop version of Alessia Cara'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.
** The Kidz Bop version of "Friends" by 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")

* Downplayed weirdly with the 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.

* 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.

* When Music/{{Moby}} covered Mission Of Burma'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).

* 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.

* {{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).

** Boone wasn't alone. Elvis recorded a notably toned-down version of Big Mama Thornton's raunchy "Hound Dog", and Bill Haley & His Comets 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").

* 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".

* NWOBHM band Music/{{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:

* Again {{invoked}} in the video for the clean version of Marianas Trench's "Desperate Measures", in which Josh Ramsay covers his mouth in the blurbed portion of the line "payback is a motherfucker".

** 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.

* 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.
* After the 9/11 terror attacks, several songs that mentioned bombs and war were censored -- among them was Electric Six'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!"]]
* 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".)

** Kelly Clarkson'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.

** Their edit of The Chainsmokers' "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.
** Radio Disney's edit of Shawn Mendes' "Mercy" blanks out "I'm prepared to sacrifice [[spoiler:my life]]".
** Hey Violet'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".
** Dua Lipa's "New Rules" has a large chunk of the chorus blanked out/replaced with an echo in the Radio Disney edit.

** Dua Lipa's "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.
** Demi Lovato'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.)
** Radio Disney's edit of 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.
** On Radio Disney, Hilary Duff's "All About You" changed from a song about a dirty secret in the backseat to a little secret at the sunset.

** 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".

* When the Eels album ''Daisies Of The Galaxy'' was released, Dream Works Records 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.

* The official edited version of the 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."
** 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?"
* "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba goes from "pissing the night away" to "KISSING the night away."
* 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.

** 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.

* 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:

** 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.

* When Van Morrison'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.

* 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.

* The "clean" version of "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.)

* When Music/DaVincisNotebook 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."

* In a subversion, The Dresden Dolls' song "Coin-Operated Boy" has two versions:

* 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."

* In the U.K., 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.

** 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.

** 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 a overdose," from 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 B.o.B. and Music/BrunoMars' "Nothin' On You").

** 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.

* 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, it aired uncensored.

* 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 10's through Website/YouTube is one that removes all of the violent lyrics to be appropriate for young children.

* When {{Music/Beck}}'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.

* 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.

* Some radio stations completely remove the second verse of the Dire Straits 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.

* 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."

* On Music/{{Creed}}'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.