FEATURE:
Mind Your Ps and Qs!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kirsty MacColl and Shane MacGowan
The Case of Fairytale of New York: Censorship in Music
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I can appreciate…
PHOTO CREDIT: @dariusbashar/Unsplash
how, especially in a more modern and (hopefully) enlightened time, certain songs that are played on the radio might not seem appropriate or contain language that is either rude, offensive or discriminatory. There has been a bit of a debate rumbling because one of the best-loved Christmas songs, Fairytale of New York, by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl has been the subject of censorship. We all know the word ‘faggot’ is offensive and not one that we can really accept in 2020. It is not only offensive to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community but, if an artist used that word today in a song, it would be censored for the radio edit. As this BBC article reports, BBC Radio 1 are not going to air the version with the F-word included:
“BBC Radio 1 will not play the original version of Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl this Christmas, because its audience may be offended by some of the lyrics.
The station said young listeners were particularly sensitive to derogatory terms for gender and sexuality.
It will instead play an edited version with different lyrics sung by MacColl.
But the 1987 original will still be played on Radio 2, while 6 Music DJs can choose between the two versions.
A BBC spokesman said: "We know the song is considered a Christmas classic and we will continue to play it this year, with our radio stations choosing the version of the song most relevant for their audience."
The duet is one of the most enduring Christmas pop songs, having returned to the UK top 20 every year since 2005. Along with a string of other festive favourites, it is now rising the chart again, at 59 in the current midweek chart”.
But Radio 1 has decided younger listeners who are unfamiliar with the track would find some of the words stark and not in line with what they would expect to hear on air.
The new edited version changes two lines - one swapped for an alternative version in which MacColl sings "You're cheap and you're haggard" in place of a homophobic slur”.
Some say the song should be binned completely, but Fairytale of New York is a fabulous song that is not only one of the most enduring and unusual Christmas songs – like Die Hard being a Christmas film! -, but I think we should play the song as it features the late Kirsty MacColl – who died twenty years ago this year. Even though it is just one word being edited, there are those who feel that, as we can hear the original on streaming services with the F-word included, does it matter if a radio station censors?! This article in The Guardian polled listeners from BBC Radio 1, 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music to get their views:
“The Radio 1 listener: Alex Hood
A culture war around the Pogues’ song Fairytale of New York feels like a new Christmas tradition, like a Lindt chocolate Santa, but homophobic. In this year’s iteration, Radio 1 has removed two offensive words from the recording it plays, but Radio 2 will continue to play the original; Radio 6 Music DJs can choose between the recordings.
This perennial debate has become more tiresome by the year, but simply put: popularising slurs against the LGBTQ+ community, particularly on a mainstream platform such as a BBC radio station, is unacceptable. The song has not, and should not, be outright banned, but we shouldn’t have to accept slurs of any form – especially in this instance, when there is a perfectly acceptable alternative lyric in the rerecorded version from 1992.
The 6 Music listener: Luke Turner
While the argument over Fairytale of New York is not a new one, this year it has felt especially fraught, like a bad dose of port’n’turkey flavoured acid reflux at 4am on Boxing Day. I admit that, on a personal level, the contemporary enthusiasm for deeming this or that song or artist #problematic and beyond redemption is exhausting and troubling. The best art challenges preconceptions, makes us feel uncomfortable, forces us to confront the safety blanket of orthodox views. Does Fairytale of New York fall into that category?
Shane MacGowan’s explanation for the lyrics – that they’re the words of a character and that “sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the story effectively” – is perfectly reasonable. Across the pop spectrum from, say, the devilish characters Nick Cave created in Murder Ballads to the horrific storytelling on Immortal Technique’s Dance With the Devil, offensive lyrics are key to the artistic process of writing a convincing, dramatic work. The same applies to art, television, literature. But is “faggot” really adding anything to the song that Kirsty MacColl’s replacement “haggard” doesn’t serve? I don’t think so”.
Banning the song altogether would be too far but, I guess, there is not going to be a lot of difference is the offending word is removed. It does call into question the debate regarding censorship and, now that we are more aware and open-minded as a society, should we go back and evaluate other songs that might not seem appropriate?! There are rules and guidelines regarding language and what words can be included in songs for radio - and I listen to stations when the word sh*t is included in songs. Anything spicier than that would be taken out and, when it comes to profanity, radio stations have to be aware that younger listeners may be listening and it is not appropriate. That said, if you listen to The Beatles Hey Jude, one can hear John Lennon swearing in the background at one point – after he fell off a chair during recording, the F-word is shouted. It is audible and, to this day, it is played on radio stations all around the world! I am not going to say which F-word is most offensive and inappropriate, but given the recent argument regarding a Christmas classic, I think censorship and editing needs to be applied more widely. Rather than sweep every song that is going to be broadcast to ensure the language is not offensive and outdated, there are examples that, I guess, need re-examination.
Obviously, as 2020 has been a particularly important year regarding racial issues and promoting Black Lives Matter, do we need to take a closer look at songs where there is outdated and offensive racial language – those that are derogatory or offensive to the Black community? There is a famous song, Walk on the Wild Side (by Lou Reed), where there is an un-P.C. term for a Black person (or Black girls in the case of the song), and that gets played widely - and it is controversial because of its mentin of drugs. How far do we go regarding censorship or anything considered blasphemous? I do think that, as we need to support the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, certain terms in songs that are played on radio need to be reassessed. I would be interested to see, in the coming days, whether the BBC stations align and Fairytale in New York is edited or not played as often. I think the problem arises when you consider the fact that streaming services will not edit songs like radio stations will and, to this date (20th November), Fairytale of New York is not marked as ‘explicit’ on Spotify – and the F-word is left in. I am going to bring in an article that examines censorship through the decades and how, from sexual references to mentions of guns and drugs, there have been some infamous cases:
“Music censorship relaxed a little bit in the 60s and 70s, as long as you didn’t say things too blatantly. A hit single about delaying sex till marriage to avoid pregnancy? Sure, if you could say it as artfully as The Supremes did in “Love Child.” An honest-to-God Top 20 hit about the sex and drug predilections of the Andy Warhol crowd? Thank you, Lou Reed, for “Walk On The Wild Side.”
Songs with erotic noises are an art in themselves. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus’ proved too hot for America in 1969, but The Chakachas ‘Jungle Fever’ broke the taboo just a year later, as did “Pillow Talk” by Sylvia Robinson, the same woman who’d make history as the founder and owner of Sugar Hill Records.
By the 80s it seemed that the powers behind music censorship had lost the war. Songs with strong language were all over FM radio (The Who again, with ”Who Are You”); longtime boundary-breaker Frank Zappa had his first (and last) Top 40 single with the family-friendly “Valley Girl”; and the twin revolutions of hip-hop and metal were knocking down whatever lyrical restrictions were left.
Then along came the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose crusade for music censorship was in some ways the best thing to happen to musical freedom in the 80s. You might call the former First Lady Tipper Gore and her crew the definitive mix of noble intentions and utterly ham-fisted execution. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they really wanted to protect teenagers’ ears from potentially harmful messages. But their aggressive methods (including bankrupting Dead Kennedys’ leader Jello Biafra over a museum-quality piece of HR Giger art), and their clueless choice of targets (yes, Twisted Sister’s “Under The Blade” really was about surgery) doomed them to failure, as did a nation of teens who figured they could protect themselves just fine, thank you.
Music censorship got uglier as the 90s wore on. The hip-hop group 2 Live Crew may have been every parent’s nightmare, but they did have a “Tipper sticker” on their notorious album As Nasty As They Wanna Be, and the PMRC always insisted that the parental-advisory warning was all they asked for in response to their crusade for music censorship. But that didn’t stop authorities in Florida from arresting the owner of a store that sold the album, and, eventually, the group itself. Both convictions were overturned, and As Nasty As They Wanna Be sold two million copies, but for a time the censorship wars weren’t so funny anymore. What was funny was your local indie-rock band’s attempts to cover the single “Me So Horny” in solidarity – as many did at the time.
By the 90s, the Wal-Mart chain store had replaced the PMRC as America’s moral arbiter, refusing to stock albums if the content didn’t meet their criteria. Nirvana changed the name of the In Utero track “Rape Me” to the nonsensical “Waif Me,” leaving the song title partially intact. More notably, Wal-Mart banned Sheryl Crow’s self-titled second album because of her song “Love Is A Good Thing,” which mentioned Wal-Mart and, specifically, how easy it was to buy guns there. This perhaps was an ominous hint that anti-corporate sentiment was about to replace sex and drugs as the real taboo”.
PHOTO CREDIT: @melwasser/Unsplash
Does one go through these songs and, as you can see from the article, adjust some older tracks to suite a more modern mindset and moral compass?! I think, in the wake of Fairytale of New York cropping up in the news, maybe radio stations do need to draw up new rules when it comes to mentions of sex, violence and language – and, especially, offensive terminology and outdated terms. Censorship has recently come into play regarding Drill videos and the assumption, by the police, that they incite violence. There are a lot of articles regarding censorship in music and where one draws the line. Is it a case of simply hooking out swear words and offensive terms but, when it comes to suggestiveness regarding sex and violence, is that okay!? There are particular genres, like R&B, Rap and Drill, that are more prone to linguistic cosmetic surgery and censorship compared to others. One song that has raised debate because of its content is Cardi B’s WAP. An article from The New York Times examines that song’s content:
“What kind of music do you listen to? Do you ever listen to songs with lyrics that are explicit, suggestive or violent? Do you prefer the clean versions of these songs or the unedited ones? Why?
In “Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ Proves Music’s Dirty Secret: Censorship Is Good Business,” Ben Sisario writes about the hit single and its explicit themes:
Doc Wynter still remembers the first time he heard “WAP.”
A top radio programmer for decades, Wynter has come across countless explicit rap tracks and “blue” R&B songs that required nips and tucks before they could be played on-air. But even Wynter, the head of hip-hop and R&B programming for the broadcasting giant iHeartMedia, was taken aback by “WAP,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s brazenly graphic anthem of lubrication, when he was given a preview before the song’s release in August.
“It hits you at the very beginning — like, whoa! — and then it just keeps on going and going and going,” Wynter said, still marveling at the song’s barrage of suggestive imagery. “Thank God we have systems in place,” he recalled thinking, “that prevented that record from hitting the airwaves.”
Of course, “WAP” did hit the airwaves, and the streaming services, in a big way. One of the year’s most inescapable hits, it held No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for four weeks and drew 1.1 billion clicks on streaming platforms. An instant social media phenomenon, the song spawned remixes and memes galore, including a subgenre of outraged-slash-titillated parental reaction videos.
To an extent not seen in years, “WAP” also became something of a political lightning rod, decried by pearl-clutching commentators like Ben Shapiro, who saw the song as a “really, really, really, really, really vulgar” embodiment of liberal hypocrisy. (Cardi B has been a vocal supporter of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.)”.
I am quite liberal when it comes to language in songs and, so long as anything offensive and obviously controversial is omitted when it comes to airplay, then the rest is okay. I think it is impossible to go through the entire history of music and adjust for 2020 but, when it comes to artists putting out songs for airplay today, self-censorship and consideration is required regarding language that might be deemed offensive. I do find it odd that there are songs widely played today that contain very obvious racist and even homophobic language. Some might say that if Fairytale of New York is censored or up for discussion, then what about other songs that tread a similar course?! I think the Christmas classic will get played a lot this year but, as mentioned, it will be intriguing to see whether there is widespread censorship or whether stations are more relaxed. Either way, I don’t think the song will put off a lot of people; it will continue to be shared and loved by people this year. I do think censorship needs to be more of a priority going into next year, as 2020 has been a year of awareness. Some might say that censorship removes artists’ freedom of speech and it will damage expression and music in general, but we are only talking about radio play and, as highlighted, streaming services will not necessarily edit a song or mark it as explicit if they do not feel it is. There is a lot more to discuss and, going forward, I do think the nature of censorship needs to be examined and explored…
PHOTO CREDIT: @krivitskiy/Unsplash
IN greater depth.