Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
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Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
Haha, I get the joke. I feel like I'm on Reddit again.
Anyway on with the cleanup.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
Regarding "Summer Night City": This is one case where record label rules did kick in. In general, for various reasons ABBA didn't release that many singles to Swedish radio, focusing instead on international airplay. Epic Records was concerned enough about an impending UK airplay ban that they re-released an edited version that fades out before that part.
As far as "embracing it for controversy" no one can read Bjorn's mind and official sources vary on whether it was intentional, but this specifically seems unlikely since the band didn't embrace the song at all, they distanced themselves from the song fairly quickly.
Calendar enthusiast
Hmm. OK, so that definitely happened, but I still feel like it doesn't qualify on the grounds that it wasn't intentional. It's a clear case of Mondegreen, and possibly Accidental Innuendo.
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Veteran Editor IV
Is Radar.Dragon Quest I legit? I'm pretty sure the SNES remake (1993) wasn't originally rated (and it's kinda weird it mentions a Japanese version when that console only got a release of that game in Japan), while the GBC port (1999) is rated E. The mobile version (2014) doesn't have this scene, but it's rated Teen by ESRB and 3 by PEGI.
- In the SNES remake's first town, you can meet up with an ardent female admirer who will "tag along." If you spend a night while she's with you, the dialog strongly suggests you and the admirer had a night of wild sex. This can also happen while you are escorting Princess Lora.
Innkeeper: Good morning. You were up late!
- The Japanese version is even more explicit: "It sounded like you had fun last night."
- In the GBC version, you can actually spend the night at the inn with both of them in tow and the above message will occur.
Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 1st 2022 at 5:08:02 PM
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)
Calendar enthusiast
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Nope. Not only are such things common in Japanese media, but Japan didn't assign age ratings to games until 2002. Also, it's literally one example, and doesn't warrant an entire page.
Gonna take on the rest of Radar.Music, starting with the Alternative folder.
- Parental Advisory standards (Recording Industry Association of America) - started in 1985
- The Code (Australian Recording Industry Association) - started in 2003
- "Wolf Moon" by Type O Negative isn't about werewolves. It uses werewolves as a metaphor. It's about the narrator going down on his girlfriend while she's on her period.
I checked, and the album doesn't appear to have a PAL.
After listening to it, I don't think this song qualifies. If you can even discern the lyrics, they're very metaphorical, and anybody who manages to pick up on the hidden meaning is well old enough for it.
On the other hand, that same album includes the song "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity", which features the lyrics "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else", "I know what you're doing, you stupid twat!" and "Fuck! Whore!", all shouted very clearly, which definitely do warrant the label.
On the gripping hand, the RIAA's own guidelines specifically say:
3. The context of the artist performing the material, as well as the expectations of the artist’s audience;
7. That a sound recording may contain strong language or depictions of violence, sex, or substance abuse, yet due to other factors involved, may not merit a designation as containing PAL Content.
With that in mind, TON's music does appear to be aimed specifically at adults who don't mind strong language and sexual themes. As such, I'm on the fence but leaning towards "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" being a valid example.
- The song "Blubberboy" by Regurgitator reached #1 in Australia. It has the line "Rub me on your cunt I'll come back again". Since that worked so well, they tried to be more blatant and also charted with the song titled "I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am".
"Blubber Boy" was released in 1995, before Australia had music classification. "I Sucked a Lot of Cock to Get Where I Am" was never released in Australia; it was released in America, and it got a Parental Advisory sticker, so the radar definitely did see this one.
- "Addicted" by Simple Plan- according to Pierre Bouvier, the point of the song was to be the first band to get the word "dick" on to Much Music. "I'm a addic-dic-dic-dic-dicted to you." Another lyric is "I'm a dick. I'm addicted to you." This is hidden by the conceit that it's a hiccuped line: "I'm addic-, I'm addicted to you."
- Who would have guessed that the upbeat, catchy song "Semi-Charmed Life" was a song about sexual addictions and crystal meth usage? Don't believe me? Google the lyrics. Disney used it in promos for The Tigger Movie. Yes, Tigger was bouncing around to a song about crystal meth.
I watched the trailer. The only lyrics used are "doodoodoo-doodoo", none of the sex or meth stuff, so this doesn't count.
- The Violent Femmes did this a lot. From "36-24-36", which spoke of a woman being the perfect measurements and them wanting to bang her, to "Gimme The Car", which was about getting a girl drunk, high and then banging her, to the "Country Death Song", which involved the voice of it pushing his youngest daughter into a bottomless pit and then hanging himself in shame... And, of, course, their best known song, "Blister in the Sun", is about A Date With Rosie Palms.
Hookey.
"36-24-36" was released in 1993. It's sexually charged, but doesn't sound explicit enough to warrant a Parental Advisory label.
"Gimme the Car" isn't about doing those things, it's about wanting to do those things. Nonetheless, it was released in 1983, and re-released in 1991. The lyrics are borderline but probably valid.
"Country Death Song" is about what this example says it's about. Explicitly. Like, it's not subtle, or hidden. This is a song specifically about performing a murder suicide and nothing else. They weren't trying to hide anything or be sneaky. Also, the description of the murder isn't particularly gratuitous, so doesn't warrant a PAL.
"Blister in the Sun" is quite mild and metaphorical, so the ratings people don't have an issue with it.
- The Smiths song "A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours" contains the line "you're still a young man/so phone me, phone me, phone me", but Morrissey enunciates it so that it sounds like "fuck me."
A simple mondegreen.
[[/quoteblock]]
- Tori Amos' albums never have an Explicit Lyrics label on them, even though she sometimes curses in her songs. For example, "Professional Widow" from Boys For Pele has lines such as "slag shit", "starfucker just like my daddy", and "peace, love, and a hard cock". However, radio stations did refuse to play "Big Wheel", since she chants "I am a M-I-L-F" in it.
Yeah, that's valid.
- While it's pretty bluntly sexual to begin with, Sublime's "Caress Me Down" has a couple of lines that would probably have to be edited out for radio were they not among the song's several bursts of gratuitous Spanish: "Pero la cosa que me gusta más es panochita", which translates to "but the thing I like the most is pussy", and "con un chingo de dinero" which translates to "with a fuckload of money". Also, in April 29, 1992 (Miami), while the singer is listing off places, he says the f-word. This is likely because it is mainly in the background of the song, and is easy to miss.
It has the Parental Advisory sticker; the radar noticed this one.
- The lyric sheet for Garbage's psycho breakup song "Vow" (possibly one of the most brutal, vengeance-soaked, unhinged breakup songs ever written) includes the phrase "I came to knock you up, I came to break you down" in the chorus. If you listen to the actual track, however, it doesn't quite sound like that, especially as the song makes a lot more sense with "fuck" in the first clause. (Though Shirley Manson (aka The Creepiest Woman in Rock)'s delivery ratchets the nastiness up to 11 all by itself...) It happens in the chorus of the second verse. That word in that particular spot is different in every chorus repetition, which makes it especially sneaky.
No, it sounds exactly like that. And because there's no actual cursing, this does not violate the PAL rules.
- The Bloodhound Gang just bowls right over the radar with almost blunt innuendos. Though most famously is ''Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" which is laden with innuendo. though that was to sneak the true innuendo with the title as it just so happens to use military phoenetics and once you figure it out, well.
- For a song so outrageously blunt as "The Bad Touch" (yeah, the Discovery Channel song), it's amazing how the only censored song in the music video is 'doggie'. Yeah: doggie.
- For a song so outrageously blunt as "The Bad Touch" (yeah, the Discovery Channel song), it's amazing how the only censored song in the music video
FUCK counts for the title alone.
I don't hear anything censored in "The Bad Touch", though the lyrics are on the questionable side.
- The music video for "Is Anybody Out There?" by K'naan and Nelly Furtado features 3 different examples of this trope. At the beginning, when the emo looking girl is inside of the comic book store and the man asks her if she's gonna buy something, she yells "Shit! Leave me alone!" at him. Later on, some other girl sees her looking in the window of the restaurant she's eating in and she says "What a skank..." and then shortly after that, the emo girl writes STFU on the window of a restaurant and flips the bird at everyone inside. This video gets regular rotation on VH1.
That stuff is in the video, not the actual song. Whether it belongs on VH 1 comes down to the channel's internal policies, which we don't have access to.
- The Killers' "Mr Brightside" makes the following lyrical dodge: "Now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick, and it's all in my head, but she's touching his....chest now"
So they snuck in the word "dick"... by not saying "dick"?
- Possibly 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' by Sophie B. Hawkins, when she says 'I'd rock you till the daylights come' which sounds an awful lot like fuck in the first verse.
Another mondegreen.
- Space's duet with Cerys Matthews, 'The Ballad Of Tom Jones', contains the line 'and I just want to cut off your nuts'. It made it past the censors, although Cerys didn't sing the word 'nuts' when she and the band peformed it on some TV shows.
The song has a fair amount of violent imagery, but it's about overcoming such urges, which I believe the RIAA and ARIA would be OK with. The bit about Cerys not singing the lyric on some TV shows has to do with either her own personal feelings or TV channels' internal policies; either way, this doesn't appear to be an example.
- The Smashing Pumpkins' single "Zero" from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness includes the line "Bullshit Fakers", which has never been censored on American radio, to this day.
Every radio station has its own internal standards. Still, I think this one is valid for lacking the Parental Advisory sticker.
- Cage The Elephant's single "In One Ear" featured the line "The crowd will only like me if they're really fuckin' drunk". The radio edit did change this... to "the crowd will only like me if they're all smacked up". Thus, they got rid of an f-bomb, but also changed a reference to drinking to a reference to heroin use.
Radio stations can refer to drugs if they want, and this just looks like a drug version of Accidental Innuendo.
- Green Day
- "Longview" includes the phrase "I smell like shit" more than once, but Billie Joe Armstrong, the band's singer, doesn't pronounce the "T" in the offending word. This goes completely unedited on radio. Green Day also got the word "shit" past Saturday Night Live during their first ever public performance of "Geek Stink Breath", the specific lyric being "wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one gets filled first". This slipped by because the studio version wasn't released yet and the vocals weren't all that intelligible in that particular performance.
- Similarly, "Hitchin' A Ride" has a difficult-to-understand Metal Scream of "SHIT!" that goes uncensored.
RIAA standards suggest this is fine.
- Matchbox Twenty's "She's So Mean": "She has a hard time coming when she can't hit back!" Also, "All her clothes are on the floor and all your records are scratched".
The actual lyrics are pretty mild and only mildly suggestive; they're actually about how the chick in question is inconsiderate. Not an example.
- Nirvana has both a scream at the end of "Stay Away" from Nevermind (GOD IS GAY!) and the infamous 92 MTV VMA's where Kurt played the first bars of "Rape Me" as Writer Revolt before changing to "Lithium".
The RIAA standards don't say anything about opining on God's sexual orientation, plus this is the sort of thing Nirvana fans would have come to expect.
The VMA thing is just Writer Revolt, since I believe they're broadcast live.
- The B-52s look at first glance like one of the most innocuous bands there is, although they seem to delight in hidden meanings:
- "There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)" - When Fred sings the line "can't get no atmosphere tonight", the girls clearly sing 'can't get no fuckin term tonight' in the background. This line is not printed in the official lyrics.
- "Dirty Back Road" is about doing it 'doggy style'.
- "Legal Tender" is about counterfeiting money, and its upbeat music makes it seem like a good thing to do.
- "Cosmic Thing" is implied to be about male masturbation, especially during the line "shake it till the butter melts", although the more conventional interpretation (shaking your behind) is there too ("shake your honeybuns!") along with a Shout-Out to President Bill Clinton and his reputation ("don't let it rest on the President's desk!")
- "Deviant Ingredient" is about drunk sex.
- Fred Schneider's solo songs are also full of this:
- "Monster" - "There's a monster in my pants" - pretty obvious.
- "Cut the Concrete" - The word 'fuck' can be heard whispered as part of the background dialogue. Also, the first line is audibly "Fuck The Chicken". The first verse is not printed in the lyrics.
- "Wave" is about sex and the buildup towards an orgasm "Get as wet as we can get"
- "What I Want" - "You pulled me off, and it felt good".
- "There's a Moon in the Sky" - yup, that's valid.
- Yes, but "Dirty Back Road" is implicity, which the RIAA and ARIA are more lenient on.
- The standards don't say anything about singing about crimes
- "Cosmic Thing" is also implicit, and there is the more common and tamer interpretation for children.
- "Deviant Ingredient" isn't trying to hide anything, but should definitely have gotten a Parental Advisory sticker, so it's valid.
- I don't think "Monster" counts; it's really an example of Naked People Are Funny.
- RIAA standards specifically say there's no need for the sticker if there is a barely-audible curse in the background.
- "Wave" is indeed about an orgasm, but it's implicit, so doesn't count.
- I couldn't find any evidence that Schneider or the B52s have a song called "What I Want"
- A double standard: radio stations that play Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" ("But she never lost her head/Even while she was giving head") from Transformer uncut will censor the line "Would she go down on you in a theater?" from Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" from Jagged Little Pill.
Which radio stations? What are their internal standards?
- Voltaire's song, The Dirtiest Song That Ain't is about this trope and parodies it, though whether it will ever actually get past the radar is (intentionally) doubtful considering how heavy the implications are.
Very valid in-universe example.
- blink-182, despite having many sexual songs and songs with explicit tags somehow got away with the clean edit of their untitled/self-titled CD only having the f-words scratched out in the lyric book.
- Feeling This is stated by Word of God to be about sex and has an obvious F-bomb. It isn't censored anywhere.
- Valid if they're uncensored in the actual track
- It is not remotely obvious, but that is the lyric, so yeah, this one probably count.
- Dionysos' entire album, Jack et la mécanique du cœur, is absolutely full of this. One song in particular, "Madamoiselle Cle", has a pun, which, when translated, mentioned a Raging Stiffie. This same song mentioned the female character, Miss Acacia, making 'something other than his nose' get longer, while another song, Flamme à lunettes (which itself is a pun on the French phrase 'femme à lunettes', which basically means 'promiscuous girl with glasses') mentions him taking off her clothes with his teeth. The kicker? Both of these songs were included in a film adaptation of a book, titled The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, which itself was based on the album. The film was given the French equivalent of a PG-13 rating. Parents who get the puns might have been secretly praying their children were still innocent. Dionysos are masters of this trope.
France does not have a music ratings agency, so there is no radar to get past.
I really don't get why people insist on trying to "convert" every system into CARA ratings instead of just saying "It was rated 12", which is an age rating that allows some sexual innuendo.
- From the Fall Out Boy song "7 Minutes in Heaven":
I'm sleeping my way out of this one
With anyone who'll lie down- There's a pretty blatant reference to sex in "27":
My body is an orphanage
We take everyone in- "Sugar, We're Going Down":
Oh, don't mind me I'm watching you two from the closet
Wishin' to be the friction in your jeans
Pretty mild, I don't think these count.
- Björk's "Pagan Poetry" note video has blurry scenes of fellatio, penetration, a topless Björk, and girls piercing their skin. It was banned on MTV though.
- In "Cocoon" (from the same album) we have Björk wearing a bodysuit that looks like as if she was naked. The lyrics are also very suggestive:
He slides insideHalf awake, half asleepWe faint backInto sleephoodWhen I wake upThe second time in his armsGorgeousness!He's still inside me
- So it was in fact censored?
- Again, this is pretty implicit.
- According to vocalist John Hall, King Missile were a bit irritated at the fact that their album Happy Hour had a parental advisory label on the cover... So for their Self-Titled Album, they tried to avoid this by sneaking any cursing past their record company: "on the lyric sheet we submitted to Atlantic, we changed all the curse words to acceptable words, figuring nobody would listen to the record, and we [would] get away with not having a warning label. This actually worked!"
Valid if we can find an example. Wikipedia cites this page, but it appears the interview is in an Adaobe Flash file, which I am unable to read. Can anyone get a copy or an alternative source?
- When OneRepublic's "Good Life" was first released, it managed to get "bullshit" past some stations.
Which ones?
- On some stations, you can hear Haley Williams say "You're once a whore/you're nothing more" on the radio uncensored.
Which stations? What are their internal standards?
- "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush is either an erudite take on the Tyreseus myth, or a euphemism-filled song about how she really likes pegging.
Kate Bush is British, and the UK did not have music labelling in 1985.
- PJ Harvey's album Dry. The album title sounds innocent, but as P.J. explained herself in an interview with "Puncture" magazine:
(...) I called the album "Dry" because it's a simple, minimal word, and more powerful because of it. It's a word of needing something else, and a lot of songs are about that. And I think it's funny to sing about dry vaginas.
- "Sheela-na-Gig", also from Dry refers to a Celtic stone carving, originally from Irish origin, of a female crouching down, holding her vagina open and laughing insanely. Most listeners and radio deejays probably had no clue what she was referring too. Harvey herself commented:
What I like about it is that she's laughing and ripping herself apart. Humour and horrificness.
These also are from before Britain had music labelling.
- The Heart Throbs. No, German Wiki, "Herzklopfen" is a legit translation but not what's meant.note More hidden smut occurs in the album titles "Cleopatra Grip" and "Vertical Smile".
Um, what? Who the funt uses "heart throbs" to refer to vaginal orgasms?
In any case, they were active from 1986 - 1993, which once again, is before Britain had music labelling.
- The song "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette, as previously mentioned on this page, has a 'censored' VEVO version which leaves in a blatant reference to oral sex ("Would she go down on you in a theater?") and censors the line "Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?" by only censoring the second half of the profanity, leaving the word 'fu-' and obvious to someone even very young. Makes you wonder why they bothered.
You can say whatever you like on YouTube, and any censorship is up to the uploader.
- Woah boy. It's truly a wonder how the song 'Hey Mister' by Custom got radio play, especially considering it comes from Canada. Even if it's censored, it still has lines such as
Hey Mister how'd it get so badYou raised her so wellAnd now she's calling me dadIn the back seat naked of a new VolkswagenThe perfect little gift for high school graduation.
Here are the Canadian broadcasting rules. It doesn't appear to be filthy enough to warrant government intervention, meaning it's up to the individual radio stations to decide if it's acceptable.
Eh, it's just a Double Entendre. The RIAA is OK with this sort of thing.
- MY FRIEND'S GOT A GIRL/BOYFRIEND AND S/HE HATES THAT BITCH/DICK! That one can go 'completely uncensored. Make sure your parents aren't around when it does.
This one doesn't appear to have a Parental Advisory label, so it's probably valid.
Whew. Quite a few more valid examples than I was expecting. More genres will follow.
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Angry babby
Most of this looks fair, though I think the Writer Revolt one for Nirvana could also be Defying the Censors.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Cutlisted the Dragon Quest one.
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
Calendar enthusiast
I do believe you are correct.
Anyway, I'm going to go through some more of Radar.Music
Blues
- The song "Kitchen Man" by Bessie Smith was loaded with sexual double entendre, and it was recorded in 1929. Sample lyrics: "When I eat his doughnut / All I leave is the hole / Any time he wants to / Why, he can use my sugar bowl"
- Early blues singers got away with a lot of really blatant innuendo. Smith, for example, recorded another tune called "I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl"; lyrics include "I need a little hot dog 'tween my rolls" and "Hard papa, come on and drop something in my bowl"
- Butterbeans and Susie (Jodie and Susie Edwards) recorded I Want A Hot Dog For My Roll" in 1926.
- From the same time period, Dixieland-era songwriter "Jelly Roll" Morton was big on innuendo. Starting with his name.
- Julia Lee sings several of these. On the surface, "The Spinach Song" is about trying the titular greens and learning to like them. "Somehow, it's always hittin' the spot / especially when they bring it in hot". Likewise "All This Beef and Big Ripe Tomatoes". Male singer: "I like to travel and I like to roam" Julia: "what I've got will bring you right back home". And finally, "Come and see me, Baby / but please don't come too soon".
- The song "Jet Airliner" by the Steve Miller Band features the line "funky shit going down in the city". Some stations use the radio edit, which replaces the word with "kicks". Other stations use the original...
- Indigenous had album art where the inside flap featured a man going on a vision quest. But he's holding his loincloth up. Yes, he's naked.
- Banana in your Fruit Basket by Bo Carter, released 1931, is so clearly about having sex.
Indiginous' album art isn't part of the song, so has no bearing on whether or not it warrants a Parental Advisory sticker. It might fit under Exposed to the Elements.
The rest of this section is tricky but I'm leaning towards the examples not counting. They were quite likely attempts to circumvent public morals of the time, but America's First Amendment guarantees the right to sing about whatever they want, and if somebody is publishing blues, they probably aren't massively racist against black people. These examples also predate the foundation of the FCC, so there was no body to regulate radio play, and they came decades before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced. I would say they should just be moved to Double Entendre.
Bossa Nova
- Brazilian singer/songwriter Chico Buarque's song "Apesar de você" snuck past the Brazilian military dictatorship's censors by using subtext to hide its true message ("we're really angry at you for being so evil and I'm going to be celebrate the inevitable day comes that the people destroy you") as the love song of a jilted man. The censors only picked up on it after the release, and ever after they paid extra-close attention to the guy's songs, rejecting perfectly innocent songs of his for imagined reasons.
- His 1971 album Construção barely even bothered with the radar, slipping into Refuge in Audacity. It's completely baffling how such a blatantly anti-government album was released, though perhaps the fact that it was musically based on more traditional samba rather than rock might have helped. Nowadays, it's Vindicated by History and considered one of the greatest Brazilian albums.
Definitely valid. And badass.
Chanson Française
- "Nous les amoureux" ("We the lovers") by Jean-Claude Pascal, the song that landed Luxembourg its first Eurovision win in 1961. Its lyrics are about a relationship between the singer and a lover rejected by everyone else ("They would like to separate us. They would like to hinder us from being happy."), yet shows faith that will be accepted further down the line. As Pascal explained years later, the song was actually about a homosexual relationship, and knowing the topic would have been controversial in The '60s, the lyrics were deliberately ambiguous and avoided any reference to the lovers' genders so that the subtext slipped past listeners.
Valid (source in French).
Christian Rock
- The song "Wolves" by Chasing Victory mentions a "girl in a short skirt showing off her assets". Pretty tame by normal standards, but this is a CHRISTIAN ROCK band.
The song is specifically about resisting temptation, so this doesn't count.
- Jars of Clay's song "Heaven" may very well be the only song about sex to ever become a Christian radio single.
After listening to it, this sounds more like Accidental Innuendo.
- P.O.D., a band known for overtaking Stryper as the Trope Codifier for Christian Rock bands attaining mainstream success in the late 90's/early 00's, is in general fairly brash lyrically in comparison to other Christian rock bands, albeit mild in comparison to secular bands sharing P.O.D.'s Nu Metal designation. The band controversially sidestepped the Christian rock radar entirely by including a Precision F-Strike in the song "I Am," appearing on the album Murdered Love (heavily edited in most versions of the album). Before expressly including a profanity in one song's lyrics, however, the band got several mild vulgarities past the radar, including "hell yeah" and "I don't give a damn" on "If It Wasn't for You" and "Kaliforn-Eye-A," respectively. More explicit (yet somehow more often overlooked) examples of vulgarity in P.O.D.'s lyrics include the line "we tore the roof off this mother" (presumably an abbreviation of "motherfucker") from "Lights Out" and the entirety of "On the Grind," an ominous excursion into Gangsta Rap territory in which a guest rapper brags of his ability to "break the hymen on ears" and explicit references to street violence and pimping appear elsewhere. Finally, the pre-major label P.O.D. song "Live and Die" samples the line "And here's the plot: takin' niggaz out with a flurry of buckshots" from N.W.A's "Gangsta Gangsta."
Hmm. Wikipedia tells me that at least some of P.O.D.'s music was published by RIAA members, but what cursing is present looks pretty mild, not enough to warrant a Parental Advisory label. "I Am" is the only one that might warrant a label, and the example states outright that there is also a censored version of the song. Probably not an example.
Classical
- Carl Orff's famous choir work Carmina Burana is mostly in latin, which is probably how it gets away with lyrics such as this:
In the wavering balance of my feelingsset against each othersexual love and modestyBut I choose what I see,and submit my neck to the yoke;I yield to the sweet yoke.My virginitymakes me horny,my simplicityholds me back.Oh! Oh! Oh!I am bursting out all over!I am burning all over with first love!
Wikipedia cites a book which states that the Nazis did see the sex stuff and were at first iffy about it, but later embraced it as a symbol of how Germans were so much better than everybody else. So yeah, this didn't get past the radar; the radar saw it, considered it, and decided to let it through.
Comedy
- Jasper Carrott famously in the comedy album "Carrott in Notts" did a parody of the "Fish Cheer", all together now "Give us an F! F! Give us a U! U?! Give us a N! N? Give us a T! (audience very quiet now) t? What does that spell? Funt? Well, that didn't work, did it?"
No actual cursing here, though he does come close. And also Britain did not label records in 1976.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic is generally thought of as being family-friendly, but he occasionally slips one past the radar. Like this brilliant euphemism in "One More Minute", for instance:
I guess I might seem kinda bitter
You got me feeling down in the dumps
'Cause I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love
And I have to use the self-service pumps- An even better one? in "Don't Download this Song" If you listen closely, at the end he says cheap bastard,
- In "Hardware Store," he mentions automatic circumcisers among the other things in the store.
- From his video for "I Lost On Jeopardy": "This German Baroness could suck the chrome off a fender."
- "Amish Paradise" has a particularly excellent example in the music video. When the line "I've churned butter once or twice" is said, Al is, indeed, standing there churning butter with both hands. When an Amish lady walks by him, he turns his head to follow her as he goes and his hands move noticably faster and faster.
- "Jerry Springer" is by far and away the most risque song he's ever made, with references to drugs, bestiality, transvestites, gay sex, strippers, lap dances, porn stars, and a bleeped use of "bitch" (albeit in the literal sense)
- During the fade out at the end of "Phony Calls", Al sneaks in the line "But you're just a pain in the ass" at literally the last possible moment.
- "My Own Eyes" mentions a stripper kissing a duck, along with some more mild references to drugs and alcohol.
- "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi" contains the line "the parents pay the mohel, and he gets to keep the tip." A mohel is a rabbi who performs a circumcision.
- "Word Crimes" is all about improving the listener's atrocious spelling and grammar, with one of the suggestions being that they "hire some Cunning Linguist."
- "One More Minute": Mild innuendo that the RIAA doesn't mind.
- You really have to listening to "Don't Download This Song" to hear the good word, and the Parental Advisory guidelines specifically say there's no need to label that kind of thing.
- Circumcision is a Jewish cultural procedure.
- The RIAA doesn't care about videos, only the song itself, so "I Lost on Jeopardy" doesn't warrant a label.
- "Amish Paradise" is just a bit of innuendo, nothing label-worthy.
- "Jerry Springer" is making fun of Jerry Springer, and the word "bitch" is bleeped, so it is in fact censored.
- "Phony Calls" is another just-about-audible word that the RIAA is OK with.
- "My Own Eyes" doesn't have any cursing or content explicit enough to warrant a PAL.
- Again, this is a Jewish cultural ritual. Does the troper think it's against the rules to reference Judaism?
- "Cunnilingus" isn't a word that warrants a PAL, let alone a parahomophone.
- Comedic Italian group Elio e le Storie Tese managed to do it in the title of their first record thanks to Bilingual Bonus: it's called "Elio Samaga Hukapan Kariyana Turu", which in Tamil means "let's happily fart and come with Elio". Unsurprisingly, they got even better at it by mixing silly music with Black Comedy.
Italy does not have any form of record labelling.
- "The Art of the Ground Round" by P.D.Q. Bach has a movement which sounds innocuous when sung by one person, but when combined in a round becomes:
Singer 1: ...... Look ... her ..... face could launch...Singer 2: She's ..... up ... dress-ing, she'll...
- This type of song is known as a "diagonal catch", and has been popular since the Renaissance, at least.
I don't think this is strong enough to warrant a PAL. If Diagonal Catch is common enough, it might be tropeworthy.
- Several novelty songs of Lito Camo from the Philippines which he claims to have been derived from children's songs. This may be true but when they are taken out of context, sung by an all-girls sexy group and their steps re-choreographed...results are different.
Sasara ang bulaklak, bubuka ang bulaklak, dadaan ang reyna ang saya-saya! (The flower will close, the flower will open and the Queen will pass through, it's so fun!)
But what about when they're taking in context?
- Also from the Philippines — Aleck Bovick's song "Nota" has the singer complimenting her partner's songwriting skill, as the words "nota" and "titik" mean "note" and "letters" respectively in English. But "nota" is also Filipino slang for penis, and "titik," if you remove the last letter, means the same thing. Go figure.
There doesn't appear to be any specific censorship or labelling of music in the Philippines unless Duterte decides it's encouraging drug use, and even that isn't a formal watchdog. I would say this doesn't count.
- George Formby was very much known for this in The '30s, in particular phallic references such as "With My Little Ukulele In My Hand". He didn't quite manage it with When I'm Cleaning Windows, probably his best known hit, which was banned by The BBC. Unsurprising given lyrics like those below...
The blushing bride, she looks divine,The bridegroom, he is doing fine,I'd rather have his job than mine,When I'm cleaning windows!
- Formby's music has been championed and revived by Midlands comic FrankSkinner, a man who not only plays the ukelele but has a remarkable similarity.
- Tom Lehrer has "I Got It From Agnes". "It" is never actually described, but it's certainly implied that it's an STD. It also sneaks a bisexual or homosexual orgy in at one point, as well as bestiality, doctor-patient rape and incest. However, it's worth noting that this did NOT get past the radar around the time of its release (although this is actually because Lehrer didn't want it released at the time). Still a pretty worthwhile attempt.
If it didn't get past the radar, why is it on this list?
Country
- Garth Brooks' "That Summer" has, without being at all explicit, is loaded with innuendo, as well as a very well-done chorus referencing the singer and his older partner having sex.
Sounds like it should just be moved to Double Entendre.
- The Charlie Daniels Band has gotten away with several "ass" and "son of a bitch" instances in the lyrics of their songs ("asses" along with "fags" in 1973's "Uneasy Rider," and "son of a bitch" in 1979's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia").
- On Devil you can tell which version it is just before they say the line. The "clean" version has the line "I told you once you son-of-a-gun I'm the best that's ever been." The "Dirty" version uses "I done told you once you son-of-a-bitch I'm the best that's ever been." When they were on American Bandstand they did the so-called "dirty" version, amd Dick Clark, with a supposedly surprised look on his face, said after the performance, "Are we still on?"
This all predates Parental Advisory stickers and TV age ratings.
- In "Big Bad John," the concluding lyric in the official release was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man ... Big John!" In 1961, even the mild profanity "hell," outside religious contexts, was considered a no-no by some conservative groups, so a second release was issued, containing the milder "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man ... Big John!" However, earlier in the song, there is the lyric "Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell ... ," which apparently did not raise any objections. As for the song, "Big Bad John" topped the Billboard Hot 100 (five weeks), Easy Listening Singles (nine weeks) and Hot C&W Sides charts (two weeks) at the end of 1961, marking one of the earliest No. 1 songs to contain (mild) profanity.
Not an example, since those conservative groups have no actual power to decide whether the song gets released or not, no matter how much they complain.
- A surprisingly subtle example in Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw", in which she claims her boyfriend had "a tendency of getting stuck on backroads at night".
- In "Fifteen," Taylor remarks that her friend "gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind."
- When Taylor ducks behind her book in the video for "The Story of Us", she can clearly be seen mouthing "Shit!" at the sight of her ex.
- "Sparks Fly" managed to get rather suggestive lines past the Moral Guardians (see the song's entry on Intercourse with You).
- The line in the chorus of "Better Than Revenge":
She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress, whoa-oh!
Mild innuendo.
- An old Dixie Chicks song called "Goodbye Earl" (which is about a woman who murders her abusive husband and uses him for fertilizer) had a sly line at the end stating that the female protagonists of the song sell "Tennessee Ham and strawberry jam". If anybody's ever seen the video, at the Tennessee Ham part all three girls do a sort of hip thrust toward the camera and slap themselves on the ass, which is followed by a shot of one of the girls doing a rather suggestive taste test on the aforementioned strawberry jam. Turns out that selling Tennessee ham is a euphemism used in connection with prostitution...
Sounds true, but the only source I could find is blocked outside the USA. Still, this is a rather obscure term and all the search engine results are either for this song or for ham from Tennessee, so I would say it's mild enough not to warrant a sticker.
- Sugarland's song "It Happens" sticks a "ssssh" before the title.
It does, indeed, happen. By which I mean this example is valid.
- Garth Brooks somehow got "It's Midnight Cinderella", complete with the line "By the way he's walking, I can guess where your slipper's at", into the top 5.
- The Kenny Chesney / George Strait duet "Shiftwork" draws out the I and almost completely elides the F.
Borderline. The example is exaggerating the mispronunciation, but it does include the line "A big ol' pile of shiftwork", so I'm leaning towards valid.
- Toby Keith went the spoonerism route on "American Ride" by singing "The fit's gonna hit the shan".
Borderline but I'm leaning towards not valid.
- In 1992,Joe Diffie got "Ships That Don't Come In" to #1 despite having the lyric "we bitch about a dollar" in it. This is pretty much the only mainstream country song ever to have that word in it.
No PAL, so I think this one is valid.
- In 2005, Blake Shelton somehow got a four-week #1 hit with a song titled "Some Beach". Say that out loud and see if you can figure out what he's really meaning to say.
- And a few months prior to him, Gretchen Wilson was able to get "I'm here for the beer and the ball-busting band" past censors on her song "Here for the Party".
No actual cursing here, plus radio stations can play whatever they want.
- Clint Black's album track "Straight from the Factory" has the line "You're the only lock that's made to fit my key."
This can reasonably be interpreted as a romantic metaphor.
- K.T. Oslin's "Do. Ya" contains the line, contains the line "Do you still get a thrill when you see me coming up the hill?" which refers to when she performs fellatio on her partner.
It's hidden behind a metaphor, so the RIAA is OK with itt.
- The 1977 Mel Tillis country hit "I Got The Hoss" is a sweet little ode to the joys of lovers going on a horseback ride together...oh, who are we kidding? The song doesn't even try to hide that it's really about Intercourse with You:
Well, I got the hoss and you got the saddle
We like to ride side by sideI got the hoss and she got the saddle
Together we're gonna ride, ride, ride
This song predates Parental Advisory stickers.
That's B and C done, with a few valid examples, and a bunch of double entendres. More to follow.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Calendar enthusiast
More from Radar.Music, this time covering genres D to J!
Turns out there is a grand list of RIAA members, which will help with determining if their standards apply.
I also dug up the British Phonographic Industry's guidelines.
Disco
- The line 'walking in the moonlight' in the fade-out to ABBA's 'Summer Night City' sounds an awful lot like 'fucking in the moonlight'.
We've been over that, it's just a mondegreen.
- The Village People, oeuvre.
ZCE
- "It's Raining Men" features a sly bit of innuendo, as the female singers exclaim that they plan to enjoy the weather by going out and "get absolutely soaking wet".
There is nothing remotely sly about this. It was also released in 1983, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced. I think it does belong on All Women Are Lustful.
[folder:Electronic]]
- There is a techno track by DJ Aligator called The Whistle Song or Blow My Whistle Baby. It is a thinly veiled depiction of fellatio. Oddly, enough, there was absolutely no warnings on it. Blow My Whistle Baby
- The "unclean version" has the lyrics "blow my whistle bitch" in a considerably more misogynistic tone.
- And of course, with title edited to match the lyrics, it was in the E-rated DDR Max 2
Denmark does not have music labelling.
The game is indeed rated E in America, but it has a content warning for "mild lyrics", which means the radar did indeed pick this up.
- Leftfield's 1999 hit "Afrika Shox" was heavily playlisted on UK radio. The song featured guest vocals by Afrika Bambaataa, and repeated repetition of the word "funk." Which as readers might have guessed, often tends to sound a little like another rather more obscene word. Hence the song seems to contain Bambaataa repeatedly chanting 'I wanna FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!' quite a lot. The song's highly suspect nature didn't seem to trouble the radio stations that played it at all hours of the day.
British radio at the time was regulate by the Radio Authority; the official standard can be read here. The Radio Authority never pre-approved broadcasts; only got involved if somebody made a complaint after the fact, and even then people were encouraged to first take up their complaint directly with the radio station. Radio stations each had their own internal policies.
As to "Afrika Shox" specifically, Afrika's accent does indeed make "funk" sound like "fuck", but that's a mondegreen, and in context "funk" simply fits better. Radio stations were required to avoid gratuitous sexual cruelty, but only had to consider children when it could be reasonably expected children would be listening - thus, for example, they would have to exercise restrained between 07:00 and 09:00, but would have some more leeway at, say, 11:00, when the children should be in school
So with all that in mind, it just sounds like not many people complained, so there was no need for the regulators to get involved. Not an example.
- Stroker Ace by Lovage: It gets weird. "It looks like you both can use a pet" "Stroking is a start, only for the wild at heart" and they cover it as if they're talking about cats, hahaha. (Not mention the whispering of 'Pussy' every other line.) "I'd like to watch if you don't mind..."
That song is definitely about proposing a threesome. It was also published by 75Ark, which is not an RIAA member.
- Lords of Acid, who pretty much ignores censors and just.. makes their songs. Among them "I must Increase my bust", a song about how a girl wants to have gigantic breasts to get men, or "I sit on Acid." which starts with the line
They have the Parental Advisory sticker; the radar saw these.
- Remember EMF's "Unbelievable"? The song used a distorted yet uncensored and heavily used sample of Andrew "Dice" Clay saying "What the f**k was that?!". Tell that to the radio and MTV, who play the song uncensored.
Radio and TV stations can broadcast whatever they want, internal policies permitting.
- The song "Helpless, helpless" by Camouflage has the line "Party leaders try to fog your senses" which can be very easily misheard as "Party leaders try to FUCK your senses"
Mondegreen
- Peaches' "Rub" video, in theory, should not be on YouTube, even with an age restriction. It has full-frontal nudity and a ton of bizarre sexual imagery. Some sort of artistic defense must have been made, because it stands with 500,000+ views as of December 19, 2015.
YouTube officially, and infamously, only gets involved if somebody complains after the fact.
- Dillon Francis' "I.D.G.A.F.O.S." has the title (I Don't Give A Fuck Or Shit) and its drop has a subtle voice saying "fap, fap, fap, fap" to the beat.
He released it under his own label, which is not an RIAA member.
Experimental
- Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention were asked to mime for an early television appearance performing "Son Of Suzy Creamcheese" from Absolutely Free- instead of lip syncing the lyrics, Zappa spent the entire song mouthing "you're a motherfucker" over and over again.
- During the production of We're Only In It For The Money, the label asked that Frank Zappa remove one verse of "Mother People" due to offensive language. Zappa complied, but also added a short sound collage piece called "Hot Poop", which was just the offending verse from "Mother People" played backwards. This didn't fully slip past the radar though - "Hot Poop" made the initial release but was cut from a later pressing that also re-edited several other songs for censorship purposes.
- The TV appearance is more of a Writer Revolt, since Zappa didn't like the idea of lip synching.
- Wikipedia cites Icons of Rock for the "Hot Poop" example, so that looks valid.
- Negativland's Escape From Noise made it into record stores without a Parental Advisory sticker despite the presence of curse words, because it was issued on independent record labels (SST Records and the band's own Seeland Records) not affiliated with the RIAA.
So the radar wasn't even looking.
Folk
- Simon & Garfunkel: "Cecilia" from Bridge Over Troubled Water: "Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia, up in my bedroom / I got up to wash my face, when I came back to bed someone had taken my place" Now, what kind of lovin' would cause a guy to go wash his face after making it with a girl, hmmm?
- Also, on "A Simple Desultory Phillippic":
I'm a Communist because I'm left handed,
That's the hand I use... well, never mind.
These songs were released respectively in 1970 and 1965, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- "Afternoon Delight". "This is a song about afternoon lovemaking."
- This becomes a plot point in the eponymously-titled episode of Arrested Development.
This song was released in 1975, before America, Australia, or Britain has any form of music labelling.
- Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled "Hard, Ain't It Hard". The Double Entendre is especially obvious as the first verse ends and the chorus begins:
And he takes other women right down on his knee
And he tells them a little tale he won't tell me.It's a-hard and it's hard, ain't it hard
To love one who never did love you?
Woody Guthrie 'died in 1967, almost 20 years before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- English folk-rock veterans Steeleye Span are good at this. Refer to Drink down The Moon, which at first glance is about the birds and the bees. Well, the birds, anyway. Then ask yourself if the cuckoo has a nest anywhere and if so what form it would take...
"Drink Down the Moon" is a traditional folk song. Even if Britain had music labelling in 1974, this would surely be exempt.
- Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, Naturally opens with a guy telling how if he continues to feel bad (which later in the song is revealed to be because his fiancee dumped him at the altar), he's going to climb to the top of a tower and jump off.
- The same singer's Clair appears to be a straightforward love song but as it progresses it becomes clear that the object of his affection is a young child, and he cries over the age difference between them.
These songs were both released in 1972, before Britain or America has music labelling.
- Cat Stevens stated in an interview that Mona Bone Jakon — the title of his third album, which saw him figuratively and literally Growing the Beard — was actually what he called his penis.
It was also released in 1970, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
Funk
- The song "Real Mother For Ya" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson uses repetition. Over the course of the song, it's pronounced "Real Motha Fo' Ya", and at the end of the song, is repeated several times, but at the end he actually says "Real Motherfucker." Most radio stations cut out that last part in its entirety, although it sometimes slips by.
Eh, radio stations can play whatever they like. "Most radio stations" and "sometimes" are weasel words; we'll need an example of a station actually failing to catch it.
- Long-forgotten 80s funk-rock band Extreme had a minor UK hit with 'Get the Funk Out'. Nobody, but nobody, realises that is the title when they hear it on the radio. The chorus "If you don't like/ what you see here/ get the funk out (oh getthefunkout, getthefunkout) we won't try to/ force-feed you/ get the FUNK out" doesn't even make sense, other than as a means of getting Radio 2 to play it.
- Funk isn't about making sense, funk is about partying. And getting crap past the radar.
I mean, they are singing "funk". Ofcom has the same basic approach as the old Radio Authority - if you don't like something, complain to the radio station, and if that fails, contact Ofcom. There is nobody pre-approving every broadcast, and Ofcom only gets involved if somebody complains after the fact.
- Prince has invoked this trope more than once (to the point where it's more Refuge in Audacity than Getting Crap Past the Radar — especially in his 1980s songs).
- The album Dirty Mind.
- Controversy: "Jack U Off" - self-explanatory.
- 1999: "Little Red Corvette" is NOT, repeat, NOT about the actual car.
- Purple Rain: "Darling Nikki"'s raunchy content single-handedly led to the formation of the infamous PMRC.
- Gett Off wasn't even trying to be subtle. Especially the line "23 positions in a one night stand".
- Many radio stations played "Erotic City" uncensored for over a decade, believing the lyrics with the F-bombs to be "We can funk into the dawn" and "Thoughts of pretty you and me". One station was fined by the FCC in 1989 for playing it, but it wasn't until the 2000s that all radio stations switched to a version with either the F-bombs muted or another part of the song played over the offending lyrics.
- "Dirty Mind" is a ZCE
- "Jack U Off" is from 1981, before the stickers were introduced.
- "Little Red Corvette" is from 1983, again before the stickers were introduced.
- "Darling Nikki" is why the Parental Advisory stickers exist. Even modern releases don't appear to have the sticker, so yeah, this one looks valid.
- "Gett Off" is also valid.
- "Erotic City" did happen.
- Herbie Hancock's video for "Rockit" from Head Hunters is famous for featuring dozens of moving sculptures walking, kicking, and generally moving around a English apartment. One sculpture in particular is laying on the bed, under a comforter, but still rather obviously (and... kinda violently) masturbating.
Music labels only apply to the audio, not the video.
- In the video for Junior Senior's Move your feet, there's a Visual Innuendo scene where totally plastered animated squirrel has an hallucination about a champagne bottle and a champagne glass... where the bottle "explodes" and its white contents fill the glass in a way that looks very suggestive... The band probably got away with it just because the video was made with pixel animation, but still.
Again, this is the video, not the actual song.
- OutKast's "Hey Ya!" almost always plays on the radio with the line "Don't want to meet your momma/just want to make you cumma" uncensored.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies? [[/quoteblock]]
Indie
- The song "Paper Bag" By Goldfrapp starts with the words "No time to fuck". Despite this the album has no warning label.
The song was released in 2000, a decade before the BPI started using the Parental Advisory sticker.
- The name of an actually not-bad indie band - the Test Icicles. Again the BBC let this go without comment.
"Testicles" isn't exactly a coarse word; we'd need to see the BBC's internal policies, as well as when that was broadcast, to figure out if it was in violation. I would like to add them to Intentionally Awkward Title.
Industrial
- The entirety of 'Meet your Master' by Nine Inch Nails seems to be about gay BDSM. They probably couldn't be much more blatant about it if they tried...
- "Closer" from The Downward Spiral. While the famous "fuck you like an animal" line is censored on both radio and MTV, the get away with equally explicit (although profanity-free) lines like "You let me penetrate you" and "It's your sex I can smell."
- "Meet Your Master" is borderline but I think it can stay.
- "Closer" depends on the internal policies of individual radio stations and MTV, which are free to be as abritrary as they like with what they consider acceptable.
Jazz
- Eddy Duchin's 1938 big band cover of Louis Armstrong's "Ol' Man Mose" has vocalist Patricia Norman uttering something that certainly sounds like something naughty that rhymes with "bucket" during one of the choruses. That's right, in 1938. (Seriously, listen closely around the 0:50 mark.)
This is from before Parental Advisory stickers.
J-Pop
- Jpop group Southern All Stars' 1985 track Brown Cherry. Not just the title slipped past the censors; most of the lyrics to the song contain nonsense English words that are homophonous with Japanese sexual terms and vice versa.
I couldn't find any evidence that Japanese music has to be labelled. From what I can gather, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but Article 175 of the Criminal Code bans obscenity, and this has been used to censor. However, I don't speak Japanese, so I can't consult the law itself or how it is enforced, let alone what the case may have been in 1985. That said, from what I can determine, Japan hasn't had formal censors since 1945, so most likely this would require an after-the-fact complaint to be made.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Calendar enthusiast
Continuing my trip through Radar.Music, covering genres M to P. I'm also going to revise my two previous posts, since I made a couple of errors there.
- Parental Advisory standards (Recording Industry Association of America) - started in 1985
- The Code (Australian Recording Industry Association) - started in 2003
- British Phonographic Association standards - started in 1995.
Alternative
- "Wolf Moon" by Type O Negative isn't about werewolves. It uses werewolves as a metaphor. It's about the narrator going down on his girlfriend while she's on her period.
I checked, and the album doesn't appear to have a PAL.
After listening to it, I don't think this song qualifies. If you can even discern the lyrics, they're very metaphorical, and anybody who manages to pick up on the hidden meaning is well old enough for it.
On the other hand, that same album includes the song "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity", which features the lyrics "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else", "I know what you're doing, you stupid twat!" and "Fuck! Whore!", all shouted very clearly, which definitely do warrant the label.
On the gripping hand, the RIAA's own guidelines specifically say:
3. The context of the artist performing the material, as well as the expectations of the artist’s audience;
7. That a sound recording may contain strong language or depictions of violence, sex, or substance abuse, yet due to other factors involved, may not merit a designation as containing PAL Content.
With that in mind, TON's music does appear to be aimed specifically at adults who don't mind strong language and sexual themes. As such, I'm on the fence but leaning towards "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" being a valid example.
- The song "Blubberboy" by Regurgitator reached #1 in Australia. It has the line "Rub me on your cunt I'll come back again". Since that worked so well, they tried to be more blatant and also charted with the song titled "I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am".
"Blubber Boy" was released in 1995, before Australia had music classification. "I Sucked a Lot of Cock to Get Where I Am" was never released in Australia; it was released in America, and it got a Parental Advisory sticker, so the radar definitely did see this one.
- "Addicted" by Simple Plan- according to Pierre Bouvier, the point of the song was to be the first band to get the word "dick" on to Much Music. "I'm a addic-dic-dic-dic-dicted to you." Another lyric is "I'm a dick. I'm addicted to you." This is hidden by the conceit that it's a hiccuped line: "I'm addic-, I'm addicted to you."
- Who would have guessed that the upbeat, catchy song "Semi-Charmed Life" was a song about sexual addictions and crystal meth usage? Don't believe me? Google the lyrics. Disney used it in promos for The Tigger Movie. Yes, Tigger was bouncing around to a song about crystal meth.
I watched the trailer. The only lyrics used are "doodoodoo-doodoo", none of the sex or meth stuff, so this doesn't count.
- The Violent Femmes did this a lot. From "36-24-36", which spoke of a woman being the perfect measurements and them wanting to bang her, to "Gimme The Car", which was about getting a girl drunk, high and then banging her, to the "Country Death Song", which involved the voice of it pushing his youngest daughter into a bottomless pit and then hanging himself in shame... And, of, course, their best known song, "Blister in the Sun", is about A Date With Rosie Palms.
Hookey.
"36-24-36" was released in 1993. It's sexually charged, but doesn't sound explicit enough to warrant a Parental Advisory label.
"Gimme the Car" isn't about doing those things, it's about wanting to do those things. Nonetheless, it was released in 1983, and re-released in 1991. The lyrics are borderline but probably valid.
"Country Death Song" is about what this example says it's about. Explicitly. Like, it's not subtle, or hidden. This is a song specifically about performing a murder suicide and nothing else. They weren't trying to hide anything or be sneaky. Also, the description of the murder isn't particularly gratuitous, so doesn't warrant a PAL.
"Blister in the Sun" is quite mild and metaphorical, so the ratings people don't have an issue with it.
- The Smiths song "A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours" contains the line "you're still a young man/so phone me, phone me, phone me", but Morrissey enunciates it so that it sounds like "fuck me."
A simple mondegreen.
[[/quoteblock]]
- Tori Amos' albums never have an Explicit Lyrics label on them, even though she sometimes curses in her songs. For example, "Professional Widow" from Boys For Pele has lines such as "slag shit", "starfucker just like my daddy", and "peace, love, and a hard cock". However, radio stations did refuse to play "Big Wheel", since she chants "I am a M-I-L-F" in it.
Yeah, that's valid.
- While it's pretty bluntly sexual to begin with, Sublime's "Caress Me Down" has a couple of lines that would probably have to be edited out for radio were they not among the song's several bursts of gratuitous Spanish: "Pero la cosa que me gusta más es panochita", which translates to "but the thing I like the most is pussy", and "con un chingo de dinero" which translates to "with a fuckload of money". Also, in April 29, 1992 (Miami), while the singer is listing off places, he says the f-word. This is likely because it is mainly in the background of the song, and is easy to miss.
It has the Parental Advisory sticker; the radar noticed this one.
- The lyric sheet for Garbage's psycho breakup song "Vow" (possibly one of the most brutal, vengeance-soaked, unhinged breakup songs ever written) includes the phrase "I came to knock you up, I came to break you down" in the chorus. If you listen to the actual track, however, it doesn't quite sound like that, especially as the song makes a lot more sense with "fuck" in the first clause. (Though Shirley Manson (aka The Creepiest Woman in Rock)'s delivery ratchets the nastiness up to 11 all by itself...) It happens in the chorus of the second verse. That word in that particular spot is different in every chorus repetition, which makes it especially sneaky.
No, it sounds exactly like that. And because there's no actual cursing, this does not violate the PAL rules.
- The Bloodhound Gang just bowls right over the radar with almost blunt innuendos. Though most famously is ''Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" which is laden with innuendo. though that was to sneak the true innuendo with the title as it just so happens to use military phoenetics and once you figure it out, well.
- For a song so outrageously blunt as "The Bad Touch" (yeah, the Discovery Channel song), it's amazing how the only censored song in the music video is 'doggie'. Yeah: doggie.
- For a song so outrageously blunt as "The Bad Touch" (yeah, the Discovery Channel song), it's amazing how the only censored song in the music video
FUCK counts for the title alone.
I don't hear anything censored in "The Bad Touch", though the lyrics are on the questionable side.
- The music video for "Is Anybody Out There?" by K'naan and Nelly Furtado features 3 different examples of this trope. At the beginning, when the emo looking girl is inside of the comic book store and the man asks her if she's gonna buy something, she yells "Shit! Leave me alone!" at him. Later on, some other girl sees her looking in the window of the restaurant she's eating in and she says "What a skank..." and then shortly after that, the emo girl writes STFU on the window of a restaurant and flips the bird at everyone inside. This video gets regular rotation on VH1.
That stuff is in the video, not the actual song. Whether it belongs on VH 1 comes down to the channel's internal policies, which we don't have access to.
- The Killers' "Mr Brightside" makes the following lyrical dodge: "Now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick, and it's all in my head, but she's touching his....chest now"
So they snuck in the word "dick"... by not saying "dick"?
- Possibly 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' by Sophie B. Hawkins, when she says 'I'd rock you till the daylights come' which sounds an awful lot like fuck in the first verse.
Another mondegreen.
- Space's duet with Cerys Matthews, 'The Ballad Of Tom Jones', contains the line 'and I just want to cut off your nuts'. It made it past the censors, although Cerys didn't sing the word 'nuts' when she and the band peformed it on some TV shows.
The song has a fair amount of violent imagery, but it's about overcoming such urges, which I believe the RIAA and ARIA would be OK with. The bit about Cerys not singing the lyric on some TV shows has to do with either her own personal feelings or TV channels' internal policies; either way, this doesn't appear to be an example.
- The Smashing Pumpkins' single "Zero" from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness includes the line "Bullshit Fakers", which has never been censored on American radio, to this day.
Every radio station has its own internal standards. Still, I think this one is valid for lacking the Parental Advisory sticker.
- Cage The Elephant's single "In One Ear" featured the line "The crowd will only like me if they're really fuckin' drunk". The radio edit did change this... to "the crowd will only like me if they're all smacked up". Thus, they got rid of an f-bomb, but also changed a reference to drinking to a reference to heroin use.
Radio stations can refer to drugs if they want, and this just looks like a drug version of Accidental Innuendo.
- Green Day
- "Longview" includes the phrase "I smell like shit" more than once, but Billie Joe Armstrong, the band's singer, doesn't pronounce the "T" in the offending word. This goes completely unedited on radio. Green Day also got the word "shit" past Saturday Night Live during their first ever public performance of "Geek Stink Breath", the specific lyric being "wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one gets filled first". This slipped by because the studio version wasn't released yet and the vocals weren't all that intelligible in that particular performance.
- Similarly, "Hitchin' A Ride" has a difficult-to-understand Metal Scream of "SHIT!" that goes uncensored.
RIAA standards suggest this is fine.
- Matchbox Twenty's "She's So Mean": "She has a hard time coming when she can't hit back!" Also, "All her clothes are on the floor and all your records are scratched".
The actual lyrics are pretty mild and only mildly suggestive; they're actually about how the chick in question is inconsiderate. Not an example.
- Nirvana has both a scream at the end of "Stay Away" from Nevermind (GOD IS GAY!) and the infamous 92 MTV VMA's where Kurt played the first bars of "Rape Me" as Writer Revolt before changing to "Lithium".
The RIAA standards don't say anything about opining on God's sexual orientation, plus this is the sort of thing Nirvana fans would have come to expect.
The VMA thing is just Writer Revolt, since I believe they're broadcast live. As mightymewtron pointed out, it's also Defying the Censors.
- The B-52s look at first glance like one of the most innocuous bands there is, although they seem to delight in hidden meanings:
- "There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)" - When Fred sings the line "can't get no atmosphere tonight", the girls clearly sing 'can't get no fuckin term tonight' in the background. This line is not printed in the official lyrics.
- "Dirty Back Road" is about doing it 'doggy style'.
- "Legal Tender" is about counterfeiting money, and its upbeat music makes it seem like a good thing to do.
- "Cosmic Thing" is implied to be about male masturbation, especially during the line "shake it till the butter melts", although the more conventional interpretation (shaking your behind) is there too ("shake your honeybuns!") along with a Shout-Out to President Bill Clinton and his reputation ("don't let it rest on the President's desk!")
- "Deviant Ingredient" is about drunk sex.
- Fred Schneider's solo songs are also full of this:
- "Monster" - "There's a monster in my pants" - pretty obvious.
- "Cut the Concrete" - The word 'fuck' can be heard whispered as part of the background dialogue. Also, the first line is audibly "Fuck The Chicken". The first verse is not printed in the lyrics.
- "Wave" is about sex and the buildup towards an orgasm "Get as wet as we can get"
- "What I Want" - "You pulled me off, and it felt good".
- "There's a Moon in the Sky" - yup, that's valid.
- Yes, but "Dirty Back Road" is implicity, which the RIAA and ARIA are more lenient on.
- The standards don't say anything about singing about crimes
- "Cosmic Thing" is also implicit, and there is the more common and tamer interpretation for children.
- "Deviant Ingredient" isn't trying to hide anything, but should definitely have gotten a Parental Advisory sticker, so it's valid.
- I don't think "Monster" counts; it's really an example of Naked People Are Funny.
- RIAA standards specifically say there's no need for the sticker if there is a barely-audible curse in the background.
- "Wave" is indeed about an orgasm, but it's implicit, so doesn't count.
- I couldn't find any evidence that Schneider or the B52s have a song called "What I Want"
- A double standard: radio stations that play Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" ("But she never lost her head/Even while she was giving head") from Transformer uncut will censor the line "Would she go down on you in a theater?" from Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" from Jagged Little Pill.
Which radio stations? What are their internal standards?
- Voltaire's song, The Dirtiest Song That Ain't is about this trope and parodies it, though whether it will ever actually get past the radar is (intentionally) doubtful considering how heavy the implications are.
Very valid in-universe example.
- blink-182, despite having many sexual songs and songs with explicit tags somehow got away with the clean edit of their untitled/self-titled CD only having the f-words scratched out in the lyric book.
- Feeling This is stated by Word of God to be about sex and has an obvious F-bomb. It isn't censored anywhere.
- Valid if they're uncensored in the actual track
- It is not remotely obvious, but that is the lyric, so yeah, this one probably count.
- Dionysos' entire album, Jack et la mécanique du cœur, is absolutely full of this. One song in particular, "Madamoiselle Cle", has a pun, which, when translated, mentioned a Raging Stiffie. This same song mentioned the female character, Miss Acacia, making 'something other than his nose' get longer, while another song, Flamme à lunettes (which itself is a pun on the French phrase 'femme à lunettes', which basically means 'promiscuous girl with glasses') mentions him taking off her clothes with his teeth. The kicker? Both of these songs were included in a film adaptation of a book, titled The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, which itself was based on the album. The film was given the French equivalent of a PG-13 rating. Parents who get the puns might have been secretly praying their children were still innocent. Dionysos are masters of this trope.
France does not have a music ratings agency, so there is no radar to get past.
I really don't get why people insist on trying to "convert" every system into CARA ratings instead of just saying "It was rated 12", which is an age rating that allows some sexual innuendo.
- From the Fall Out Boy song "7 Minutes in Heaven":
I'm sleeping my way out of this one
With anyone who'll lie down- There's a pretty blatant reference to sex in "27":
My body is an orphanage
We take everyone in- "Sugar, We're Going Down":
Oh, don't mind me I'm watching you two from the closet
Wishin' to be the friction in your jeans
Pretty mild, I don't think these count.
- Björk's "Pagan Poetry" note video has blurry scenes of fellatio, penetration, a topless Björk, and girls piercing their skin. It was banned on MTV though.
- In "Cocoon" (from the same album) we have Björk wearing a bodysuit that looks like as if she was naked. The lyrics are also very suggestive:
He slides insideHalf awake, half asleepWe faint backInto sleephoodWhen I wake upThe second time in his armsGorgeousness!He's still inside me
- So it was in fact censored?
- Again, this is pretty implicit.
- According to vocalist John Hall, King Missile were a bit irritated at the fact that their album Happy Hour had a parental advisory label on the cover... So for their Self-Titled Album, they tried to avoid this by sneaking any cursing past their record company: "on the lyric sheet we submitted to Atlantic, we changed all the curse words to acceptable words, figuring nobody would listen to the record, and we [would] get away with not having a warning label. This actually worked!"
Valid if we can find an example. Wikipedia cites this page, but it appears the interview is in an Adaobe Flash file, which I am unable to read. Can anyone get a copy or an alternative source?
- When OneRepublic's "Good Life" was first released, it managed to get "bullshit" past some stations.
Which ones?
- On some stations, you can hear Haley Williams say "You're once a whore/you're nothing more" on the radio uncensored.
Which stations? What are their internal standards?
- "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush is either an erudite take on the Tyreseus myth, or a euphemism-filled song about how she really likes pegging.
Kate Bush is British, and the UK did not have music labelling in 1985.
- PJ Harvey's album Dry. The album title sounds innocent, but as P.J. explained herself in an interview with "Puncture" magazine:
(...) I called the album "Dry" because it's a simple, minimal word, and more powerful because of it. It's a word of needing something else, and a lot of songs are about that. And I think it's funny to sing about dry vaginas.
- "Sheela-na-Gig", also from Dry refers to a Celtic stone carving, originally from Irish origin, of a female crouching down, holding her vagina open and laughing insanely. Most listeners and radio deejays probably had no clue what she was referring too. Harvey herself commented:
What I like about it is that she's laughing and ripping herself apart. Humour and horrificness.
These also are from before Britain had music labelling.
- The Heart Throbs. No, German Wiki, "Herzklopfen" is a legit translation but not what's meant.note More hidden smut occurs in the album titles "Cleopatra Grip" and "Vertical Smile".
Um, what? Who the funt uses "heart throbs" to refer to vaginal orgasms?
In any case, they were active from 1986 - 1993, which once again, is before Britain had music labelling.
- The song "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette, as previously mentioned on this page, has a 'censored' VEVO version which leaves in a blatant reference to oral sex ("Would she go down on you in a theater?") and censors the line "Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?" by only censoring the second half of the profanity, leaving the word 'fu-' and obvious to someone even very young. Makes you wonder why they bothered.
You can say whatever you like on YouTube, and any censorship is up to the uploader.
- Woah boy. It's truly a wonder how the song 'Hey Mister' by Custom got radio play, especially considering it comes from Canada. Even if it's censored, it still has lines such as
Hey Mister how'd it get so badYou raised her so wellAnd now she's calling me dadIn the back seat naked of a new VolkswagenThe perfect little gift for high school graduation.
Here are the Canadian broadcasting rules. It doesn't appear to be filthy enough to warrant government intervention, meaning it's up to the individual radio stations to decide if it's acceptable.
Eh, it's just a Double Entendre. The RIAA is OK with this sort of thing.
- MY FRIEND'S GOT A GIRL/BOYFRIEND AND S/HE HATES THAT BITCH/DICK! That one can go 'completely uncensored. Make sure your parents aren't around when it does.
This one doesn't appear to have a Parental Advisory label, so it's probably valid.
Blues
- The song "Kitchen Man" by Bessie Smith was loaded with sexual double entendre, and it was recorded in 1929. Sample lyrics: "When I eat his doughnut / All I leave is the hole / Any time he wants to / Why, he can use my sugar bowl"
- Early blues singers got away with a lot of really blatant innuendo. Smith, for example, recorded another tune called "I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl"; lyrics include "I need a little hot dog 'tween my rolls" and "Hard papa, come on and drop something in my bowl"
- Butterbeans and Susie (Jodie and Susie Edwards) recorded I Want A Hot Dog For My Roll" in 1926.
- From the same time period, Dixieland-era songwriter "Jelly Roll" Morton was big on innuendo. Starting with his name.
- Julia Lee sings several of these. On the surface, "The Spinach Song" is about trying the titular greens and learning to like them. "Somehow, it's always hittin' the spot / especially when they bring it in hot". Likewise "All This Beef and Big Ripe Tomatoes". Male singer: "I like to travel and I like to roam" Julia: "what I've got will bring you right back home". And finally, "Come and see me, Baby / but please don't come too soon".
- The song "Jet Airliner" by the Steve Miller Band features the line "funky shit going down in the city". Some stations use the radio edit, which replaces the word with "kicks". Other stations use the original...
- Indigenous had album art where the inside flap featured a man going on a vision quest. But he's holding his loincloth up. Yes, he's naked.
- Banana in your Fruit Basket by Bo Carter, released 1931, is so clearly about having sex.
Indiginous' album art isn't part of the song, so has no bearing on whether or not it warrants a Parental Advisory sticker. It might fit under Exposed to the Elements.
The rest of this section is tricky but I'm leaning towards the examples not counting. They were quite likely attempts to circumvent public morals of the time, but America's First Amendment guarantees the right to sing about whatever they want, and if somebody is publishing blues, they probably aren't massively racist against black people. These examples also predate the foundation of the FCC, so there was no body to regulate radio play, and they came decades before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced. I would say they should just be moved to Double Entendre.
Bossa Nova
- Brazilian singer/songwriter Chico Buarque's song "Apesar de você" snuck past the Brazilian military dictatorship's censors by using subtext to hide its true message ("we're really angry at you for being so evil and I'm going to be celebrate the inevitable day comes that the people destroy you") as the love song of a jilted man. The censors only picked up on it after the release, and ever after they paid extra-close attention to the guy's songs, rejecting perfectly innocent songs of his for imagined reasons.
- His 1971 album Construção barely even bothered with the radar, slipping into Refuge in Audacity. It's completely baffling how such a blatantly anti-government album was released, though perhaps the fact that it was musically based on more traditional samba rather than rock might have helped. Nowadays, it's Vindicated by History and considered one of the greatest Brazilian albums.
Definitely valid. And badass.
Chanson Française
- "Nous les amoureux" ("We the lovers") by Jean-Claude Pascal, the song that landed Luxembourg its first Eurovision win in 1961. Its lyrics are about a relationship between the singer and a lover rejected by everyone else ("They would like to separate us. They would like to hinder us from being happy."), yet shows faith that will be accepted further down the line. As Pascal explained years later, the song was actually about a homosexual relationship, and knowing the topic would have been controversial in The '60s, the lyrics were deliberately ambiguous and avoided any reference to the lovers' genders so that the subtext slipped past listeners.
Valid (source in French).
Christian Rock
- The song "Wolves" by Chasing Victory mentions a "girl in a short skirt showing off her assets". Pretty tame by normal standards, but this is a CHRISTIAN ROCK band.
The song is specifically about resisting temptation, so this doesn't count.
- Jars of Clay's song "Heaven" may very well be the only song about sex to ever become a Christian radio single.
After listening to it, this sounds more like Accidental Innuendo.
- P.O.D., a band known for overtaking Stryper as the Trope Codifier for Christian Rock bands attaining mainstream success in the late 90's/early 00's, is in general fairly brash lyrically in comparison to other Christian rock bands, albeit mild in comparison to secular bands sharing P.O.D.'s Nu Metal designation. The band controversially sidestepped the Christian rock radar entirely by including a Precision F-Strike in the song "I Am," appearing on the album Murdered Love (heavily edited in most versions of the album). Before expressly including a profanity in one song's lyrics, however, the band got several mild vulgarities past the radar, including "hell yeah" and "I don't give a damn" on "If It Wasn't for You" and "Kaliforn-Eye-A," respectively. More explicit (yet somehow more often overlooked) examples of vulgarity in P.O.D.'s lyrics include the line "we tore the roof off this mother" (presumably an abbreviation of "motherfucker") from "Lights Out" and the entirety of "On the Grind," an ominous excursion into Gangsta Rap territory in which a guest rapper brags of his ability to "break the hymen on ears" and explicit references to street violence and pimping appear elsewhere. Finally, the pre-major label P.O.D. song "Live and Die" samples the line "And here's the plot: takin' niggaz out with a flurry of buckshots" from N.W.A's "Gangsta Gangsta."
Hmm. Wikipedia tells me that at least some of P.O.D.'s music was published by RIAA members, but what cursing is present looks pretty mild, not enough to warrant a Parental Advisory label. "I Am" is the only one that might warrant a label, and the example states outright that there is also a censored version of the song. Probably not an example.
Classical
- Carl Orff's famous choir work Carmina Burana is mostly in latin, which is probably how it gets away with lyrics such as this:
In the wavering balance of my feelingsset against each othersexual love and modestyBut I choose what I see,and submit my neck to the yoke;I yield to the sweet yoke.My virginitymakes me horny,my simplicityholds me back.Oh! Oh! Oh!I am bursting out all over!I am burning all over with first love!
Wikipedia cites a book which states that the Nazis did see the sex stuff and were at first iffy about it, but later embraced it as a symbol of how Germans were so much better than everybody else. So yeah, this didn't get past the radar; the radar saw it, considered it, and decided to let it through.
Comedy
- Jasper Carrott famously in the comedy album "Carrott in Notts" did a parody of the "Fish Cheer", all together now "Give us an F! F! Give us a U! U?! Give us a N! N? Give us a T! (audience very quiet now) t? What does that spell? Funt? Well, that didn't work, did it?"
No actual cursing here, though he does come close. And also Britain did not label records in 1976.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic is generally thought of as being family-friendly, but he occasionally slips one past the radar. Like this brilliant euphemism in "One More Minute", for instance:
I guess I might seem kinda bitter
You got me feeling down in the dumps
'Cause I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love
And I have to use the self-service pumps- An even better one? in "Don't Download this Song" If you listen closely, at the end he says cheap bastard,
- In "Hardware Store," he mentions automatic circumcisers among the other things in the store.
- From his video for "I Lost On Jeopardy": "This German Baroness could suck the chrome off a fender."
- "Amish Paradise" has a particularly excellent example in the music video. When the line "I've churned butter once or twice" is said, Al is, indeed, standing there churning butter with both hands. When an Amish lady walks by him, he turns his head to follow her as he goes and his hands move noticably faster and faster.
- "Jerry Springer" is by far and away the most risque song he's ever made, with references to drugs, bestiality, transvestites, gay sex, strippers, lap dances, porn stars, and a bleeped use of "bitch" (albeit in the literal sense)
- During the fade out at the end of "Phony Calls", Al sneaks in the line "But you're just a pain in the ass" at literally the last possible moment.
- "My Own Eyes" mentions a stripper kissing a duck, along with some more mild references to drugs and alcohol.
- "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi" contains the line "the parents pay the mohel, and he gets to keep the tip." A mohel is a rabbi who performs a circumcision.
- "Word Crimes" is all about improving the listener's atrocious spelling and grammar, with one of the suggestions being that they "hire some Cunning Linguist."
- "One More Minute": Mild innuendo that the RIAA doesn't mind.
- You really have to listening to "Don't Download This Song" to hear the good word, and the Parental Advisory guidelines specifically say there's no need to label that kind of thing.
- Circumcision is a Jewish cultural procedure.
- The RIAA doesn't care about videos, only the song itself, so "I Lost on Jeopardy" doesn't warrant a label.
- "Amish Paradise" is just a bit of innuendo, nothing label-worthy.
- "Jerry Springer" is making fun of Jerry Springer, and the word "bitch" is bleeped, so it is in fact censored.
- "Phony Calls" is another just-about-audible word that the RIAA is OK with.
- "My Own Eyes" doesn't have any cursing or content explicit enough to warrant a PAL.
- Again, this is a Jewish cultural ritual. Does the troper think it's against the rules to reference Judaism?
- "Cunnilingus" isn't a word that warrants a PAL, let alone a parahomophone.
- Comedic Italian group Elio e le Storie Tese managed to do it in the title of their first record thanks to Bilingual Bonus: it's called "Elio Samaga Hukapan Kariyana Turu", which in Tamil means "let's happily fart and come with Elio". Unsurprisingly, they got even better at it by mixing silly music with Black Comedy.
Italy does not have any form of record labelling.
- "The Art of the Ground Round" by P.D.Q. Bach has a movement which sounds innocuous when sung by one person, but when combined in a round becomes:
Singer 1: ...... Look ... her ..... face could launch...Singer 2: She's ..... up ... dress-ing, she'll...
- This type of song is known as a "diagonal catch", and has been popular since the Renaissance, at least.
I don't think this is strong enough to warrant a PAL. If Diagonal Catch is common enough, it might be tropeworthy.
- Several novelty songs of Lito Camo from the Philippines which he claims to have been derived from children's songs. This may be true but when they are taken out of context, sung by an all-girls sexy group and their steps re-choreographed...results are different.
Sasara ang bulaklak, bubuka ang bulaklak, dadaan ang reyna ang saya-saya! (The flower will close, the flower will open and the Queen will pass through, it's so fun!)
But what about when they're taking in context?
- Also from the Philippines — Aleck Bovick's song "Nota" has the singer complimenting her partner's songwriting skill, as the words "nota" and "titik" mean "note" and "letters" respectively in English. But "nota" is also Filipino slang for penis, and "titik," if you remove the last letter, means the same thing. Go figure.
There doesn't appear to be any specific censorship or labelling of music in the Philippines unless Duterte decides it's encouraging drug use, and even that isn't a formal watchdog. I would say this doesn't count.
- George Formby was very much known for this in The '30s, in particular phallic references such as "With My Little Ukulele In My Hand". He didn't quite manage it with When I'm Cleaning Windows, probably his best known hit, which was banned by The BBC. Unsurprising given lyrics like those below...
The blushing bride, she looks divine,The bridegroom, he is doing fine,I'd rather have his job than mine,When I'm cleaning windows!
- Formby's music has been championed and revived by Midlands comic FrankSkinner, a man who not only plays the ukelele but has a remarkable similarity.
- Tom Lehrer has "I Got It From Agnes". "It" is never actually described, but it's certainly implied that it's an STD. It also sneaks a bisexual or homosexual orgy in at one point, as well as bestiality, doctor-patient rape and incest. However, it's worth noting that this did NOT get past the radar around the time of its release (although this is actually because Lehrer didn't want it released at the time). Still a pretty worthwhile attempt.
If it didn't get past the radar, why is it on this list?
Country
- Garth Brooks' "That Summer" has, without being at all explicit, is loaded with innuendo, as well as a very well-done chorus referencing the singer and his older partner having sex.
Sounds like it should just be moved to Double Entendre.
- The Charlie Daniels Band has gotten away with several "ass" and "son of a bitch" instances in the lyrics of their songs ("asses" along with "fags" in 1973's "Uneasy Rider," and "son of a bitch" in 1979's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia").
- On Devil you can tell which version it is just before they say the line. The "clean" version has the line "I told you once you son-of-a-gun I'm the best that's ever been." The "Dirty" version uses "I done told you once you son-of-a-bitch I'm the best that's ever been." When they were on American Bandstand they did the so-called "dirty" version, amd Dick Clark, with a supposedly surprised look on his face, said after the performance, "Are we still on?"
This all predates Parental Advisory stickers and TV age ratings.
- In "Big Bad John," the concluding lyric in the official release was "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man ... Big John!" In 1961, even the mild profanity "hell," outside religious contexts, was considered a no-no by some conservative groups, so a second release was issued, containing the milder "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man ... Big John!" However, earlier in the song, there is the lyric "Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell ... ," which apparently did not raise any objections. As for the song, "Big Bad John" topped the Billboard Hot 100 (five weeks), Easy Listening Singles (nine weeks) and Hot C&W Sides charts (two weeks) at the end of 1961, marking one of the earliest No. 1 songs to contain (mild) profanity.
Not an example, since those conservative groups have no actual power to decide whether the song gets released or not, no matter how much they complain.
- A surprisingly subtle example in Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw", in which she claims her boyfriend had "a tendency of getting stuck on backroads at night".
- In "Fifteen," Taylor remarks that her friend "gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind."
- When Taylor ducks behind her book in the video for "The Story of Us", she can clearly be seen mouthing "Shit!" at the sight of her ex.
- "Sparks Fly" managed to get rather suggestive lines past the Moral Guardians (see the song's entry on Intercourse with You).
- The line in the chorus of "Better Than Revenge":
She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress, whoa-oh!
Mild innuendo.
- An old Dixie Chicks song called "Goodbye Earl" (which is about a woman who murders her abusive husband and uses him for fertilizer) had a sly line at the end stating that the female protagonists of the song sell "Tennessee Ham and strawberry jam". If anybody's ever seen the video, at the Tennessee Ham part all three girls do a sort of hip thrust toward the camera and slap themselves on the ass, which is followed by a shot of one of the girls doing a rather suggestive taste test on the aforementioned strawberry jam. Turns out that selling Tennessee ham is a euphemism used in connection with prostitution...
Sounds true, but the only source I could find is blocked outside the USA. Still, this is a rather obscure term and all the search engine results are either for this song or for ham from Tennessee, so I would say it's mild enough not to warrant a sticker.
- Sugarland's song "It Happens" sticks a "ssssh" before the title.
It does, indeed, happen. By which I mean this example is valid.
- Garth Brooks somehow got "It's Midnight Cinderella", complete with the line "By the way he's walking, I can guess where your slipper's at", into the top 5.
- The Kenny Chesney / George Strait duet "Shiftwork" draws out the I and almost completely elides the F.
Borderline. The example is exaggerating the mispronunciation, but it does include the line "A big ol' pile of shiftwork", so I'm leaning towards valid.
- Toby Keith went the spoonerism route on "American Ride" by singing "The fit's gonna hit the shan".
Borderline but I'm leaning towards not valid.
- In 1992,Joe Diffie got "Ships That Don't Come In" to #1 despite having the lyric "we bitch about a dollar" in it. This is pretty much the only mainstream country song ever to have that word in it.
No PAL, so I think this one is valid.
- In 2005, Blake Shelton somehow got a four-week #1 hit with a song titled "Some Beach". Say that out loud and see if you can figure out what he's really meaning to say.
- And a few months prior to him, Gretchen Wilson was able to get "I'm here for the beer and the ball-busting band" past censors on her song "Here for the Party".
No actual cursing here, plus radio stations can play whatever they want.
- Clint Black's album track "Straight from the Factory" has the line "You're the only lock that's made to fit my key."
This can reasonably be interpreted as a romantic metaphor.
- K.T. Oslin's "Do. Ya" contains the line, contains the line "Do you still get a thrill when you see me coming up the hill?" which refers to when she performs fellatio on her partner.
It's hidden behind a metaphor, so the RIAA is OK with itt.
- The 1977 Mel Tillis country hit "I Got The Hoss" is a sweet little ode to the joys of lovers going on a horseback ride together...oh, who are we kidding? The song doesn't even try to hide that it's really about Intercourse with You:
Well, I got the hoss and you got the saddle
We like to ride side by sideI got the hoss and she got the saddle
Together we're gonna ride, ride, ride
This song predates Parental Advisory stickers.
Disco
- The line 'walking in the moonlight' in the fade-out to ABBA's 'Summer Night City' sounds an awful lot like 'fucking in the moonlight'.
We've been over that, it's just a mondegreen.
- The Village People, oeuvre.
ZCE
- "It's Raining Men" features a sly bit of innuendo, as the female singers exclaim that they plan to enjoy the weather by going out and "get absolutely soaking wet".
There is nothing remotely sly about this. It was also released in 1983, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced. I think it does belong on All Women Are Lustful.
[folder:Electronic]]
- There is a techno track by DJ Aligator called The Whistle Song or Blow My Whistle Baby. It is a thinly veiled depiction of fellatio. Oddly, enough, there was absolutely no warnings on it. Blow My Whistle Baby
- The "unclean version" has the lyrics "blow my whistle bitch" in a considerably more misogynistic tone.
- And of course, with title edited to match the lyrics, it was in the E-rated DDR Max 2
Denmark does not have music labelling.
The game is indeed rated E in America, but it has a content warning for "mild lyrics", which means the radar did indeed pick this up.
- Leftfield's 1999 hit "Afrika Shox" was heavily playlisted on UK radio. The song featured guest vocals by Afrika Bambaataa, and repeated repetition of the word "funk." Which as readers might have guessed, often tends to sound a little like another rather more obscene word. Hence the song seems to contain Bambaataa repeatedly chanting 'I wanna FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!' quite a lot. The song's highly suspect nature didn't seem to trouble the radio stations that played it at all hours of the day.
British radio at the time was regulated by the Radio Authority; the official standard can be read here. The Radio Authority never pre-approved broadcasts; only got involved if somebody made a complaint after the fact, and even then people were encouraged to first take up their complaint directly with the radio station. Radio stations each had their own internal policies.
As to "Afrika Shox" specifically, Afrika's accent does indeed make "funk" sound like "fuck", but that's a mondegreen, and in context "funk" simply fits better. Radio stations were required to avoid gratuitous sexual cruelty, but only had to consider children when it could be reasonably expected children would be listening - thus, for example, they would have to exercise restrained between 07:00 and 09:00, but would have some more leeway at, say, 11:00, when the children should be in school
So with all that in mind, it just sounds like not many people complained, so there was no need for the regulators to get involved. Not an example.
- Stroker Ace by Lovage: It gets weird. "It looks like you both can use a pet" "Stroking is a start, only for the wild at heart" and they cover it as if they're talking about cats, hahaha. (Not mention the whispering of 'Pussy' every other line.) "I'd like to watch if you don't mind..."
That song is definitely about proposing a threesome. It was also published by 75Ark, which is not an RIAA member.
- Lords of Acid, who pretty much ignores censors and just.. makes their songs. Among them "I must Increase my bust", a song about how a girl wants to have gigantic breasts to get men, or "I sit on Acid." which starts with the line
They have the Parental Advisory sticker; the radar saw these.
- Remember EMF's "Unbelievable"? The song used a distorted yet uncensored and heavily used sample of Andrew "Dice" Clay saying "What the f**k was that?!". Tell that to the radio and MTV, who play the song uncensored.
Radio and TV stations can broadcast whatever they want, internal policies permitting.
- The song "Helpless, helpless" by Camouflage has the line "Party leaders try to fog your senses" which can be very easily misheard as "Party leaders try to FUCK your senses"
Mondegreen
- Peaches' "Rub" video, in theory, should not be on YouTube, even with an age restriction. It has full-frontal nudity and a ton of bizarre sexual imagery. Some sort of artistic defense must have been made, because it stands with 500,000+ views as of December 19, 2015.
YouTube officially, and infamously, only gets involved if somebody complains after the fact.
- Dillon Francis' "I.D.G.A.F.O.S." has the title (I Don't Give A Fuck Or Shit) and its drop has a subtle voice saying "fap, fap, fap, fap" to the beat.
He released it under his own label, which is not an RIAA member.
Experimental
- Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention were asked to mime for an early television appearance performing "Son Of Suzy Creamcheese" from Absolutely Free- instead of lip syncing the lyrics, Zappa spent the entire song mouthing "you're a motherfucker" over and over again.
- During the production of We're Only In It For The Money, the label asked that Frank Zappa remove one verse of "Mother People" due to offensive language. Zappa complied, but also added a short sound collage piece called "Hot Poop", which was just the offending verse from "Mother People" played backwards. This didn't fully slip past the radar though - "Hot Poop" made the initial release but was cut from a later pressing that also re-edited several other songs for censorship purposes.
- The TV appearance is more of a Writer Revolt, since Zappa didn't like the idea of lip synching.
- Wikipedia cites Icons of Rock for the "Hot Poop" example, so that looks valid.
- Negativland's Escape From Noise made it into record stores without a Parental Advisory sticker despite the presence of curse words, because it was issued on independent record labels (SST Records and the band's own Seeland Records) not affiliated with the RIAA.
So the radar wasn't even looking.
Folk
- Simon & Garfunkel: "Cecilia" from Bridge Over Troubled Water: "Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia, up in my bedroom / I got up to wash my face, when I came back to bed someone had taken my place" Now, what kind of lovin' would cause a guy to go wash his face after making it with a girl, hmmm?
- Also, on "A Simple Desultory Phillippic":
I'm a Communist because I'm left handed,
That's the hand I use... well, never mind.
These songs were released respectively in 1970 and 1965, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- "Afternoon Delight". "This is a song about afternoon lovemaking."
- This becomes a plot point in the eponymously-titled episode of Arrested Development.
This song was released in 1975, before America, Australia, or Britain has any form of music labelling.
- Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled "Hard, Ain't It Hard". The Double Entendre is especially obvious as the first verse ends and the chorus begins:
And he takes other women right down on his knee
And he tells them a little tale he won't tell me.It's a-hard and it's hard, ain't it hard
To love one who never did love you?
Woody Guthrie 'died in 1967, almost 20 years before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- English folk-rock veterans Steeleye Span are good at this. Refer to Drink down The Moon, which at first glance is about the birds and the bees. Well, the birds, anyway. Then ask yourself if the cuckoo has a nest anywhere and if so what form it would take...
"Drink Down the Moon" is a traditional folk song. Even if Britain had music labelling in 1974, this would surely be exempt.
- Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, Naturally opens with a guy telling how if he continues to feel bad (which later in the song is revealed to be because his fiancee dumped him at the altar), he's going to climb to the top of a tower and jump off.
- The same singer's Clair appears to be a straightforward love song but as it progresses it becomes clear that the object of his affection is a young child, and he cries over the age difference between them.
These songs were both released in 1972, before Britain or America has music labelling.
- Cat Stevens stated in an interview that Mona Bone Jakon — the title of his third album, which saw him figuratively and literally Growing the Beard — was actually what he called his penis.
It was also released in 1970, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
Funk
- The song "Real Mother For Ya" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson uses repetition. Over the course of the song, it's pronounced "Real Motha Fo' Ya", and at the end of the song, is repeated several times, but at the end he actually says "Real Motherfucker." Most radio stations cut out that last part in its entirety, although it sometimes slips by.
Eh, radio stations can play whatever they like. "Most radio stations" and "sometimes" are weasel words; we'll need an example of a station actually failing to catch it.
- Long-forgotten 80s funk-rock band Extreme had a minor UK hit with 'Get the Funk Out'. Nobody, but nobody, realises that is the title when they hear it on the radio. The chorus "If you don't like/ what you see here/ get the funk out (oh getthefunkout, getthefunkout) we won't try to/ force-feed you/ get the FUNK out" doesn't even make sense, other than as a means of getting Radio 2 to play it.
- Funk isn't about making sense, funk is about partying. And getting crap past the radar.
I mean, they are singing "funk". Ofcom has the same basic approach as the old Radio Authority - if you don't like something, complain to the radio station, and if that fails, contact Ofcom. There is nobody pre-approving every broadcast, and Ofcom only gets involved if somebody complains after the fact.
- Prince has invoked this trope more than once (to the point where it's more Refuge in Audacity than Getting Crap Past the Radar — especially in his 1980s songs).
- The album Dirty Mind.
- Controversy: "Jack U Off" - self-explanatory.
- 1999: "Little Red Corvette" is NOT, repeat, NOT about the actual car.
- Purple Rain: "Darling Nikki"'s raunchy content single-handedly led to the formation of the infamous PMRC.
- Gett Off wasn't even trying to be subtle. Especially the line "23 positions in a one night stand".
- Many radio stations played "Erotic City" uncensored for over a decade, believing the lyrics with the F-bombs to be "We can funk into the dawn" and "Thoughts of pretty you and me". One station was fined by the FCC in 1989 for playing it, but it wasn't until the 2000s that all radio stations switched to a version with either the F-bombs muted or another part of the song played over the offending lyrics.
- "Dirty Mind" is a ZCE
- "Jack U Off" is from 1981, before the stickers were introduced.
- "Little Red Corvette" is from 1983, again before the stickers were introduced.
- "Darling Nikki" is why the Parental Advisory stickers exist. Even modern releases don't appear to have the sticker, so yeah, this one looks valid.
- "Gett Off" is also valid.
- "Erotic City" did happen.
- Herbie Hancock's video for "Rockit" from Head Hunters is famous for featuring dozens of moving sculptures walking, kicking, and generally moving around a English apartment. One sculpture in particular is laying on the bed, under a comforter, but still rather obviously (and... kinda violently) masturbating.
Music labels only apply to the audio, not the video.
- In the video for Junior Senior's Move your feet, there's a Visual Innuendo scene where totally plastered animated squirrel has an hallucination about a champagne bottle and a champagne glass... where the bottle "explodes" and its white contents fill the glass in a way that looks very suggestive... The band probably got away with it just because the video was made with pixel animation, but still.
Again, this is the video, not the actual song.
- OutKast's "Hey Ya!" almost always plays on the radio with the line "Don't want to meet your momma/just want to make you cumma" uncensored.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies? [[/quoteblock]]
Indie
- The song "Paper Bag" By Goldfrapp starts with the words "No time to fuck". Despite this the album has no warning label.
Valid.
- The name of an actually not-bad indie band - the Test Icicles. Again the BBC let this go without comment.
"Testicles" isn't exactly a coarse word; we'd need to see the BBC's internal policies, as well as when that was broadcast, to figure out if it was in violation. I would like to add them to Intentionally Awkward Title.
Industrial
- The entirety of 'Meet your Master' by Nine Inch Nails seems to be about gay BDSM. They probably couldn't be much more blatant about it if they tried...
- "Closer" from The Downward Spiral. While the famous "fuck you like an animal" line is censored on both radio and MTV, the get away with equally explicit (although profanity-free) lines like "You let me penetrate you" and "It's your sex I can smell."
- "Meet Your Master" is borderline but I think it can stay.
- "Closer" depends on the internal policies of individual radio stations and MTV, which are free to be as abritrary as they like with what they consider acceptable.
Jazz
- Eddy Duchin's 1938 big band cover of Louis Armstrong's "Ol' Man Mose" has vocalist Patricia Norman uttering something that certainly sounds like something naughty that rhymes with "bucket" during one of the choruses. That's right, in 1938. (Seriously, listen closely around the 0:50 mark.)
This is from before Parental Advisory stickers.
J-Pop
- Jpop group Southern All Stars' 1985 track Brown Cherry. Not just the title slipped past the censors; most of the lyrics to the song contain nonsense English words that are homophonous with Japanese sexual terms and vice versa.
I couldn't find any evidence that Japanese music has to be labelled. From what I can gather, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but Article 175 of the Criminal Code bans obscenity, and this has been used to censor. However, I don't speak Japanese, so I can't consult the law itself or how it is enforced, let alone what the case may have been in 1985. That said, from what I can determine, Japan hasn't had formal censors since 1945, so most likely this would require an after-the-fact complaint to be made.
Metal [[quotelobck]]
- Stupify by Disturbed prominently features the singer screaming FUCK at the top of his lungs in nearly every verse. Despite this, most radio stations and day-time TV running the video have decided that the shrill squaking of the words was just incomprehensible enough to go uncensored (ironically, "Shit out of LUCK" still managed to be blanked out of the radio-edit). The song even made it as a Rock Band dowloadable by passing the lyric off as Simlish, making Disturbed the only band in the game to manage full-on cussing (Green Day would be a close second for Longview's drawn-out "Shiiiii~", mentioned below).
Hmm. The song has the Parental Advisory sticker, even on the PlayStation store, so I don't think that counts. Since the download is just a song, I think it technically is outside the ESRB's remit, but does fall under the RIAA.
As for TV and radio, which stations? What are their internal policies?
- Faith No More's "Epic" contains the following lyrics "So you lay down on it and you do it some more" after Mike Patton was advised to remove the f-word from the song. In concert the line is explicitly "and you fuck it some more".
So the radar did notice the fuck-word and made him remove it?
[[quoteblcok]]
- Warrant's "Cherry Pie' is all this trope, from the very title to the immortal lyrics "Swingin' in there/Cause she wanted me to feed her/So I mixed up the batter/And she licked the beater"
- Ah, Cherry Pie, the song that removes all doubt about exactly what the singer is referring to Exactly seven lines into the first Verse. Swingin' to the Left/Swingin' to the right/Think about baseball/swing all night
The song is definitely about sex, but it's all pretty allusiony. It's borderline, but I'm leaning on it not counting.
- Metallica released a DVD entitled Cunning Stunts; much earlier, this was also the title of a Caravan album.
This belongs on Spoonerism and Country Matters, but not on GCPTR since the actual words aren't dirty.
- The Primus song "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver." I mean just look at the title.
Lots of double entendres, but the song is about the animal, not the vagina. However, there is some cursing and references to cocaine use, which are radar-worthy.
- Back in The '70s when homosexuals were very much Acceptable Targets and a favorite bogeyman of the Moral Guardians, Judas Priest released a song called "Raw Deal", whose lyrics (written by homosexual singer Rob Halford) contained (very thinly) veiled references to a gay bar and the struggle for gay rights. The themes were so blatant it's a wonder how, especially after Rob Halford's later adoption of Leatherman attire, how anyone could have been surprised when he came out in the late nineties.
- "Eat Me Alive", although it wasn't entirely successful.
- It just wasn't common to see gays in metal at the time, so it wasn't something one would expect, and he sold it so well that he was able to go onstage in bondage gear while making a lot of fisting motions, and nobody thought twice. He also was very publicly dating Penthouse Pet Cheryl Rixon around the time of British Steel, so yay, publicists.
- "Eat Me Alive", although it wasn't entirely successful.
- "Raw Deal" predates Parental Advisory stickers. Homophobia was standard in 1978, but Columbia could publish whatever they wanted, and I doubt anybody was concerned with how the moral guardians felt about Judas Priest.
- "Eat Me Alive" was one of the songs that led to Parental Advisory stickers, so yeah, the radar did indeed detect it. The reason it's on the Filthy 15 and "Raw Deal" isn't is that "Eat Me Alive" was released in 1984, so it was on people's minds.
- Iron Maiden has two: "Tailgunner", from No Prayer For The Dying, is about an aerial battle. Then using an airplane name as a replacement for a cuss word ("Nail that fokker, kill that son") fits well. And "El Dorado", from The Final Frontier, has a Stealth Pun on a British offense - "I'm a clever banker's face, with just a letter out of place".
Britain did not have music labelling when No Prayer for the Dying was released.
The Final Frontier did come out when Britain had labelling, but it's not coarse enough to warrant the label, especially bearing in mind Iron Maiden's intended audience.
(Also, why do people refer to every single pun as a Stealth Pun?)
- In Van Halen's "Everybody Wants Some," David Lee Roth ad-libs "Where'd you get that shit?" and "Look, I'll pay you for it, what the fuck...". These profanities are never censored whenever the song is played on the radio.
- And their 1991 album, "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge". What's that spell?
- Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- FUCK is valid.
- Sabaton's Metal Machine has "Come touch my metal machine!" repeated several times. It sounds innocent until you get to the end where the singer shouts "Come hold my metal machine!" and then finishes off with "Come suck my metal machine!" Hmm, now what "metal machine" can you touch, hold and suck?
Sweden does not have music labelling.
- The back cover of Sweet's Give Us a Wink depicts a wall with graffiti that would only make sense if "wink" were changed to "wank".
Britain did not have music labelling in 1976.
- There exists an almost universally rejected subgenre of metal named "National Socialist Black Metal," according to Wikipedia. Most metal musicians (including black metallers) criticise and berate it for, among others, contradicting "[metal's] focus on individualism." Even some white supremacists with a conservative m.o. lashed at it for having a "black" or "negroid" influence.
What does this have to do with sneaking around censorship?
- Even considering that it was released by US Extreme Metal label Metal Blade Records (home of such delightful Death Metal stalwarts as Cannibal Corpse and Cattle Decapitation), Melodic Death Metal band Vehemence's album God Was Created is an obscene, transgressive and downright creepy concept album, focusing on a sexual predator who stalks a young Christian girl and gratuitously documenting rape, pedophilia, incest and necrophilia along the way. The album is so lyrically vile that the album cover art includes a Parental Advisory warning whereas other obviously explicit albums released by Metal Blade do not. It also seems to fly past the radar partly due to the growled vocals rendering the lyrics mostly indecipherable and the fact that the song titles suggest more vanilla anti-religious themes by death metal standards.
It has the Parental Advisory sticker. What does this example even mean?
- Filipino rap-metal band Slapshock's 1999 song "Hudas" includes the chorus "Hudas, baka madapa ka," which, in English, literally means "Judas, you might trip." But the band had subtly insulted the song's subject in three different languages – "Hudas" (Tagalog for "Judas"), "baka" (Japanese for "idiot"), and "madapaka" ("motherfucker" if pronounced in an exaggerated Filipino accent). Hence, "Hudas, baka madapa ka" may also mean "Judas, idiot motherfucker" if you come to think of it.
Maybe, but I don't believe the Philippines have music labelling or formal censorship.
New Wave
- The Police's hit song "Rehumanize Yourself" features the line "he's got his hand in the air with the other cunts" which never seems to be censored on classic rock radio, most likely because censoring would make more people notice it.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- "Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello features the phrase "white nigger" which is never censored on the radio...
- Although "nigger" was bleeped out of the video when it aired on "The Midnight Special."
- On Stars In Their Eyes, comedian Frank Skinner sang "one more widow, one less white figure"
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- The version where one gets the censors to focus on one thing in order to let another through was pulled off beautifully, though inadvertently, by The Kinks with "Lola." The BBC was so busy getting them to change the mention of Coca-Cola (something about not being allowed to advertise) to cherry cola that they completely missed the fact that the song was about a sexual tryst with a a transvestite.
- Their next single, "Apeman," about pollution and environmental issues, contains the line "this air pollution is fogging up my eyes". They knew it sounds like "fucking". We know it sounds like "fucking". And whoever produced the album knew it sounds like "fucking", since they very clumsily reduce that solitary word's volume so it's barely audible. Ironically, while everyone involved claims it's definitely "fogging", this makes it harder to decipher whether Ray Davies does actually sing "fogging" or "fucking".
- "Lola" is a valid Censor Decoy.
- Britain did not have music labelling in 1970.
- Frankie Goes to Hollywood has a lot of those songs that got that reputation, with "Relax" being their most infamous example. How that song ever got on the radio is a mystery. It's not even innuendo: there's not even the smallest attempt at hiding the fact that it's about sex. Especially with the music video.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- The entirety of She Bop by Cyndi Lauper.
ZCE, and predates Parental Advisory stickers
It was also released before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- Huey Lewis and the News' "Power of Love" is a cheerful little pop ditty about the Power of Love, right? And certainly appropriate for the soundtrack of a PG-rated film like Back To The Future (although heaven knows that film has a pretty long entry of its own on the film sub-page of this trope), right? Except that one of the ways that the lyrics describe the Power of Love is as "Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream...." So yeah, that's perfectly innocent.
First up, the PG rating allows for some sexual references.
Also, it is innocent. This is just shoehorning.
The Netherlands do not have music labelling.
- The Three Shadows, Part II by Bauhaus contains the line, "To your faces, and Rex Complexes, riddle my breast, full of the oppressed pus." The song is an anti-capitalist protest song, and the Rex Complexes bit is a seemingly polite way of calling someone something much worse.
Britain did not have music labelling in 1982.
- "Sax and Violins" by Talking Heads. Yeah, the title is a goofy pun, but in 1992 a lot of radio stations didn't censor the line "Mom and Pop, they will fuck you up for sure", probably because David Byrne's signature staccato vocal phrasing gave them plausible deniability about what was actually being sung.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- Haysi Fantayzee's "John Wayne Is Big Leggy" contains a reference to him having anal sex with a Native American woman.
Now speckled hen
Just stop your squawkin'
Big Bad Rooster's doin' the talkin'
I know a trick we ought to try
Turn right over, you'll know why
Britain did not have music labelling in 1982.
Pop
- The Dev song "In the Dark" practically had no radar:
On my waist, through my hair. Think about it when you touch me there. Dancing in the Dark. Open my body up and do some surgery. I wanna taste it, taste it, feel it, feel it, shove it in there, oh yeah."
- Not to mention that the video had a naked Dev, but her breasts were covered up by human hands.
- It's worth noting the song did not get past the radar in the UK, where most radio stations opted to play a version which muted the most direct sexual references, though "think about it when you touch me there" was somehow not muted.
Borderline but I'm leaning on towards valid.
- LMFAO flung its name past the radar. "Laugh my fucking ass off". Yes.
- Although legally, their name stands for "Laughing My Freaking Ass Off", and it has also been interpreted to mean "Loving My Friends and Others."
- And their songs are just doing whatever they could to have them fling it off- I'm in Miami Bitch, I am Just a Whore, Sexy and I Know It.
- Sexy and I Know It: "Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah...oh yeah wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah, oh yeah." And also "Girl look at that bodies, girl look at the bodies. Girl look at the bodies, I work out. That's sexy and I know it, sexy and I know it, ooh sexy and I know it, sexy-sexy-sexy-sexy and I know it!"
- "Yes" has: "Foo, your royal penis is clean." It may not sound that bad, but his "royal" penis is huge, and it has to be clean after an ejaculation. Also, "Two naked models with suds on their boobies", and "Call your bitches, a big party".
- Although legally, their name stands for "Laughing My Freaking Ass Off"
The band's name is not an example since "freaking" isn't a curse. And the songs have the Parental Advisory sticker, so the radar did pick them up.
- Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" is even confirmed by Word of God as being about the singer's bisexuality/mixed feelings in the bedroom with her boyfriend (hence the chorus), though this is easily passed up by listeners as the song is initially wrapped up in Double Entendre-laden Texas Hold 'Em metaphors. She also has a habit of singing Lyric Swaps that are a wee bit naughtier than the official lyrics and getting away with it. Lady Gaga also confirms that muffin meant exactly what you thought it meant.
- She also actually says "fuck her face" in the chorus instead of "poker face." It's confirmed. And yet, the song still manages to get played uncensored. While many radio stations have now fixed it, it's still uncensored on her Youtube Vevo channel.
- Also in Gaga's 'Bad Romance', part of the lyrics go "I want your psycho, your vertigo schtick— want you in my rear window, baby you're sick." This is kind of a subverted example because more people find it dirty before they realize it doubles as a Shout-Out to Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window)
- She also actually says "fuck her face" in the chorus instead of "poker face." It's confirmed
"Fuck her face" is valid, the rest is not.
- Lady Gaga's album Born This Way as a whole is good at this, not in the way of sexual content(there is plenty but not enough for a Tipper sticker), but for language sneaking. The mild swears "hell" and "damn" are sung clearly in some parts, but give it another listen and you will know that they aren't the worst words on the album, Scheiße is German for shit, but the song actually contains a couple uses of 'bullshit' in English, but somewhat twist so you can't hear it too clear. The opening to Bad Kids also has the word shit, but it sounds more like "SheOUWT". Then after the first line is "I'm a bitch", but 'bitch' is swirled around and you can hardly make it out at all. Heavy Metal Lover actually contains the F word, and you can actually kind of make it out, yet the album got away without a Tipper Sticker.
That's because you can just barely make out the cursing, and the RIAA standards explicitly say barely-audible cursing doesn't warrant a sticker.
- Bowling for Soup's "My Wena"
- "Her skin is so soft, I can't keep my hands off ever since the day I found her"
- They also had a very odd case with Almost. There's one censored version out there where the words "drunk" and "14" get censored in the first line, but the word "slut" is left uncensored in the very next line. To make it worse, the second verse mentions that the narrator almost got arrested for beating up a guy who stole some drugs that the narrator was addicted to. This is left completly uncensored. Proof.
- Did the troper not notice that Wena is the singer's penis and the song is about masturbation? In any case, there is not Parental Advisory sticker, so yeah, this one is valid.
- The language in "Almost" does appear to be an example. The crime is not, because it's only mentioned briefly.
- Maroon 5 pulled this off with "If I Never See Your Face Again" which is blatantly about a pair of sex buddies.
- It makes you burn to learn I'm with another man.I wonder if he's half the lover that I am.
- Maroon 5 tend to do this a lot; for instance in "Harder To Breathe":
Clutching your pillow and writhing in a naked sweat,Hoping somebody someday'll do you like I did!
- Made considerably worse by Howard Stern, who misheard the lyric as "writhing in a nigger's way".
- "This Love":
My pressure on your hipsSinking my fingertipsInto every inch of you...
- Or, from the same song:
I tried my best to feed her appetiteKeep her coming every nightSo hard to keep her satisfied
- Wake Up Call:
Wake up call, caught you in the morningWith another man in my bed.Don't you care about me anymore? I don't think so?Shot him dead, won't come around here anymore.
- They also pulled this trope off with "One More Night":
But baby there you go again, there you go again, making me love youAnd I stopped using my head, using my head, let it all goAnd you stuck on my body, on my body, like a tattooAnd now I'm feelin' stupid, feelin' stupid, coming back to you
- Maroon 5 videos are also extremely suggestive. Take, for instance, the video for "If I Never See Your Face Again". The video includes Rihanna suggestively grabbing Adam's guitar. What can be expected when the Ms. Fanservice Rihanna teams up with the overly sexed Maroon 5, though?
- Just allusions, which the RIAA is OK with.
- "Harder to Breathe" looks valid
- "This Love" is borderline.
- "Wake Up Call" is about cheating, it's acceptable.
- "One More Night" sounds like it's about a toxic relationship rather than sex per se
- Labels only apply to the audio, not the video.
- "Yummy Yummy Yummy" written by Arthur Resnick and recorded by the Ohio Express. What sort of "love" can one have in one's "tummy," I wonder?
... the romantic kind? Because "Yummy" rhymes with "tummy"?
- Swedish drag act After Dark's entry in Melodifestivalen 2007 (the annual national song competition), (Åh) När Ni Tar Saken I Egna Händer, which is three minutes' worth of thinly-veiled masturbation jokes, disguised as verses about TV personalities doing domestic chores. Read the Wiki entry for details.
- For those that don't speak Swedish, "Åh, när ni tar saken i egna händer" roughly means "Oh, when you take matters into your own hands" but literally translates to "Oh, when you take the thing into your own hands". Also, the singers appear to be making a conscious effort to be pronouncing "Åh, när ni" as "Onani", which is the Swedish word for "masturbation".
- "Onanii" is also a Japanese word for "masturbation" (one of thousands of loanwords, although they actually got it from German in this case), so Japanese YouTube and Nico Nico Douga users got the joke immediately.
- If we're only speaking of visual examples, there's Army of Lovers' entry "Rocking The Ride" in Melodifestivalen 2013. For those who are unable to watch the video, it contains people prancing around half-naked and crawling all over each other, Alexander Bard (the bearded singer) doing the sexual hand gesture, Camilla (the woman on the throne) having a cross over her crotch area, and two guys making out on stage. Even the Swedes, who are notorious for being non-religious and open-minded about different sexualities, were shocked that the broadcast channel allowed something like this, what with violating Christianity and it being a show for families. It got its response by being directly outvoted.
- The interval act of the final in Melodifestivalen 2015 had a Threesome Subtext one of the Norwegian Ylvis members with Swedish singers Lili & Susie; they kneel down out of picture as the lyrics roughly go "When the kids go to bed / We are alone / And She gives me a smile and plays with my balls". This particular clip caused outrage amongst the contenders and viewers, and even Lili & Susie themselves thought it was too excplicit for a family show and asked the editors to cut it down for fear of this happening, but they were declined that wish. note . For smaller examples, usage of the word "fuck" was there as well, but as this has happened before (2011), and Sweden being less sensitive about using profanity on air in contrast to places like the USA, this is not as outrageous. note
- For those that don't speak Swedish, "Åh, när ni tar saken i egna händer" roughly means "Oh, when you take matters into your own hands" but literally translates to "Oh, when you take the thing into your own hands". Also, the singers appear to be making a conscious effort to be pronouncing "Åh, när ni" as "Onani", which is the Swedish word for "masturbation".
All right, for the most part, you can do this sort of thing in Sweden. And the execs not only knew about the content, since the performers brought it up, but they consciously chose to broadcast it and actively refused to tone it down. Maybe Refuge in Audacity?
- Rihanna's "Shut Up and Drive" is just a big Double Entendre, but it made it onto TWO Disney movies.
And did it have any of the suggestive lyrics?
- Britney Spears managed to release a single entitled "If U Seek Amy", where the chorus makes little sense as read ("All boys and all the girls are begging to, If You Seek Amy"). However, when heard, it's clear that the intended meaning is F-U-C-K me. Moral Guardians did figure it out. unfortunately, although that is due to the video mentioning a news story saying "Britney song spells out obscenity in disguise".
- Lampshaded in the music video.
- The Script pulled the same trick with their song "If You See Kay."
- Turbonegro did the exact same thing that The Script did, tacking on the letter "e" at the end of "Kaye." It doesn't have as much impact, mostly due to the frontman's thick Norwegian accent.
Valid.
- There are three versions of Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend: The censored version (which blanks out the second half of "mother-fucking"), The edited version (It gets replaced with "One and only", and the uncensored version (which plays out the full word).
- Avril also did the "add more words" version of Last-Second Word Swap twice in the chorus of "Things I'll Never Say" in order to get highly sexual lines off:
If I could say what I want to sayI'd say I wanna blow you......Away, be with you every nightAm I squeezing you too tightIf I could say what I want to seeI want to see you go downOn one knee, marry me todayGuess, I’m wishing my life awayWith these things I’ll never say
So it is in fact censored and the publishers knew what they were putting out.
- Kylie Minogue's song "Shocked" was a significant hit in the UK back in 1991. It's something of an urban myth that at least one point in the song sees Minogue replacing the word "Shocked" with a certain other, more "colourful" word (ie, "Fucked"). This wasn't picked up on by radio playlisters at all, seeing as any controversy at the time revolved around the song's more sexually suggestive video. Minogue's fans could read this shift into mild controversy as coming in tandem with her significant image-change from wholesome girl-next-door to scantily-clad sex siren - coupled with the fact she was dating famously decadent INXS frontman Michael Hutchence at the time.
Sounds like a nothingburger.
[[quoteblcok]]
- Nowadays known primarily as an actress and due to her starring role as Rose in Doctor Who, Billie Piper's previous job as a run-of the mill kiddie-pop singer saw her attempt an image change by releasing a sexually suggestive song called "Honey To The Bee." One notable line in the song sees her singing "C'mon and buzz me!" which sounded to many more-perverted listeners as being much closer to "C'mon and fuck me!" Which didn't stop it being regularly played on the radio. At all.
- Her final top-ten hit in the UK was called "Something Deep Inside." Piper herself has admitted in hindsight that this might not have been a particularly appropriate title to give a song, considering her music had previously been marketed at a very young demographic.
- "Honey to the Bee" is too mild to warrant a Parental Advisory label, and the mondegreens of perverts have no bearing on radio stations#s internal policies.
- After listening to "Something Deep Inside" and considering the source of the statement, I'm pretty sure it's just an Accidental Innuendo.
- "Rock DJ" by Robbie Williams features the lines "I've got the gift/Gonna stick it in the goal" and "Give no head/No backstage passes", and is quite frequently heard uncensored on radio.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- ...I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you. I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you. And then the Witch Doctor, he told me what to do, he told me Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah Ah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang...
- They sang that in a Rugrats movie!
Fucking Aqua... Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is just nonsense lyrics. I remember it being a thing in school to sing the nonsense as sexual moans as a joke to demonstrate how we could make anything sexual.
[[quotelbock]]
- Alizee-Moi lolita. So laden with references in lyrics and videoclip,the singer confessed it was about the title subject, and its being played in supermarkets and the like. Shows how few people know the term lolita, or what a lolita complex is.
- "Put the you-know-what in the you-know-where, put the you-know-what in the you-know-where."
France does not have music labelling. I couldn't find any sources about her "confessing" that it's about being a loli.
- Whether it's intentional or not, The Jonas Brothers have gotten away with this quite a few times, the most prominent being from their song Live To Party:
"I drove her home and then she whispered in my ear
The party doesn't have to end, we can dance here."- Another surprising example from Poison Ivy, where the narrator describes a poisonous relationship/girl:
"Everybody gets the itch
Everybody hates that *guitar riff*"
- "Live to Party" is just a bit of innuendo, nothing serious;.
- "Poison Ivy" doesn't have any actual cursing, so it goes on Curse Cut Short.
- Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold" featured the lyric "You PMS like a bitch I would know". Radio edits of the song were produced to rectify that—one replacing "bitch" with "chick" and "girl".
So it didn't get past the radar?
- The Madonna songs "4 Minutes", "Like a Prayer", "Dress You Up" and "Like a Virgin". "4 Minutes" is obviously about sex, and "Like a Prayer" is about going down on a man for the first time. The lyrics for "Dress You Up" are an extended metaphor for fashion and sex, comparing dressing up with passion. Thus, it ended up on Tipper Gore's list of the "Filthy Fifteen" songs... And, of course, we all know what 'Like a Virgin' is about.
- 4 Minutes: "If you want it, you already got it/If you thought it, it better be what you want/If you feel it, it must be real/Just say the word and I will give you what you want", "I want somebody to speed it up for me/Then take it down slow, there's enough room for both/Girl, I can handle that, you just gotta show me where it's at/Are you ready to go? Are you ready to go?", "Time is waiting, we only got 4 minutes to save the world/No hesitating, grab a boy, grab a girl/Time is waiting, we only got 4 minutes to save the world/No hesitating, we only got 4 minutes, 4 minutes", andLike a Prayer: "When you call my name it's like a little prayer/I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there/In the midnight hour I can feel your power/Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there" and "I hear your voice, it's like an angel sighing/I have no choice, I hear your voice/Feels like flying/I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm falling/Out of the sky, I close my eyes/Heaven help me".Dress You Up from Like a Virgin: "You've got style, that's what all the girls say/Satin sheets and luxuries so fine/All your suits are custom made in London/But I've got something that you'll really like/Gonna dress you up in my love/All over, all over/Gonna dress you up in my love/All over your body/Feel the silky touch of my caresses/They will keep you looking so brand new/Let me cover you with velvet kisses/I'll create a look that's made for you."Like a Virgin: "Gonna give you all my love, boy/My fear is fading fast/Been saving it all for you/'Cause only love can last/.../Feels so good inside".
- Word of God denies that particular interpretation of "Like A Prayer", but nobody really cares.
Sounds like either the radar did pick these up, or we're reading stuff into them.
- When Jonas Brothers covered Busted's song "What I Go To School For", they had to change a good 70% of the lyrics. The song is about a student who wants to sleep with the teacher.
"And I fought my way to front of class To get the best view of her ass I dropped a pencil on the floor She bends down and shows me more.""Everyone that you teach all day But you're looking at me in a different way I guess, that's why My marks are getting so high."
The word "ass" probably qualifies.
- Air Hostess has these lines: "The cabin pressure's rising. My coke has got no ice in there." "I messed my pants When we flew over France." "Will I see you soon In my hotel room?", And THIS is a band that was England's version of Jonas Brothers back in 2000.
This one, on the other hand, is too mild to warrant a label.
- Kesha song 'C U Next Tuesday' uses the phrase perfectly innocently, but look at the capitalized letters in the title.
Valid.
- Ludo has "Whipped Cream", all about the odd antics that a person taking advantage does. It's not so subtle with the music video though.
Borderline but I think it fits.
- "Faster" by Matt Nathanson gets fairly regular radio play (at least to my knowledge) despite its subject, which can be discerned by paying attention for less than one line.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- Jo Jo's second album "The High Road" was an exercise in this very trope.
ZCE
- Steps were a very family-friendly pop group with many young fans, famous in Britain during the late 1990s-early 2000s. Their video for the song "Say You'll Be Mine" (a cheesy but clean love song) showed them re-enacting famous scenes from romantic movies, including the one from There's Something About Mary where Cameron Diaz spikes her hair up. We can only guess that young viewers weren't aware what she was using as hair gel in the original ...
Tenuous.
- Every Protest Song during a dictatorship or totalitarian regime ever, if they want to get it past the censors.
- For instance in Brazil one song called "Gotham City" hides the social critique behind Batman references; and famous singer Chico Buarque hid himself with either a pseudonym or denials, with "Apesar de Você" - "Despite You" - passing due to him saying it was about an abusive relationship (while the "you" in case was the general/president).
- Spice Girl Emma Bunton's solo hit "What Took You So Long" sneaks in the line "I'll Suck You All Night" instead of the official "What Took You All Night", if you listen closely from around 2:00.
I did listen, and this just seems like a mondegreen.
- In the late 90s, the album of a Swedish bubblegum pop group called Popsie was marketed toward tweens. What those tweens and their parents probably didn't realise was that one song, Love Technology, is about using a dildo.
Sweden does not have music labelling.
- "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by Baha Men isn't about dogs - it's about predatory men going after women in the club, hench, dogs.
The Bahamas do not have music labelling.
- B*Witched's "C'est La Vie" is full of sexual innuendos hidden in its supposedly clean lyrics. The group even admitted in 2013 that the song was about sex all along. The innuendos apparently weren't obvious enough, since the song was used in family films like Life-Size and Smart House.
I wanna know just what to do
Is it very big is there room for two?I got a house with windows and doors
I'll show you mine if you show me yoursGotta let me in, hey, hey, hey
Let the fun begin heyI'm the wolf today hey, hey, hey
I'll huff I'll puffI'll huff I'll puff and blow you away
Ireland does not have music labelling.
- Psy's Gentleman has the line "mother father gentleman". Try saying that a few times really fast
Tenuous, since Psy is Korean.
- JLS' songs from their album Evolution, their last one before their best of, particularly Dessert, which compares women to desert, Give me Life and Hold Me down.
ZCE
- Back when Miley Cyrus was still hanging on tight to her Contractual Purity, her song "Party in the USA" actually slipped in a mild euphemism that was subtle enough to go unnoticed by most people. The song, about Cyrus' move from Nashville to Hollywood, included the line "Who's that chick who's rockin' kicks? Gotta be from out of town," said from the POV of an onlooker who sees her at a nightclub. Though "kicks" can be a neutral slang term for "shoes", the following verse (and the music video) make it clear that she's referring to her cowboy boots—slangily known as "shitkickers".
- "We Can't Stop" got lyrics about drug use past the radar for months, as "Dancing with Molly" sounds like "Dancing with Miley". Since she confirmed the lyrics it's become censored.
- Not to mention the still-uncensored cocaine reference: "Trying to get a line in the bathroom".
- "We Can't Stop" got lyrics about drug use past the radar for months, as "Dancing with Molly" sounds like "Dancing with Miley". Since she confirmed the lyrics it's become censored.
- "Party in the USA" is a stretch.
- "We Can't Stop" [[https://stylecaster.com/miley-cyrus-drugs-molly/ appears to be valid.
- Girls Aloud snuck in a reference to cross-dressing in their song "Long Hot Summer". It's subtle enough to go unnoticed as "dressing gown" is a common synonym for bathrobe. One live version of song makes it explicit that the lover is a cross-dresser, by adding in the line, "my dresses and my makeup too" after the first two lines.
I know you like to wear my dressing-gown,When I'm not there.I guess you like it in my shoes.
Show me the rule against singing about cross-dressing.
- Pixie Lott's Kiss The Stars is blatantly about Intercourse with You. Here's part of the chorus:
Put the plug in the socket, give me all your powerWhen you turn it on I can go for hoursHit the switch, push the button, baby, then you'll seeWe can have it all, baby, you and me
- This song also contains the phrases "get in position" and "we're in love tonight".
Possibly, but this seems like the sort of thing where if you get it, you're old enough to get it.
- The group Free has a song called "All Right Now" where the singer says, "Let's move before they raise the parking rent." Spoken quickly, the 'p' sound can be mistaken for 'f'.
OH MY GOD IT'S POSSIBLE TO MISHEAR A COMMON WORD AS A REFERENCE TO A POPULAR WEBSITE! What?
- DNCE's "Cake by the Ocean" has been confirmed to be about sex - not that the lyrics were very subtle about it ("See you licking frosting from your own hands/Want another taste, I'm begging, 'Yes, ma'am.'"). Despite this, with only the swear words replaced the song was played at both the Kids Choice Awards and the Radio Disney Music Awards.
The song does have the Parental Advisory label, but that's not an issue. I checked IMDb, and the Kids' Choice Awards don't appear to have an age rating, possibly because they're broadcast live. The Radio Disney Music Awards are a radio series, and the FCC only gets involved if somebody makes a complaint after the fact. Thus, in order to determine whether crap got past a radar, we would need to know Nickelodeon and Disney's internal policies.
- The Bruno Mars song 24K Magic contains multiple uses of "shit" (as well as "bitch" but that's easier to get away with) but neither the single or album named after it have a Parental Advisory warning.
Valid.
- Despite Ariana Grande's "Dangerous Woman" dripping with sexuality, Radio Disney and iHeartRadio's kids & family stations put the song in heavy rotation. iHeart played it completely unedited, while Radio Disney stripped it of 'skin on skin', some bullet/gun metaphors, and 'bad girls'. However, they overlooked the line "I wanna save it, save it for later/the taste, the flavor".
We'll need to see iHeartRadio's internal policies to determine whether any crap got past the radar. Ditto for Radio Disney - it's entirely possible their internal policy is more liberal than the troper thinks.
- Madison Beer re-recorded "Hurts Like Hell" as "Hurts So Bad" specifically for Radio Disney, leading to a good number of edits/rewrites (including the title phrase). However, one line that actually made it through Disney's radar is Beer saying her baby was "gonna eat, sleep, and breathe me out 'til the end." She made it clear this was intentional on Genius.
That's not what the source says. We'll need either Word of God or a look at Radio Disney's internal policies to decide if this example is valid.
- In fact, only two songs, as of the 2017 switch to digital, seem to have been caught by the Radio Disney censors and pulled- Katy Tiz's "The Big Bang" and Katy Perry's "Birthday". The latter was still used in ads for the RD Birthday Concert in 2014.
I couldn't find any evidence that either of these were ever caught and pulled.
- O Town had "Liquid Dreams" which was a song about Nocturnal Emissions that was marketed to Twelve-Year-Old Girls.
This sounds more like Misaimed Marketing.
Progressive Rock
- It seems like whenever Pink Floyd's "Money" from The Dark Side of the Moon is played on air, they never censor the line "Money, it's a hit/Don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit."
- The early Pink Floyd single "Candy And A Currant Bun" was originally written as "Let's Roll Another One"; The BBC objected to the obvious drug reference of the title (as well as lyrics like "I'm high, don't try to spoil my fun"). The recorded version changed these lyrics, but somehow also slipped in "Ooh don't talk with me / please just fuck with me". Syd Barrett did slur the offending word a bit, making it sound more like "fock", whereas in "Let's Roll Another One" he was more clearly singing "please just walk with me".
"Money" might be an example, depending on which radio stations and when they played it.
"Candy and a Currant Bun" seems valid (Wikipedia has sources).
- Steely Dan has a lot of songs that push various amounts of crap past the radar, but two jump out:
- "The Fez" is not about a hat. Even the usually evasive Word of God says it's a condom.
- "Show Biz Kids" retained its Precision F-Strike as a single.
- Not to mention the fact that the band's name come from the name of a gigantic metallic dildo used to sodomise young teenage men engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation in William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch.
- Becker and Fagen Lampshaded this when they thanked Eminem at the Grammys, which they won for an album discussing psychological torture, adultery, incest, teenage prostitutes, really awesome drug addiction, professional dominas... hope I didn't forget anything.
- "The Fez" was released before Parental Advisory labels were introduced.
- So was "Show Biz Kids"
- "Two Against Nature" appears to be valid.
- In Genesis's song Robbery, Assault and Battery, they use the line "The bastard's gone away".
- The "reverend" section of "The Battle of Epping Forest" has plenty of sly Double Entendre:
They called me the Reverend when I entered the Church unstained;
My employers have changed but the name has remained.It all began when I went on a tour,
Hoping to find some furniture.I followed a sign - it said "Beautiful Chest".
It led to a lady who showed me her best.She was taken by surprise when I quickly closed my eyes.
So she rang the bell, and quick as hellBob the Nob came out on his job
To see what the trouble was."Louise, is the Reverend hard to please?"
"You're telling me!""Perhaps, sir, if it's not too late.
We could interest you in our Staffordshire plate?""Oh no, not me, I'm a man of repute."
But the Devil caught hold of my soul and a voice called out "Shoot!"To save my steeple, I visited people;
For this I'd gone when I met Little John.His name came, I understood,
When the judge said "You're a robbing hood."He told me of his strange foundation,
Conceived on sight of the Woodstock nation;He'd had to hide his reputation.
When poor, 'twas salvation from door to door.But now, with a pin-up guru every week,
It's Love, Peace & Truth Incorporated for all who seek.He employed me as a karma mechanic, with overall charms.
His hands were then fit to receive, receive alms.- The band's hit "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" is about a drug addict trying to score. It's not even particularly subtle about it. It was later used in an advert for Michelob beer (which was a big sponsor for one of the band's tours), which could be interpreted as sending the message that beer drinkers are drug addicts. They also have several pretty blatant Intercourse with You tracks, most notably "Mama", which is confirmed by Word of God as being about a creepy teenager's obsession with a much older prostitute. Other Intercourse with You songs performed by the band, such as "Counting Out Time" and "The Lamia" (both from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), weren't big hits in the same way, though that's likely more because they were simply too weird for the mainstream than because of their content.
- "Robbery, Assault, and Battery" was released before the BPI started using Parental Advisory stickers.
- So was "The Battle of Epping Forest"
- And "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"
- Electric Light Orchestra's "Oh No Not Susan" managed to get past BBC policies and had their song played on the air, with "fucking" uncensored.
I couldn't find any sources for this.
- Procol Harum's "A Souvenir of London".
Want to keep it confidential, but the truth is leaking out,Got a souvenir in London. There's a lot of it about.
Wikipedia says the BBC banned this song. Definitely not an example.
- Marillion: "Warm Wet Circles". Ostensibly about things like kisses, drink stains on bars, even bullet holes... but don't tell me the audience aren't reminded of something else.
Doesn't matter, because the BPI did not label songs in 1982.
- Jethro Tull's Wonderin' Aloud is, on the face of it, about a loving couple, where the man fixes breakfast for his lady love. Listen again...
We are our own saviours,
As we start both our hearts beating lifeInto each other;
Wond'ring aloud,Will the years treat us well?
As she floats in the kitchen,I'm tasting the smell;
Of toast, as the butter runs;Then she comes, spilling crumbs on the bed -
And I shake my head...- It is entirely possible that a different sort of morning activity between a man and his lady might be being alluded to here....
The BPI did not label music in 1971.
- At first glance, the lyrics to "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel don't make much sense. However, he later admitted that the lyrics are about sex; with this in mind, the phallic imagery throughout the song becomes much more apparent (although the music video did provide a couple of clues, like opening with a shot of swimming sperm). In spite of this, the song still plays on radio stations uncensored, since there's no profanity or anatomically-correct terminology.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
Psychedelic
- "Mellow Yellow" by Donovan. Twice. First, he spread the rumor that the song was about Bananadine, a fictional psychoactive substance supposedly extracted from banana peels. He admitted later that the song made reference to something more hands-on:
Is gonna be a sudden crazeElectrical bananaIs bound to be the very next phase.
- And they used that to close out the Minions movie!
The song was released in 1966, before the RIAA introduced Parental Guidance labels.
A look at IMDb indicates that Minions received age ratings which allow for this sort of thing.
- Death In Vegas's song "Dirt" uses a number of samples from Woodstock, including Joe Mac Donald's FISH cheer: "What's that spell?" to which one hundred thousand hippies chant "Fuck!" over and over again. Since the "Gimme an F! Gimme a U!..." part was left out, it's a bit hard to figure out just what the crowd is screaming unless you know the reference.
The cursing is effectively bleeped out, so it doesn't count.
- The French song "Les Sucettes" even got past the radar of its own singer. It was written by Serge Gainsbourg for pop idol France Gall and is ostensibly about a girl who enjoys lollipops, but it was obvious to the public, once it was released, that it was actually about oral sex. Gall, just eighteen when the song was recorded (and this was 1966) had no idea until she saw the public's reaction. She felt hurt and betrayed by Gainsbourg and ended their professional relationship. "Sucette" is also a notorious porn cartoon about the sexual adventures of a young French girl.
This one is valid and is on the trope page.
- Psychedelic folk band Pearls Before Swine's 1967 song "(Oh Dear) Miss Morse." The song's chorus (and the Morse Code beeps in the background) spells out the F-word in Morse Code. Frontman Tom Rapp claims "I seriously tried L-O-V-E first, but it didn't work in the code cadence."
This song predates music labelling.
Punk
- Dead Kennedys song "Holiday in Cambodia" from Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables rarely gets its errant N-word censored on the rare occasion it's heard on the radio.
Which radio stations play it? What are their internal policies?
- Whenever "Los Angeles" by X (US Band) is played on radio (KCBS in Los Angeles), they rarely censor the N-word, but "shit" is muted.
I couldn't find any information about KCBS' internal policies on what is acceptable.
- "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues: "You're a bum, you're a punk / You're an old slut on junk, lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed / You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot / Happy Christmas your ass / I thank God it's our last". Plays on the radio, uncensored, in the UK and Ireland every Christmas. Something of a Grandfather Clause, since when BBC Radio 1 did censor it, they were hit with major backlash and reversed it the same day.
- The movie PS I Love You lampshaded it. The song was played at the funeral under the pretense that it was the main character's husband's favorite song. At the "You're a faggot" line the pastor started singing along.
Ofcom and BSAI only get involved if somebody complains after the fact. This is a case where people complained that it was censored, so not an example.
- The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"
It's always tease, tease, teaseYou're happy when I'm on my knees...Come on and let me knowShould I cool it or should I blow?
The BPI did not label music in 1981.
- Goldfinger's "Here In Your Bedroom" has the singer saying, "One, Two" quickly before the bridge. At the end of the song, he says "Fuck you!" in the same manner, quickly enough to be mistaken for a simple count, and was never edited on radio. Although the modern rock station that used to play the song in my area was never strict in its editing.
Which radio station is that? What is its internal policy?
The "fuck you" is also hard enough to make out that I don't think it warrants a Parental Advisory sticker.
- Captain Sensible of The Damned recorded a cover version of "Happy Talk" from South Pacific in 1982 - but changed the lyric "Golly baby, I'm a lucky cause" to "Golly baby, I'm a lucky cunt". The vocal take on the single was recorded after a day spent down the pub and kept in as a joke. The word itself is drawn out enough to make it sound enough like <s>"cause"</s> "cuss" not to be censored or banned from airplay. The Captain confirmed which word he sang on the record in a 2005 book published to commemorate 1000 #1 singles in the UK charts - "Happy Talk" being one of them!
Hmm. This predates Parental Advisory labels, so I'm not sure it counts/
- The Ramones were forced to pull "Carbona Not Glue" off their 1977 album Leave Home due to a potential lawsuit - the makers of the cleaning solvent Carbona probably would not be thrilled with it being endorsed as an inhalant. The track would eventually be restored to reissues of the album, but well before then the band managed to slip in an unlisted live version on 1991's Loco Live.
- "53rd and 3rd" from Ramones is also about a gay prostitute.
- "Carbona Not Glue" is valid.
- "53rd and 3rd" was released in 1976, before Parental Advisory labels were introduced.
- "Pretty Vacant" by Sex Pistols from Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols features a rather... unusual enunciation of the title lyric.
A band called The Sex Pistols released an album with the word "bollocks" in the title and you're concerned about the word "vacant" is pronounced? In any case, the BPI did not label music in 1977.
- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Bang' got played on the radio, despite the line 'as a fuck, son, you suck!'
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- Pansy Division's "Alpine Skiing" is definitely not about a downhill slalom, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything specific in it that would prevent airplay. This is a staple trope of Queercore in general, when it isn't taking Refuge in Audacity.
If there's nothing that actually breaks the rules, why is it listed here?
Ukrainian Red Cross
Calendar enthusiast
Right, last of Radar.Music.
R&B
- "Son of A Preacher Man" from Dusty Springfield, about a girl being deflowered by the local preacher's son. With the line "Looking to see how much we've grown?"
This predates Parental Advisory stickers.
- Early R n' B is full of this trope: examples include Billy Ward & The Dominoes' 1951 hit Sixty Minute Man: 'There'll be fifteen minutes of kissing, then you'll holler 'please don't stop', fifteen minutes of teasing, fifteen minutes of squeezing, and fifteen minutes blowing my top'.
- Not to mention Dinah Washington's 'Big Long Slidin' Thing' from 1954 (it's a trombone). 'He said 'I blow through here, then I work my fingers and thumb''.
- And (bisexual) Ma Rainey releasing "Prove it on me blues" — "I went out last night with a crowd of my friends, it must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men".
So do these.
- Martha and the Vandellas' song "Quicksand" places a lot of vocal emphasis on the phrase "deeper and deeper." Because it's about quicksand, you see...
And this.
- Little Richard's career is about this trope. While "Tutti Frutti" from Here's Little Richard was originally "Tutti frutti, good booty," much of the song was left intact. "She rocks to the east, she rocks to the west" was not about geography. And why was "Long Tall Sally" bald-headed? Maybe because she was really a transvestite? "She's got everything that Uncle John needs." Then there's "Lucille": "You won't do your sister's will." And "I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight/I asked my friends about her, but all they did was cry, "Lucille!" What were all his friends doing in his bedroom?
- Oh, for heaven's sake: his name is a euphemism for small man's bits.
- This was cleaned up just enough to meet broadcast regulations, but it didn't fool anybody, and they were mad.
These are all from the 1950s, before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- Speaking of "Brown Sugar", the D'Angelo song of that name is 'not talking about a woman.
Who said anything about brown sugar? In any case, this song carries the Parental Advisory sticker, so the radar did pick up whatever might be objectionable about it.
- If you don't get that, see also: "Mary Jane" by Rick James.
America did not have music labelling in 1978.
- The Kingsmen's garbled, unintelligible version of "Louie Louie" ignited controversy in the McCarthy-era United States, to the point where an official federal coalition was formed to determine the exact lyrics of the song and whether or not they were obscene (The verses were rumored to contain references to getting busy in a drive-in movie). What said coalition seems to have missed was the point in the song (about 54 seconds in) when the band's drummer broke his stick and clearly yelled "FUCK" loud enough to register on the vocal mic.
That doesn't happen.
"Louie Louie" is rather notorious, but there was no formal censorship body for music at the time, and obscenity wasn't legally defined, so there wasn't actuall a radar to get past.
- Labrinth and Emeli Sande's chart topper Beneath your Beautiful, in which the chorus is "Would you let me see beneath your Beautiful? Would you let me see beneath your perfect? Take it off now, cause I wanna see inside." However, Labrinth and Sande are rather wholesome artists, and the real lyrical meaning is reveled here, and is not overtly sexual (although The Guardian admitted people could easily think it was).
So this is just people reading into it?
- It wasn't the radio edit, but Stevie Wonder got away with an n-word in the full album cut of "Living in the City" (off Innervisions), when a brief interlude in the middle of the song has a (probably black) man arriving in NYC, just to be wrongly accused and then convicted of drug trafficking or possession within an exceedingly short amount of time. The prison guard says, at the end of this sequence, quite gruffly, "c'mon, get in that cell, nigger." The song then starts back up, leading to one of Wonder's most angry, frustrated vocal performances.
This song predates Parental Advisory stickers, and the N-word is important to the song.
Rap
- An example from NewBoyz: the supposed lyrics to "Back Seat" hide the fact that they drop the F-bomb twice. While many radio stations realize that they are actually saying "She just trying to fuck comfortably" instead of "She just trying to fit comfortably", they managed to hoodwink YouTube, as it is not censored. Again the line "you're function with the man girl" gets by in their music video, however it is actually "you're fuxing with the man girl", which makes a lot more sense grammatically (which should be an obvious clue but maybe YouTube censors are illiterate).
YouTube does not have censors. Seriously, you can say "fuck fuck fuck fucking mother fuck" on YouTube as much as you want. You might not get advertising money, but the video will stay up. And YouTube isn't checking every single video before allowing it to go live - doing that is physically impossible. YouTube only cares if the video is against their terms of service or is actually illegal, and even then only gets involved is people complain.
- Not as much gotten past the radar, but let right through with the Red Carpet treatment, Queen Latifah's "U.N.I.T.Y." often ran on radio stations with the lines "Bitch" and "Ho" uncensored. Most likely because the lyrics made it impossible to take the use of the words as offensive.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- Method Man's "All I Need" often got away with the oft-repeated line "I swear to God I hope we fuckin' die together" by stashing it in the instrument line and covering it with the more recognizable chorus.
When? Where? By who?
- The Black Eyed Peas get away with this in "My Style".
Tu chocha es todo mio (your pussy is all mine)
Hmm, possibly, but I feel like the RIAA doesn't care about Spanish lyrics.
- The Bomfunk M.C.s managed to slip a reference to a porn movie AND a F-word past the censors on "Freestyler" in the verse before the second chorus:
"We deliver anything from acappellas
To propellers, suckers get jealousBut their soft like marshmallows
You know they can't handle usLike Debbie Does Dallas
Yeah, we come scandalous,- Which is particularly jarring for anybody who grew up with Christopher Robin...
- They go one further with Live Your Life, where the verse would have been 'so much shit that my nose is uplifted' but the 'shit' was replaced by a sniffing sound to sound like they are referring to cocaine. Not that this one got much airplay outside of Finland, which is a pity as the lyrics are about coping with fame and living life to the full, subject matter which is markedly more serious than B.O.W.'s usual lyrics about being the best rapper around.
- Which is particularly jarring for anybody who grew up with Christopher Robin...
Finland does not have music labelling.
- The radio edit of Missy Elliot's "Work It" alters the line "Let's get drunk, this gon' bring us closer!" But the word substituted for "drunk" is "crunk", a portmanteau for "crazy drunk"
One,crunk means a lot of things. Two, which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
[[quotebock]]
- In the song Bottoms Up by Trey Songz and Nicki Minaj, Nicki clearly says
"If a bitch try to get cute
I'mma stomp herThrow a lotta money at her then yell
Fuck her, fuck her, fuck herThen yell fuck her "
** This goes completely uncensored on the radio, but references to a 380 pistol are promptly censored.
Radio stations can play what they want, but this one really should have gotten a Parental Advisory sticker.
- The chorus of the song "Right Round" by Flo-Rida goes, "You spin my head right round, right round/When you go down, when you go down down." The song makes it pretty clear that he's with a stripper, but he's not talking about the head that you think.
I think this is implicit enough that the RIAA isn't concerned.
- Yes, Fergie's "London Bridge" is about a spit roast or lazy H or whatever you want to call it. One guy doing a girl via rear entry, and the other getting a blowjob from the same girl.
This one has the Parental Advisory sticker. It did not get past the radar.
- Flo Rida's song "Whistle" is not about whistles, despite what the lyrics, melody and artwork may tell you. The song is about fellatio. It's not about netball, The Other Wiki confirms that it is about oral sex.
Can you blow my whistle, baby, whistle, baby? / Let me know / Girl i'mma show you how to do it, let me start real slow / You just put your lips together and you come real close / Can you blow my whistle, baby, whistle, baby? / Here we go...
- Compared to most examples, this one is very, very blatant.
This song is definitely about fellatio, but the Parental Advisory sticker does allow for lyrics having multiple interpretations, so I'm leaning towards this one being just implicit enough not to warrant the Parental Advisory sticker.
- Usher's "Scream" invokes this trope.
If you wanna scream "YEEAAAH" / Let me know and I'll take you there / Got you feeling like ooh, baby, baby / Ooh, baby, baby / A-ooh, baby, baby / Ooh, baby, baby
- Usher's classic dance track "Yeah!" is such an upbeat, catchy and (relatively) family-friendly song that it regularly gets played at Bar Mitzvahs, family weddings and middle school dances without raising any eyebrows. But then there's the recurring line "Take that and rewind it back, _____ got the _____ to make ya booty go...", followed my the singer clapping his hands together loudly. It seems pretty innocuous, until you realize that it's meant to be taken as "...make ya booty go CLAP!" It's a veiled reference to "booty clapping", an infamously risqué dance move that involves a scantily clad woman shaking her butt hard enough to make her butt cheeks slap together.
- I'm not sure how one can "invoke" GCPTR, but "Scream" is a valid example.
- "Yeah!", on the other hand, only sounds dirty if you go a couple of layers deep.
- "Parents Don't Understand" by Will Smith was considered a family friendly song. Near the middle of the song the sixteen year old protagonist sees a girl and almost gets into a sexual situation with her. It turns out she's twelve years old.
I listened to the song and 1) it's written as a simple mistakge, and 2) the police pull them over for speeding before anything actually happens. I don't think this is an example.
- Even the clean version of Top 40 hit Feeling Myself by Nicki Minaj and Beyonce gets away with multiple masturbation references, one of which flies by because of its double meaning as a reference to The Karate Kid.
- "He be thinking about me when he whacks off. Wax on? Wax off."
The Parental Advisory stickers allow for lyrics having multiple interpretations.
Rock
- Let's all remember that "rock 'n' roll" was, in its day, a euphemism for sex.
Yeah, in the 1950s. And it also referred to the energy at African-American Masses, which is where the music originated.
- Prior to the songs by Cee-Lo Green, Nicki Minaj and P!nk, several songs containing the word "bitch" in the title have made the top 5 of the Hot 100, most notably Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" in 1974, and Meredith Brooks' "Bitch" in 1998. One of the earliest songs that contained an uncensored "bitch" to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 was Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl" ("You can rely on the old man honey/it's a bitch girl, ..."), while the album version of Jimmy Buffett's 1977 single "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" contains the lyric "... Good times and riches and son of a bitches ... ." The radio edit at the was re-recorded to have the lyric "Good times and riches, some bruises, some stitches..."
- "The Bitch is Back" predates the BPI's adoption of Parental Advisory labels.
- "Bitch" is valid
- "Rich Girl" predates Parental Advisory labels
- So does "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes"
- Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" (originally written and recorded by J.J Cale) is shamelessly about, well, cocaine and how fun it is. Clapton describes it as an anti-drug song. He has called the song "quite cleverly anti-cocaine". How in the world it is anti-cocaine with those lyrics, you tell me.
- Because of its controversial message, Clapton did not perform the song in many of his concerts; over the years, Clapton has added the lyrics 'that dirty cocaine' in live shows to "underline" the (supposed) anti-drug message of the song.
Whatever the case, "Cocaine" predates Parental Advisory stickers.
- John Mellencamp's "Lovin' Mutha Fo' Ya," where he never comes right out and says "motherfucker," but the way it's phrased makes it obvious. Ironically, a member of his band clearly says, "Hey, what the fuck?" on the intro.
I couldn't find any evidence Mellencamp recorded a song called "Lovin' Mutha Fo' Ya".
- Sheryl Crow's song "A Change Would Do You Good" contains the line "Jack off, Jimmy, everybody wants more". No one else seems to have remarked about this one...
Borderline but I'm leaning towards it not being valid, since the song is clearly discouraging such behaviour.
- While KISS's discography is made up of almost entirely songs about sex, they are never really obscene in them, preferring metaphors and hinting rather than just saying it. However, in "I Just Wanna", the official line is "I just wanna forget you", but, well, just listen. In the Alive III version, Paul even says fuck instead of look and then giggles a little.
Mondegreen.
- "Boys Light Up" by Australian Crawl is considered to be a classic Aussie rock song. But if you listen closely it's all about sex with air hostesses and also about a wife using sexual aids when her husbands away. It is really a really, really dirty song.
This predates music labelling in Australia.
- The Blue Öyster Cult's rendition of the Michael Moorcock-penned Black Blade fades out on the metallic voice of the sword boasting about how evil it is... singer Eric Bloom slips in a final line, You poor fucking humans!, right at the very end, on the very brink of hearing.
- Dominance and Submission is apparently about a ten year old boy invited on a New Year's Eve car drive by an older friend and her brother. Listen closely and join the dots as to what really appears to happen to him in the seamy underbelly of squeaky-clean 1964 America...
These predate Parental Advisory stickers.
- Maybe a more subtle one, but in "Mysterious Ways" by U2, Bono sings "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel / On your knees, boy." Most likely an innuendo for cunnilingus.
Speculation.
- The Who's "Who Are You?" is almost never censored on radio stations that normally censor, despite Daltrey ad-libbing "aw, who the fuck are you?" in the chorus towards the end of the song. (At least, not in the UK. Most American stations edit it by splicing in "who the hell are you?" from elsewhere in the song.)
- Another Who song, "Squeeze Box" is about a wife tiring her husband out and keeping the neighbours up all night with her rampant accordion playing. What else could it mean?
She goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out,
And she's playing all night, and the music's all right,
Momma's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night.- Word of God says that it's really about an accordion, it's just you who's reading extra things into it.
- It's obviously the part of "Weird Al" Yankovic's childhood we never heard about.
- The best example from the Who, in my opinion, is "Pictures of Lily" which is sung from the position of a kid whose dad gave him porn to masturbate to in order to help him fall asleep. This is one of their signature early hits. Another one from around the same time that got decent airplay was "Mary Anne With the Shaky Hands" from The Who Sell Out which features the line: "What she done to a man with those shaky hands" in the chorus. Quite a few other Who songs pulled this sort of thing off quite well, too!
- They slipped one past the BBC radio censors in 1966 hit single Substitute. Allegedly hacked off with Beatles-style fangirls coming to their concerts to scream hysterically and ignore the music, there is a point in the song where they play with words and clearly sing "Prostitute..."
- Another Who song, "Squeeze Box" is about a wife tiring her husband out and keeping the neighbours up all night with her rampant accordion playing. What else could it mean?
- "Who Are You": Which radio stations?
- Sometimes an accordion is just an accordion.
- "Pictures of Lily" predates music labelling
- So does "Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand"
- [citation needed] on "Substitute"
- The T. Rex song "Twentieth Century Boy" has the refrain "twentieth century toy, I want to be your boy." A casual listener probably wouldn't notice that in the last two iterations, this becomes "twentieth century toy, I want to be your toy," the song ending with "twentieth century boy, I want to be your toy."
It also predates the BPI's adoption of Parental Advisory stickers.
- "Knockin' at Your Back Door" by Deep Purple. Think about the possible meanings of the title... yeah, it's about anal. The band actually wrote the song with this in mind, seeing if they were even able to get away with it and get a song on the airwaves with such a dirty message. And it worked.
This one looks valid; Wikipedia has a citation.
- AC/DC has made this an artform in and of itself. At least half their songs are sexual innuendo, more or less thinly veiled (more often less then more). "Girls Got Rhythm", "Giving the Dog a Bone", "Big Balls" (which is about high-end social events. Really.), "You Shook Me All Night Long", "Hard as a Rock"... The list goes on and on and on and...
- The list goes on all "Night of the Long Knives".
- And "Let Me Put My Love Into You", which isn't even an innuendo, and made the PMRC's "Filthy Fifteen" list.
- They even invoke this trope when singing about sexually transmitted diseases in their early hit "The Jack," which uses playing card references to discuss how a man got gonorrhea after having sex with a promiscuous woman — "how was I to know that she'd been dealt with/shuffled before?" Also, "jack" happens to be an Australian slang for gonorrhea that might have flown over the heads of many non-Aussie fans back in the day.
AC/DC's stuff predates music labelling in Australia.
- "Poison Ivy" by The Coasters seems to be about a promiscuous, psychotic woman who gives men a sexually transmitted disease. Ah, those innocent 50s! Although, thanks to Parody Displacement, most kids today will probably assume it's about the Batman character. The 1997 movie Batman & Robin did nothing to dispel this myth, since they outright used an instrumental version of the song when Uma Thurman is introduced.
There was no music labelling in the 1950s.
- Sometime back in the early 1980's, the band April Wine released a single called "If You See Kay," which repeated the title in every chorus. Maybe nobody thought this out...
- So Britney Spears' "If U Seek Amy" wasn't original after all...
- It wasn't as though it was subtle, as the video had numerous instances of the band holding up signs with the phrase. The only throw-off is the Lyrical Dissonance, as the sweet, dreamy chorus makes the song sound like it's about a crush.
I don't believe Canada has music labelling.
- Aerosmith may have inadvertently pulled off a very difficult version of this. The beginning of the fourth verse of "Sweet Emotion" is "Standin' in the front, just shakin' your ass". Yes, an innocent example, but WHERE this went is amazing ... when the Disney company licensed the music for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, they just happened to pick this line ... uncensored... That's right, even though it's on an attraction not meant for kids, you can clearly hear this word on the ride. The best part? It's a RE-RECORDED VERSION.
- There's also "Mama Kin", which goes uncensored on the radio despite having "shit" in the lyrics (possibly because it's pronounced "she-it" so it rhymes with "see it").
- It also has that line in the chorus, that alternates between "sleeping late and smoking tea" and "sleeping late and sucking me". Either way, Aerosmith 1, radar 0.
- "Pandora's Box" still receives airplay, with its "city slicker/slitty licker" line.
- Amusingly, they lampshade it with the title track of the album, "Just Push Play", where the chorus says, "Just push play, *beep*ing A! Just push play, they're gonna beep it anyway." Except for the last chorus, when they actually change it to "Fucking A! Just push play, they're gonna *beep* it anyway."
- "Falling in Love is Hard on the Knees." What sort of "loving" would require strong knees?
- There's also "Mama Kin", which goes uncensored on the radio despite having "shit" in the lyrics (possibly because it's pronounced "she-it" so it rhymes with "see it").
- If theRock'n'Roll Coaster isn't meant for kids, what's the issue?
- Which radio stations are playing "Mama Kin" uncensored? What are their internal policies?
- Which radio stations are playing "Pandora's Box" uncensored? What are their internal policies?
- Just Push Play" is valid.
- "Falling In Love is Hard on the Knees" has "ass" in it, so is valid on that basis alone.
- The Guns N' Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle" from Appetite for Destruction could be seen as a metaphor for sex. The singer talks to a "very sexy girl/ That's very hard to please" then he goes on to say "Feel my, my, my serpentine / I, I wanna hear you scream".
- It's also interesting that an old word for orgasm is die. So when the singer says "You're in the jungle baby /You're gonna die" he means ...
- Brings a whole new meaning to the song "(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight".
- That's exactly the meaning the singer/writer intended. The title came to him (geddit?) while having sex with his girlfriend.
Yeah, but the RIAA standards specifically say to allow for lyrics having multiple interpretations. This seems like a case of "If you get it, you're old enough to get it".
- The Rolling Stones' Start Me Up from Tattoo You... after singing "you make a grown man cry" a couple of times, the last line of the song is "You make a dead man come". It feels as if, do to the rhyming, it would have been "You make a grown man cry/You make a grown man die/You make a dead man come". But hey, you can only get away with so much, right? Right?....Right?....
- "Brown Sugar" from Sticky Fingers is even worse. The song is reportedly about some guy having his way with one of his slave girls, yet, somehow, the song topped the U.S. charts.
These predate Parental Advisory stickers.
- Cat. Scratch. Fever.
"make a pussy burn with a stroke of my hand"
- Also: Little Miss Danger-Ass (which is how he pronounces it every time, throughout the song).
- "Cat Scratch Fever" predates Parental Advisory labels.
- He's singing "Dangerous", not "Danger-ass". That's just his accent.
- Fanny (whose name is not an example, at least intentionally, since they didn't know what that word means in the UK until after the fact) slip the whispered line "So fucking hard..." into "Rock Bottom Blues".
Fanny released their last song in 1975, before Parental Advisory labels were introduced.
- Led Zeppelin is quite good at this. Several songs, such as "Trampled Underfoot" from Physical Graffiti get significant radio airplay despite consisting almost entirely of innuendo.
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- Chicago: A blatant example? Gee, erm...Ladies and Germs, I bring you, "Stay The Night". It's rather smooth and nostalgic, given that awesome beat in the back that requires a trained ear to hear. Now, the song itself is getting crap past the radar, but the music video, in some ways, is even more blatant than the song. Here, look!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LTWwkBNilI (Okay, she's pissed off when he reaches for her breast, and AFTER the fact that he ran his hand down her thigh during a steamy make-out session!) And, just in case you have trouble understanding Peter Cetera, here's the lyrics: http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/1835/ Hell, even one of the site members laughingly points it out as being about "Doin it, Peter Cetera style!", while also mentioning the humorous video.
"Stay the Night" was released in 1984, just before Parental Advisory labels were introduced.
- Queen's "Radio Ga Ga" is a literal example of Getting crap (caca) past the radar: Although written as a lament to TV taking over good ol' radio, it was conceived by writer Roger Taylor when he heard his toddler (French/English bilingual) son exclaim "Radio Caca" (presumably not intended as a serious statement on anything, really). If Taylor is to be believed, the band never changed the wording, and it remains "radio caca" in the recording, in spite of its title (no thanks to Media Watchdogs.
This trope is not about actual crap. And "caca" is a pretty mild term.
- The single and album versions of The Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought The Law" were different takes of the song. On the single version, Bobby sings, "I miss my baby and HER GOOD FUN." On the album version, Bobby sings, "I miss my baby and A GOOD FUCK." Oldies radio seems to be blissfully unaware of the difference in lyrics, since it's almost always the album version that gets airplay in the modern era.
(HINT: The more innocuous single version was mono-only. If it's stereo, it's the naughtier album version.)
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
- According to Word of God from Bryan Adams, the 69 in the song "Summer of 69" doesn't refer to the year. Enforcing this is the fact that as the song fades out at the end, you can hear him sing "Me and my baby in 69". Strangely, Jim Vallance, who co-wrote the song with Bryan Adams, denied this, but Bryan basically confirmed it, so it just depends on who you believe. (By the way, Vallance was 17 at the summer of 1969, but Adams was only 9.)
Hmm. Source. Adams matter-of-factly says it's about the sex act, while Vallance says it's definitely about the year. It's entirely reasonable they were thinking about different things when they wrote it and so they are both right, so this is a pretty obvious case of lyrics having multiple interpretations and thus not warranting the sticker.
- Elvis Presley of all singers gets one with his smash hit "Hound Dog". While it initially appears as nothing more than a song about a two timing lover it was actually based on a song of the same name by a woman named Big Mama Thorton. In that version she elaborates on just why the man is a hound dog in somewhat explicit detail. The fact that many people knew this and that Elvis preformed this song on the Ed Sullivan show with millions watching must've stepped on quite a few toes back in the day.
- Innuendo is one of the constant tropes of his career. Of particular note is 1969's "Power of My Love", a blatant ode to the singer's penis:
Crush it, kick itYou can never winI know baby you can't lick it (followed by sly chuckle indicating that Elvis knows you know what he really means)I'll make you give in
Elvis was abducted by aliens in 1977, well before Parental Advisory stickers were introduced.
- "Tight A$" from John Lennon's Mind Games, which managed to get the phrase "tight ass" past the censors.
The only source I could find for this getting past any censors is an unsourced statement on Wikipedia. No dice.
- The radio edit of "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" by The Darkness does at least censor the word "motherfucker", but lets the only slightly less offensive word "cunt" go. This may be due to Justin Hawkins' use of Melismatic Vocals, which make that word a little harder to understand (something like "you caaah-aaah-hunt!").
Which radio stations? What are their internal policies?
Yeah, this is just an urban legend.
[[quotelbock]]
- Bob Seger's first big chart hit, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man". Before the last chorus, Seger sings the line "you can have your funky world, see ya round!"
Yes, and?
- The Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Suck My Kiss", according to Anthony Kiedis, was about the act of fellatio.
- In fact, most of the group's songs are about drugs, sex, or both.
Borderline, but probably acceptable since they don't actually sing "dick".
- The Barbarians' 1965 song, "Are You A Boy (Or Are You A Girl)" features the line "you can dog like a female monkey." While the dog and the monkey were both popular '60s dances, it's possible that the band originally intended to switch both animals in the aforementioned line.
Specualation on a song released 20 years before Parental Advisory labels.
- The lyric sheet of Pearl Jam's 1993 album, Vs shows the words "get out of my lucky face" for the song "Leash." However, Eddie Vedder is clearly singing the lines "drop the leash, drop the leash/get out of my fuckin' face" in the song's chorus. (Several other songs on "Vs." also contain the word "fuck," including "Blood" and "Go," making "Vs." one of the most profane albums not to receive a parental-advisory label.)
Yup, he really is. Valid.
- Def Leppard's "Let's Get Rocked" is fairly blatant, with Lead Singer Joe Elliot going as far as substituting "I s'pose a rock's out of the question?" to "I s'pose a Blow Job's out of the question?" on at least one gig on the "Slang" tour.
Live performances do not have radars.
- The final line of Joe South's 1968 hit "Games People Play" goes "and you don't give a da da da da da," with the last five syllables replacing the word "damn" — which would have rhymed perfectly with the last line of the penultimate verse, "to remember what I am."
So, 17 years before America introduced music labelling, he got the word "damn" past the music labellers by not singing the word "damn"?
Rock en Español
- Andrés Calamaro's Mucho Mejor is about a man asking a "friend with benefits" to have sex. What makes it really bad is that at the end he confesses that he could end in jail because she is underage.
This is not a Calamaro song. It was recorded by Los Rodríguez, a Spanish band of which Calamaro was a member. And Spain does not have music labeling.
- Something similar happens in the song El profe by Argentinian group Miranda!, which is about a teacher fooling an underage student to have sex with him.
Argentina does not appear to have music labelling.
Traditional
- Au Claire de la Lune, the French folk song, carries a clear double entendre (the dead candle, the need to light up the flame, the God of Love, etc.) that becomes clear with its conclusion.
- In Child ballad 95 (recorded by Led Zeppelin as Gallows Pole), the singer invites his sister to take the hangman into a shady bower and thereby "save me from the wrath of this man." One need not wonder precisely how the hangman will be induced to release the singer.
- From World War I, a soldiers' song to the tune of "John Brown's Body" with the chorus "They were only playing leapfrog, they were only playing leapfrog, they were only playing leapfrog, when one staff-officer jumped right over the other staff-officer's back".
- Special mention should be paid to GreenSleaves, a folk song from late 16th century England. Though now ubiquitously associated with the general festivities of the Christmas holidays, the original song was a ballad about a character referred to as Lady Green Sleaves. According to The Other Wiki (where Viewers Are Geniuses), the common interpretation is that her epithet "Green Sleaves" may have implied that she was a...certain kind of woman. At the time of the song's composition, "green" had erotic connotations, and "green gown" in particular referred to a woman whose dress sleaves would accumulate green grass stains. From lying on the grass. On her back. This would have given the song a very racy meaning, in a cultural context long since forgotten in everyday life. Even today, one could imagine the Moral Guardians blushing if they knew about this.
- Just about any Renaissance madrigal that mentions 'death' in a manner not explicitly related to funeral or religious imagery is all about Intercourse with You, based on the French term 'le petit mort' (the little death) for having an orgasm, a term which is also present in Italian and, to a lesser extent, Spanish. Therefore, a madrigal with a line like "if I were to die a thousand times, I would be content", is basically just somebody who's really horny.
- 19th century hymn:
O higher than the cherubim
More glorious than the seraphim
Lead their praises.
Hallelujah!
Thou bearer of the eternal Word
Most gracious, magnify the Lord- Looks innocuous don't it? But this hymn was composed during the Catholic Revival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Movement when Bishops disapproved of hymns about the Blessed Virgin Mary.
- Looks innocuous don't it? But this hymn was composed during the Catholic Revival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Movement
- There's a lovely old Swedish folk song called "Uti vår hage" which most school kids get to learn by heart. It's a sweet song about a girl inviting a boy out to the meadow to pick a certain selection of berries and flowers. Put them together, and you have... an old home remedy intended to cause miscarriage.
The radar does not generally apply to songs people sing down the pub.
Visual Kei [[/quoteblock]]
- X Japan had a quite amusing variant that combined this with Refuge in Audacity. The original version of "Stab Me In The Back" is Intercourse with You + Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks. It is literally begging to be the receptive partner in male-male anal sex. So, when the band had to do this song on an album that wasn't released by their own label, 1991's Jealousy, it of course had to be rewritten. And Yoshiki did so, rewriting the song to be entirely about using drugs (which was, at the time, an even bigger taboo in Japan than gay sex). This rewrite is the one that is on Jealousy.
I was unable to find any evidence of this.
Vocal
- Cole Porter's "Too Darn Hot" might fit with lyrics like "I'd like to beat with my baby tonight" and references to the Kinsey report. Although it certainly didn't get past the censors at the time, since radio stations refused to play it and the movie used an altered version.
So it didn't get past the radar, then.
And that is that. There are quite a few more valid examples than I expected, such that the RIAA might warrant its own subpage. I think that most of the invalid examples can be moved to Double Entendre or Intercourse with You.
Ukrainian Red Cross
I would probably go over Pokemon if I was in better shape.
I just remembered that ESRB usually watches trailers or sumfin' like that, rather than playing the games, so it's dubious if the rader has the same range as for films and whatnot.
Edited by Delibirda on Jan 10th 2022 at 4:23:51 PM
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
and Pokémon GO is rated 9+ on iOS worldwide and uses standard video game ratings for Android (E rating for jurisdictions that use the ESRB for example).
Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 10th 2022 at 1:26:26 PM
Kirby is awesome.
Angry babby
Most of that page is either shoehorn innuendo or Demographically Inappropriate Humor or Parental Bonus.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
he/him | Image Pickin' regular
~Tropes_Searcher re-created Radar.Cars, which was cut before even the Repair Shop thread. None of the examples look valid. Can Radar.Pixar be cut too? Having the old Radar/ pages around risks making people believe the old "definition" is still valid.
Keet cleanup
Angry babby
I kind of want all the Radar pages to be locked while they're being cleaned, TBH. People still add crap to Radar.Pokemon for example.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Quickly looking over that page... Is the San Franshitsko one valid? Would need to know about ratings boards in other countries.
Several of those entries are already on Radar.Pixar.
How sweet it is
Re: Cars: Cut and salted. Is there anything valid in Pixar before it needs a cut?
Edited by Berrenta on Jan 18th 2022 at 9:43:31 AM
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
Okay, the FSK (German film ratings board) is pretty lenient on swearing. So the Inside-Out item is not valid. Not sure about the rest, which look like parental bonuses and light sexual humor.
Calendar enthusiast
Let's do this.
Ratings from IMDB.
A Bug's Life
Ratings:
- USA: G, TV-G
- Canada: G (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec), PG (Nova Scotia, Ontario)
- Australia: G
- New Zealand: G
- UK: U
- Ireland: PG
- The scene where the two flies hit on Francis (who they think is a girl at this point) contains a line that seems rather questionable when you think about it.:
Fly: Hey cutie, wanna pollinate with a real bug?
- "Jiminy H. Cricket!"
- The scene where the characters are in a tin can bar where Flik is looking for Tough Bugs, A mosquito customer orders a Bloody Marry. Given the color, It's unknown if it's a drop of blood or red wine but either way it's shocking to see in a G-rated film.
- A deliberately blatant one, but during the first part of the film's climax with the fake bird attack, the ants and Circus Bugs use boysenberries as blood to act like they were mutilated by the attack or killed, causing the grasshoppers to think that the "bird" is really attacking them. In one scene, when Slim shows Hopper and Molt his supposedly injured eye and begging for their help, the latter struggles to hold in his vomit.
Cartoonish fantasy violence, romance, and a Pinocchio reference. Nothing that goes beyond the assigned ratings.
Brave
- USA: PG, TVPG
- Canada: PG
- Australia: PG
- New Zealand: PG
- UK: PG
- Ireland: PG
- At the beginning of the movie, Fergus actually playfully grabs Elinor's butt. It's just off camera, but her reaction makes it undeniable.
- This little bit of dialogue in the Witch's cottage:
Witch: The last time I did this was for a prince.Crow: Easy on the eyes! Tight pants!
The most surprising thing here is that CARA was actually willing to give a PG rating to an animated movie. Nothing that goes beyond PG.
Cars
Ratings:
- USA: G, TV-G
- Canada: G
- Australia: G
- New Zealand: G
- UK: U (cinema), PG (DVD)
- Ireland: G
- One of the cars at the sponsor's tent describes the race in the beginning of the movie as "a real pisser." In a G-rated movie.
- Lightning McQueen groupies Tia and Mia "flashing" him with their headlights. Had they been human, they each would have flashed a pair of something, but it wouldn't have been headlights! Also, if you look at the left side of the screen during that scene, one of the "cameracars" gets a nice rear view of one of the groupies, and he looks quite pleased about it.
- Mater overhearing Lightning's gushing over Doc Hudson:
Lightning McQueen: He's won three Piston Cups!
Mater: [Spit Take] He did what in his cup?! - When Lightning McQueen bursts into Doc Hudson's office, he finds Sheriff in a compromising position on the hydraulic lift, as Doc examines his underbelly. He even has an examination pipe up his exhaust pipe; Lightning walked in on the car equivalent of a rectal exam.
Sheriff: Gettin' a good peek, city boy?
One instance of mild cursing, but not enough to warrant a rating higher than G. Also, THEY'RE CARS.
Coco
Ratings:
- USA: PG (cinemas), TV-PG
- Canada: PG
- Australia: PG
- New Zealand: PG
- UK: PG
- Ireland: PG
- In the Land of the Dead, Miguel passes a nude woman posing for a painter. Even though they're skeletons and nothing is shown, their expressions clearly sets the scene.
- The performance art that Frida Kahlo previews for Miguel begins with multiple versions of herself climbing out of a half-eaten papaya. "Papaya" is a Spanish slang term for a woman's naughty parts, meaning Pixar basically flashed the entire audience.
- Héctor revises a Bawdy Song's references to a woman's anatomical features mid-verse when he remembers his audience.
Héctor: ...and her— [Beat] —knuckles, they drag on the floor.
Chicharrón: Those aren't the words.
Héctor: There are children present!
Nothing that violates a PG rating.
Inside Out
- Germany: 0 (all ages)
- The German dub managed to sneak in a curse. Anger calls San Francisco "San Franschissko". That would be the German equivalent of calling the town San Franshitsko.
As Tabs noted, the FSK isn't particularly concerned about cursing, and I believe that scheisse is much milder than shit.
Pixar Shorts Look, I can't find exact ratings for these so I'll just assume they got G or PG unless otherwise stated.
- At the end of Tokyo Mater, the villain Kabuto (an obnoxious Japanese racing car) is stripped of his modifications as a result of him losing to Mater in a drift race.
- In the short film El Materdor (where Mater imagines himself a bulldozer fighter) at the end he is between "the twins," teenage girl Miatas Mia and Tia, who are fawning over him. He swings his hook over and yanks one of the girls closer by her rear bumper. Her surprised facial expression, though momentary, pretty much confirms that he's grabbed her butt.
- In Party Central, Art tells one of the party-goers he saw their girlfriend "making out with some slug in the closet".
- THEY'RE CARS
- THEY'RE CARS
- THEY'RE MONSTERS
The Incredibles
Ratings:
- USA: PG, TV-PG
- Canada: PG (Nova Scotia and Ontario), G (rest of Canada)
- Australia: PG
- New Zealand: PG
- UK: U
- Ireland: PG
- Syndrome's exclamation about how Mr. Incredible "got bizzay" after marrying Elastigirl when he notices Violet and Dash.
- When Frozone is looking for his super suit he argues with his wife and the argument ends with this final exchange.
Frozone: You tell me where my suit is woman, We are talking about the greater good!Wife: Greater Good!? I am your wife, I'm the GREATER GOOD that you're ever going to get.
- The Jack-Jack Attack short has this gem where Syndrome shows up at the Parrs House and the Baby Sitter Karry so tired and traumatized thinks that he's her replacement, This exchange happens when she draws attention to the symbol on his suit.
Karry: What does that stand for?Syndrome: For..."sitter"! Yeah, "sitter". Originally I was going to have initials for "babysitter" but I would have been going around wearing a big "BS", and you understand why I couldn't go with that. *chuckling through the last handful of words*
A couple of minor, discreet jokes that don't violate the UK's U rating, let alone the various PGs.
Toy Story
- USA: G, TV-G, TV-PG (home video)
- Canada: G
- Australia: G
- New Zealand: G
- UK: PG (original), U (re-rating)
- Ireland: G
- One of Woody's Catchphrases is "There's a snake in my boot!" "Snakes in the boot" is an old slang for drunken hallucinations. Arguably it's an In-Universe example as well.
- One of the very first scenes in the first movie is Slinky going on and on with his speech about how Woody is right and everyone should listen to Woody. Mr. Potato-Head takes off his mouth and taps it against his backside to visually suggest Slinky is an ass-kisser.
- This exchange between Buzz and Woody after they first meet.
Woody: OK OK, We’re all impressed by Andy's new toy.Buzz: Toy?Woody: T, O, Y, Toy.Buzz: I think the word you're looking for is Space Ranger.Woody: The word I'm looking for I can't say because there are pre-school toys here.
- While daring Buzz to prove he can fly, Woody calls him "Mr. Lightbeer". You normally don't get references to alcohol in a G-rated film.
- One of the arcade games in the Pizza Planet arcade is called Whack-a-Alien. Despite being a reference to the Alien burster scene from the Alien films, If you look at the arcade cabinet itself, you can see fake plastic blood coming out of its chest. In a G-rated film.
- One of Sid's toy creations is a fishing rod with lady's legs and where the rod is positioned is unmistakable suggestive.
Well that's a whole lot of stretching.
Toy Story 2
Ratings:
- USA: G
- Canada: G
- Australia: G
- New Zealand: G
- UK: U
- Ireland: G
- While it could just be seen as a "job dropping" move, Buzz suddenly extending his wings after witnessing Jessie's moment of awesomeness near the end of the movie could be seen as representing something a little more risque.
- This certainly gives a new meaning to the "This Space For Rent" joke during the outtakes.
- Speaking of outtakes (only found in VHS and DVD releases), there is one with Stinky Pete and two Barbie dolls in his packaged box where he promises them a role in Toy Story 3. After he realizes they're filming, he exits them out of his box while staring at there... umm... accessories. This blooper was removed from future home media releases (including Disney+) due to John Lasseter's sexual misconduct.
- That's a stretch.
- Changing values, want to avoid Unfortunate Implications.
I think it can safely be fired into the sun. Ukrainian Red Cross
I think we should get some eyes on Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?. I think this one may have slipped by (appropriately enough) due to not being indexed properly. How much of it actually got past Cartoon Network's radar? I think most of it was let through intentionally. What few examples weren't can probably be condensed to a section on the main page rather than having a whole page on its own.
Having reached page 69, it's obvious that this very thread is getting crap past the radar.