Profanity is heard in many different songs across the world. But, many young people ask the question “Why should it be censored?” So, why should it? Many adults say it shouldn’t because it “gets into people’s minds.” They think children might get “brainwashed” by the bad words. But children say differently.
“It’s freedom of speech.” Many people agree that freedom of speech has a huge impact on this situation. “Not only does it violate the first amendment of freedom of speech, but censoring lyrics also violates your freedom of thoughts.” A singer is writing from their mind and their feelings. Censoring lyrics takes away their feelings in the song.
Another argument is that it messes up the whole song. The message of the song is completely changed when censoring music.
Cee Lo Green has a song called “F— You” which was changed to “Forget you” because of the profanity in his music. It changed the whole chorus, which changes the whole meaning. F— and Forget are two different things, in my opinion.
Another example of a changed song is Nirvana’s song “Rape me.” This song seemed to deal with the media’s coverage of the writer, Kurt Cobain’s, personal life. It was changed to “Waif me” on the packaging for the stores. According to the dictionary, waif means a homeless child, which is completely different from rape.
The radio also changes songs for society’s sake. Because of the complaints they have gotten, they were forced to censor the inappropriate lyrics. For example, Sean Kingston made a song called “Beautiful Girls.” In that song, he sings, “You got me suicidal,” but it was changed to “You got me in denial” due to the word being “too bad for the radio.”
But, sometimes, radio stations censor words that aren’t even bad. For example, Radio Disney, a radio station for tweens, censored Emblem3’s song “Chloe”, when there is not a cuss word to be found. They changed the lyric “I know your sister turns everyone on” to “I know your sister’s got it going on.” Based on what kids say, Radio Disney is probably the worst censorship radio station.
Not only is there Radio Disney that makes kids mad about censorship, there is also a CD called Kidz Bop. Kidz Bop changed the whole song just because it is “bad.” Kidz Bop recently released their new CD, Kidz Bop 24. On that CD they did a cover of a song called “Thriftshop” by Macklemore and completely ruined it. “Thriftshop” is a song with a bunch of cuss words in it, and they changed almost every line to something different. To start off the song, they say “Walk up to the club I’m like, ‘What up? I got a hit song’” and then proceeds to change “Probably shoulda washed this, smells like R. Kelly’s sheets” to “Probably shoulda washed this, smells like my baseball cleats.” I think that if they know a song has a swear in it then they shouldn’t do a cover of it.
There are many ways to censor the lyrics, but most ways cause the song to become different. You usually hear blanking, which is when they silence the whole word, resinging, which is replacing the offensive word or phrase with a better word or phrase, distorting, when the words are shifted down a pitch so it is hard to understand, etc. These methods are just annoying and result in angry young people.
Adults are generally the people who want censorship in songs. The top reason seems to be because children can hear the words and start repeating them. But, it’s not exactly the lyrics that are making the children get “brainwashed.” It’s the world around them that makes them start cussing. The house they grew up at and the friends that they have cause the cussing. If the parents cuss, then the children think it’s okay because they look up to them. They don’t look up to songs.
Let’s all be honest here, we all swear at some point in our life. It’s not a secret that swearing is a part of our life, whether it is coming from your mouth or your friend’s mouth. But, if you think about it, the F bomb and all the other cuss words are just words. Just like how “freak” or “darn” are just words. Why is it that the F bomb is not okay, but freak is? In my opinion, they are just words, but society makes them bad. So, in my opinion, I think it would be okay to have profanity in music on the radio and that they shouldn’t censor it.
Becca Stockover