History Bowdlerise / Music

* The single version of [[MarilynManson Marilyn Manson]]'s song "The Beautful People" has the rather awkward line "There's no time to discriminate/Hate every mother hater that's in your way." Almost makes you long for a melonfarmer.

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* Averted in the GreenDay album ''21stCenturyBreakdown''.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.

** Interestingly enough, this song was part of the UK soundtrack album for the anime series [[Beyblade V-Force]]. Even more interesting that only the second line of the aforementioned chorus has a censor blank on it.

** Another weird one: "You're in the corner with your boys, you bet 'em five bucks / You'll get the girl that just walked in, but she thinks you [[supersecretspoiler: suck]]" Taken from the radio edit of Pink's "U + Ur Hand". [[supersecretspoiler: Just what was so offensive about the word "suck"?]]

* The song "Closer" by 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 due to the fact that 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.

* The RebaMcEntire song "Fancy" had its third verse left out of the original radio edit. The rerelease, however, was played in its entirety.
** Similarly, GarthBrooks's "Friends in Low Places" and "The Thunder Rolls" both have their third verses left out of the radio versions.

* Kanye West's "Power" originally had a second verse that started with a TakeThat against ''Saturday Night Live'':
--->"Fuck SNL and the whole cast
Tell ‘em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass
More specifically, they can kiss my asshole
I’m an asshole? You niggas got jokes
You short-minded niggas’ thoughts is Napoleon
My furs is Mongolian, my ice brought the goalies in
Now I embody every characteristic of the egotistic
He know, he so, f-ckin’ gifted
I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts
Got treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault
My childlike creativity, purity and honesty
Is honestly being prodded by these grown thoughts
Reality is catchin’ up with me
Takin’ my inner child, I’m fighting for it, custody
With these responsibilities that they entrusted me
As I look down at my dia-mond-encrusted piece"
* 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 ([[YourMileageMayVary and, in some reviewers' opinions, a better verse than the original one]]). The new second verse goes like this:

Machine gun flow, made her get a Ross Perot
And this is disestablishmentarianism
With my night goggles on, got military vision
And it’s still a very Christian way to think about livin’
When you prayin’ for freedom ’cause your mind been in prison
‘Cause they tryin’ to control every single big decision
You ain’t effin’ the system, then why the eff is you livin’?
Look, dawg, you can cop whatever suits you on
Three-piece, cuff links and the accoutrements
They been feedin’ us ish without the nutrients
So I’m back with another hit to let the truth be known
And your boy still fresh with the Gucci on
Them Italians sure know how to make what the moodies want
And they really can’t take what Doobie on
But I be on the same thing ’til you prove me wrong."

-->"Fuck SNL and the whole cast

** 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 removed and some of the profanity to be replaced with euphemisms, but instead a completely new verse was written ([[YourMileageMayVary and, in some reviewers' opinions, a better verse than the original one]]). The new second verse goes like this:
-->"The brown hero, live from Ground Zero

* Kidz Bop is a series of cover albums sung by little kids. The lyrics are changed to be more kid-friendly.

** This was lampshaded in a sketch on the ''SaturdayNightLive'' episode hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow with Cee-Lo Green as musical guest in a sketch where Cee-Lo Green's record managers speak in GoshDangItToHeck-style euphemisms ("fuck" and its variants are replaced with "forget," "forgetters," and "forgetting"; "asshole" is changed to "Sasquatch," "[[NWordPrivileges nigger]]" is changed to "Nintendo" {complete with a white character trying to say "Nintendo," people getting offended, and the white character remarking that it's not cool when someone like him says it}, "shit" changed to "sugar," etc) and try to come up with a new title for "Fuck You" so that way it can air on live TV without repercussions from the FCC. In the end, Cee-Lo's record manager (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) won him the right to say...[[spoiler: Forget]] for his song. The sketch was of course immediately followed by his performance of the "Forget You" version of the song.

* 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...". 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 "[[WallBanger Wife Beater]]".

* It was of course completely inevitable for this to happen with Cee Lo Green'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. Lampshaded in a sketch on the SaturdayNightLive episode where he was the musical guest, in which "forget" is constantly used as though it were another f word around Cee-Lo's record company, and it is considered a a triumph for free speech that one can say "Forget" on TV. The sketch was of course immediately followed by his performance of the "Forget You" version of the song.

* "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 with significant AdaptationDecay.

* The Rolling Stones 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".

* ''GuitarHero 3'' comically censors the word "niggers" in the song "Holiday on Cambodia":

* The BBC edit of "Respectable Street" by XTC censored out all off-color references, without which the song doesn't make much sense. 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". Don't even get me started on the video.

* Aerosmith's "Janie's Got A Gun" was subjected to this trope not once, but twice. The line "he jacked a little bitty baby" was originally "he raped a little bitty baby," but Steven Tyler changed it at the request of the record company. [[SarcasmMode Which is a good thing, because the sexual abuse in the song is completely undetectable with that one little word taken out.]] (This also qualifies as ExecutiveMeddling.) As if that wasn't enough, some radio stations have been known to change the line "and put a bullet in his brain" to "and left him in the pouring rain." The phrase "CompletelyMissingThePoint" comes to mind...

* In TheDoors' "Break On Through," the line "She gets high/She gets high/She gets high" became "She gets/She gets/She gets" in order to pass Top 40 radio muster. Meanwhile, the censors at ''TheEdSullivanShow'' asked Jim Morrison to change "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl, we couldn't get much better" in "Light My Fire," but Morrison, being Morrison, sang "higher" anyway.

* The Dresden Dolls song "Coin Operated Boy" has two versions:

* It was of course completely inevitable for this to happen with Cee Lo Green'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.

* The 1979 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.]]

* The 1979 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.]] between that line and the deliberately campy video.

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* "Smoke a Little Smoke" by Eric Church contains the line "Dig down deep, find my stash / Light it up..." twice. To skirt the drug reference, the first one becomes "Dig down deep, find my glass / Fill it up..." (which fits nicely with the last line, "break out the wine, forget again") and the second, "Dig down deep, strike my match". This makes it a rare example of a lyric-swap that doesn't dilute the original meaning.

* P!nk's recent song "F**king Perfect was changed for the radio, obviously. The lyrics change from

--> Like your less than, you are perfect

* The admittedly ContemptibleCover of 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.

May cause quite a surprise for fans searching for this song online.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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"

* The title of Snoop Dogg's "Sexual Eruption" is changed to "Sensual Seduction" for radio play. The words, however, are not changed.