Sound Effect Bleep / Music

---

• "Girl on the Billboard," a 1965 country hit by Del Reeves, uses an electric guitar riff to cover up extreme profanity – quite possibly the f-word – in the line, "The painter said the girl wasn't real, better get the (bleep) on my way!" If indeed the f-word was dropped, the song – despite the censorship – would likely have been the first major hit in any genre to contain that word.
• In the song 'Dirty Mouth' by New Found Glory side-project International Superheroes of Hardcore, beeps are used to censor out the swear words in the song, promoting the listener to use the replacement words supplied by the band. (Why say f[beep]/when you can say shucks/why say sh[beep], when you can say crud?)
• The radio edit of Adam Sandler's song "Ode to My Car" uses various automobile/traffic noises to censor the (copious) swearing. Some people think this makes that version funnier than the uncensored album version.
• Five Iron Frenzy parodied this (and the copious swearing of gangsta rap) in Part 8 of their mock rock opera "These Are Not My Pants": loud BEEP's are applied liberally and completely at random over Micah's improvised rapping.
• The radio edit of Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn": "We don't need no water, let the mother-[HEE-HAW] burn." As with the Adam Sandler example above, some people find this edit funnier than the album version.
  • And the radio edit of "Bad Touch" replaces the words "doggy style" with the sound of a dog barking.
    • Some versions also block out "sex", "pants", and "nuts", as well as "getting horny now".
• "Beep" by the Pussycat Dolls, where the sound censor was actually the main lick (no pun intended) of the song, and again aimed at making it sound dirtier than it probably was: "I don't give a <beep> Keep lookin' at my <boop> Cause it don't mean a thing when you're lookin' at the <beep> I'm goin' do mah thing while you're playin witchyour <beeeep>..."
  • Another song that has sound effects in the chorus in the official lyrics is "Paper Planes" by M.I.A.: "All I wanna do is *BANG Bang, Bang, BANG*/And *KA-CHING*/and take your money". In layman's terms, it's describing a mugging. Oddly enough, the sound effects themselves were evidently too suggestive for some radio stations - one censored version uses entirely different ones.
• Subverted by the band James for the MTV edit of their song "Laid". The album version of the song (oddly, also used on the radio without edit) features the line "But she only comes when she's on top." The MTV version features the edit "But she only sings when she's on top" - and a close-up of the lead singer's face while he obviously sings the original line.
• A musical number in Evil Dead: The Musical (yep) has a line that goes "And then we'll take that chainsaw and we'll shove it up your-" "Ash!" which is a bit of a moot point, since there's musical numbers titled "Stupid Bitch" and "What the Fuck Was That?"
• "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'", and other tracks by the Wu-Tang Clan, often used standard Kung Fu sound and voice effects to censor curses in radio and video versions.
  • Even the explicit album version of "Protect Ya Neck" is censored this way, with the fully uncensored version being reserved for a B-Side: on Enter the Wu-Tang, the track starts with a skit where someone calls in to a radio show to make a request, so the censored version is apparently used to maintain the illusion that you're hearing the song being played on-air.
• On an episode of Solid Gold, an '80s music and dance show, host Rick Dees began singing "Eat My Shorts". The words "finger" was censored out by birds chirping, and the "bird" was covered up with cuckoo sounds.
• Phone tones are used to cover the numbers in the "1-900-Mix-a-Lot"^note a real premium-rate phone number, which is subject to advertising regulations on TV lyric of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" video.
• The clean version of Queens of the Stone Age's third album, Songs for the Deaf, put loud censor-beeps (akin to those commonly heard on TV) over all instances of "fuck" and one instance of "kill". Here's an example.
• The rap song "Super Brooklyn" by Cocoa Brovas (sometimes mis-credited to the Wu-Tang Clan, incidentally) samples the theme from Super Mario Bros. for its backbeat. Naturally, in the radio edit, the swear words are covered up with Super Mario sound effects.
• The Lo-Fidelity All Stars' "Battleflag" contains a bit of a Cluster F-Bomb in its uncut album version^note (about forty percent of the lines in the song use the adjective "motherfucking"). The radio edit version covers up the expletives by extending a reverb effect that was already used in the uncut verses. Many listeners didn't even realize it was edited because of this.
• In Toby Keith's angry post-9/11 song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue," he famously warns the terrorists that "we'll put a boot in your ass." The radio stations would sometimes replace the word "ass" with an explosion.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic uses these occasionally in his polka medleys, most notably in his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer."
• Everlast's high-grit hit "What It's Like" uses distorted sounds in place of some key words in censored versions, especially for radio.
• "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio" from Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album uses creative bleep sounds (some of which serve to get the point across) in lieu of actual swearing.
• The Music/Nickelback song "Rockstars" tends to have the d-word in "everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial" bleeped out. Which isn't really all that much of an improvement given other lines in the song, such as "gonna pop my pills from a PEZ dispenser", aren't censored.
• Martin Mull's "Humming Song" does something similar. In it he claims to have had second thoughts about the language in the song he's just written, such that he's chosen to hum in place of anything that might have been objectionable. The original, it's implied, would have been lurid indeed. It begins "Last night, I took you home, we began to... hmm, hmm hmm...." and proceeds from there.
• In a particularly bizarre example, the video for the Electric Six's "Gay Bar" bleeps, of all things, 'war' and 'nuclear war' with whip-crack sounds. It came out as a single just after America's invasion of Iraq, so it was most likely a case of being Distanced from Current Events.
• In the radio/music video edit, the one curse word in Ween's "Push Th' Little Daisies" gets covered up by a sample of Prince shrieking (taken from the beginning of "Alphabet Street").
• Huey Lewis and the News' "The Heart of Rock & Roll" substitutes a drum beat for the word "ass".
• Subverted by Denis Leary's Asshole Song video, which lets all the words go through, but puts a large graphic of horizontal stripes with BLEEP across the center on the screen.
• The Cascada song "Fever" has the line "Who the fuck is VIP", however, "fuck" is censored out with a background noise that is part of the song.
• It is also used in Lemon Demon's Song Of The Count.
• In Lady Gaga's "Lovegame", the vocalization "huh!" is used frequently throughout the song, mostly as an emphasis on the rhythm. However, in one line it is used for a different purpose; given the unsubtle nature of the rest of the lyrics, Hilarity Ensues:
  I can see you staring there from across the block
  With a smile on your mouth and your hand on your (huh!)
  • In "Telephone" it's both averted and played straight: Gaga's "motherfucker" isn't beeped out, however, when Beyoncé's "boyfriend" is killed, she's calling him a "mother[BEEP]", putting her hand over her mouth, acting all embarrassed about her swearing.
  • "Government Hooker" from Born This Way has several swear words bleeped out at the end of the song, however it's pointless as you can still hear her singing them.
• The radio edit of Lily Allen's "Fuck You" is, understandably, in need of a lot of these, and it steps gamely up to the plate with quacks, neighs, spinning plates, and a descending note on a swanny whistle.
  • The CD version of Lily Allen's "Friday Night" also utilizes this trope, though from the Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion it's quite clear what belongs there.
  It's quarter two and we get to the front
  Girl on the guest list dressed like a [record ripping noise]
  • The radio edit of "The Fear" censors "fucking fantastic" with a chime that sounds vaguely like a cash register opening - appropriately enough following a line about credit cards.
• Madonna in the video for "Human Nature": "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your [SLAM] on me."
• Missy Elliot's "Work It" features a well-placed elephant trumpet in the chorus, even in the dirty version: "If you got a big *PHWOO* let me work it"
• The German singer and comedian Frank Zander used these to parody censorship in music in his song "oh, susi (der zensierte song)". He tells the story of a song he wrote that the record company had censored. He sings the song with the lyrics censored by means of countless sound effects, and it seems like quite some nasty and R-rated stuff has been removed. Afterwards, he sings the uncensored version, which is revealed to be squeaky clean and actually have a different meaning than what one would suppose from the censored version.
• Messed with in Chiodos's "Is It Progression If a Cannibal Uses a Fork?" A static-ed out part near the beginning of the song ( I wanna know what's going on in the $#^#$#$% little head of yours ) is revealed to just be I wanna know what's going on in the pretty little head of yours
• When the band Negativland issued "These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit," a retrospective based on the U2 EP, (the band insist it was bootlegged) they closed it with a painstaking edit of the notorious "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Special Edit Radio Mix)" in which every single obscenity (and there was a lot of them) was replaced by the sounds of, among other things, breaking glass, dogs barking, and horns.
  • However, after roughly 8:50 of silence, you hear Every expletive that Casey Kasem used over the course of the song, all in rapid succession.
• Bob Rivers has "What if Eminem Did Jingle Bells?" in two versions. One of them covers up the swearing with sound effects and makes for a much more interesting listen than the uncensored version.
  • Eminem himself used a variety of sound effects to mask the dirty language on the clean version of The Eminem Show.
• The Wired All Wrong album Break Out The Battle Tapes includes several songs where curses are either replaced by static or else chopped up enough to be unrecognizable - the unusual thing is that the only official release of the album has the lyrics censored this way ^note though, due to fan demand, the band released free mp3s of alternate versions of songs where the objectionable language is left intact: Reportedly this is because Jeff Turzo, as one half of the band, had second thoughts about making music with lyrics he wouldn't want his young son exposed to.
• Two Brave Saint Saturn songs, "Enamel" and "Heart Still Beats", had the words "hell" and "pissed" obscured by record scratches and static. This was done on the actual album, and without telling the band beforehand.
• The radio edit of DMX's song "Party Up" uses various sound effects to cover up the copious cursing and references to murder in the song.
• Played with in George Jones' "Her Name Is..." where he censors himself so that his lover's husband won't kill him. The sound effect used is notes on a clavinet:
  Her name is [note note note]
  Her eyes are [note]
  Her hair is just like [note note]
  And she measures [note note note]
  But someday I'll fill in the lines
  When she and I are free
  And we'll walk in the sunshine
  [note note note] and me
• The Lucky Charms Title of KMFDM's Symbols album is dropped this way in the lyrics for "Down and Out": "It makes you strong, it makes you [BEEP]. Don't let it go to waste". So it may be unofficially called "Bleep", as that's a five-letter word.
  • "Zip" from their first album: "Don't get your [guitar lick] into the zip of your pants".
• Groove Coverage's "Runaway" has the line "No, I am not your fucking second choice," censored with a standard beep.
• Addeboy Vs. Cliff's "Beep My Beep", with a chorus that goes "I want you to [beep] my [beep]".
• "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips At Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long)" by The Notorious Cherry Bombs (translation: a side project by Rodney Crowell's backing band along with Vince Gill) censored the word "ass" with a spring sound. This even got lampshaded at the end, which features the line "It's all right if we say it / 'Cause the radio won't play it."
• The radio edit of Tenacious D's "Fuck Her Gently" uses censor sounds that get sillier as the song progresses.
• Kid Rock's "Cowboy" uses a variety of "standard" censor sounds early in the song, like radio static and a record scratch. Near the end, lampshaded with a female voice stating "radio edit" over a censored line.
• In "Stand Up" by Love Tribe, the line "asses shaking" was censored with a POW! vocal sample.
• Some radio cuts of Nelly's "Ride Wit Me" censor the line "If you wanna go and get high with me/Smoke an L in the back..." by replacing the word "high" with the sound of someone taking a drag (presumably on a blunt) and "L" with the sound of said toker exhaling.
• The clean version of House of Pain's "Jump Around" bleeps out, cuts, or changes many words, including "pops", "I'm smackin' the ho", "bombs", "shotgun", and "death".
• The music video version of Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance" has a lot of comical sound effects to cover up sexual innuendo (for example: "I'm still gettin' in the girls' pants..." has "girls' pants" muted by a car horn honking, which goes well with Humpty grabbing a woman's rear, the line "In a 69, my Humpty nose will tickle your rear" has "69" muted by a record scratch and "rear" muted by a woman's scream, and "I get laid by the ladies..." had "laid" muted with a weird record scratch/car tire screeching noise). Of course, the "Burger King" in the famous line, "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom" was bleeped with an ordinary bleep.
• The Harvard fight song "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" is perhaps one of the oldest examples of this. Most people know the fourth verse only and some know the dog-Latin first verse ("Illegitinum non carborundum"), but during the instrumental parts, the percussion section sings a filthy pseudo-Latin second verse that ends in a raucous English "and save some for me" and a third verse that consists entirely of "la" and "fuck" (these date back to at least the 1940s). The dirty verses are mostly inaudible due to the instruments drowning them out (which is the intent).
• David Lynch's "Good Day Today" is another example of a song where the sound effects aren't actually covering anything specific up: Part of the second verse is effectively "So tired of [explosion] \ So tired of [machine gun fire]".
• Primus:
  • The video for "DMV" uses a couple to cover drug references.
  When I need relief I spell it [woof woof woof]^* THC
  perhaps you may know vaguely what I mean
  I sit back [SQUEAAAAL]^* and smoke away huge chunks of memory
  As I slowly inflict upon myself a full lobotomy-call it pointless
  • "The Air Is Getting Slippery" uses one at the end, though the liner lyrics are uncensored.
  If sweatiness makes you horny, well darlin' I think you're in luck
  'Cause all this clever banter gives me the urge to [SHATTER]
• In "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by The Offspring, "they're gonna kick his lily ass" is usually censored with either a bleep or a drum hit on American radio stations.
• Big & Rich's "Rollin' (The Ballad of Big & Rich)" has "I'm a crazy son of a [bad word] / But I know I'm gonna make it big and rich." Another voice literally says "bad word" over the offending word, and the lyric sheet in the CD even says that.
• Tim Wilson has several:
  • But they couldn't torture me half as well as well as little birthday [BLEEP] in Chucky Cheese Hell.
  • "Darryl Stokes, that dumb sonofa [BLAM], almost shot Santa Claus."
• "Freak Me" by LXR, being an Intercourse with You song, makes judicious use of these: "Yes I wanna f[beep] you on the floor", "Am I so horny to suck your p[double beep]", etc. However, the line "get your ass over my face" is left uncensored.
• In Aerosmith's "Legendary Child", the backing vocals create this effect at one point:
  Makin' love at seventeen yeah we had the luck
  But we traded them toys for other joys yeah we didn't give a [woah woah woah].
• Khia, in the clean version of My Neck, My Back (Lick It): "My neck, my back, lick my [Ah] just like that".
• Manic Street Preachers' "Stay Beautiful," has the line 'fuck off' replaced by a guitar squeal, so that the song could be released as a single. This turned out to be a good idea as it led to a tradition of the crowd yell the 'censored' words when the song is played at concerts.
• Bomfunk MC's Live Your Life has the offending word in the line 'So much shit that my nose is uplifted' censored out and replaced by a sniffing sound. This has the (probably) unintentional effect of making it sound like he's talking about cocaine. This is present even on the album version, even where other words are intact. The original word is present in some of the remixes. It is thought that it was edited out so that it would be serviceable as a single in English-speaking countries without further editing. However, Live Your Life wasn't released outside Scandinavia and Germany anyway (and neither was the parent album Burnin Sneakers), due to the failure of the previous single Super Electric in the UK (which turned out to be the band's last release there).
• Used to hilarious effect with one version of Dropkick Murphys "Pipebomb on Landsdowne". Half the words getting bleeped out aren't swears, and a lot of swears aren't bleeped out.
• Epic Rap Battles of History episode "Mario Bros. vs. Wright Brothers":
  Itsa me Mario
  And Luigi motha-[coin picked up]
• Dusty Drake's "I Am the Working Man" has the line "I've laid asphalt and I've laid brick / I've hung sheet rock and shoveled [static]". A couple years later, the same label (Warner (Bros.) Records) used static to censor "kiss my ass" in Ray Scott's "My Kind of Music".
• In later releases of Michael Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present, and Future -- Book I, the lines "jew me" and "kike me" from his song "They Don't Really Care About Us" (which led to accusations of antisemitism, which Jackson denied) were censored out with record scratches.
• Remix artists Zeds Dead used a sample of Juicy J saying "You say no to ratchet pussy" in the original version of their song "Ratchet". In an alternate version, subtitled "Meow Version", they play this trope for laughs, replacing the offending word (in its many repetitions) with sounds of cats meowing. Interestingly, this actually leads to a bigger variation of sound throughout the song, as multiple different meowing samples are played along with the original Juicy J sample.
• "Lightning Does the Work" by Chad Brock:
  Well, I've seen the lightning blow a cypress tree in half
  The thunder's busy talkin', and lightning's kickin'...[thunderclap]
• The clean version of "Glamorous" by Fergie and Ludacris:
  If you ain't got no money, take your broke [car door slam] home
• Fergilicious the word "ass" is censored by a sensual female sigh.
  Every time I turn around, brothers gathered 'round, lookin' at me up and down, lookin' at my [sigh]
• In Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Missile F-111", "Mondo teeno giving head" has "head" censored with a reverb of the preceding word.
• A children's songwriter named Judy Pancoast did a song about "Seven Words that Make Kids Laugh". None of the words were profanities (just cheeky words like 'potty'), but they were treated like profanities (stated that if she put them in the songs, the radio wouldn't play them etc). And there was a Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion that ended with one of these. (e.g. "I think that you can figure out what some of them might be. I'll have to tell you later 'cause now I have to [BOING!]")
• On a YouTube parody of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's song "Stop the Bats", Fluttershy's line "And if I did not defend them, then I would be remiss!" was replaced with "None of you thought to remind me, now she thinks I'm a (squee)!"
• "He's Messed Up" by Jo Dee Messina censors the word "bullshit" with a digital-sounding burst of static.
• The 2017 Gorillaz album "Humanz" censors no swears, but any too-specific political references, with car horns; according to Damon Albarn this is to keep the album "timeless".
  [HONK HONK HONK]^note  Obama is gone, so who is left to save us?
  [HONK HONK HONK]^note  Orlando we mourn, I'm prayin' for my neighbours,
  They say the devil's at work and [HONK]^note  Trump is callin' favours.
• The VEVO version of Amy Winehouse's "Fuck Me Pumps" bleeps out "You did too much E" (in reference to ecstasy), with the camera deliberately cutting away from her face at the last word.
• "Rich" by Maren Morris censors the line "Shit, I'd be rich" with the sound of a cash register.
• The remix of Papa Roach's "Murder" featured in Gran Turismo 4, retitled "Getting Away With...", blocked out the word "murder" with an echo of "getting away".
• In the non-acoustic version of Clean Bandit's "Solo", the F-bomb in the chorus is obscured with sound effects.

  I wanna f-*WOOP WOOP WOOP*, but I'm brokenhearted.

• A radio edit of Thea Austin's "You're the Worst Thing for Me" censors "fucking" with a phone ring; however, the word "ass" is intact.
• Will Smith's "Tell Me Why" (even on the album): "And why the [BLEEP] can't love seem to defeat hate?"
• "The Runaway Train" by Michael Holliday:
  The fireman said he rang the bell,
  The engineer said "you did like [CHORD]"
• 3OH!3’s “Touching On My” uses a synth-pop beep to censor lyrics, including its title.

---