Bowdlerise/Music

"I almost got drunk at school at fourteen
 * The version of "My Old Kentucky Home" sung at the Kentucky Derby changes "darkies" to "people".
 * Either way, the lyrics "the darkies/people are gay" still sounds funny to modern ears.
 * Averted by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Rather than change references to "Ol' Massa whippin' the darkies" in "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," the legislature simply retired the state song and held a contest to choose a new state song.
 * The Cole Porter song "I Get a Kick Out of You" is commonly performed in one of two Bowdlerised versions, which remove the reference to cocaine and replace it with "perfume from Spain" or "a bop-type refrain."
 * "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is often sung using the standard edition with all the Double Entendres removed when not performed as part of Pal Joey. One would need to Bowdlerise far, far more than this song to make a clean version of Pal Joey, a feat which was accomplished in the film version.
 * The Rolling Stones had to record a special version of "Let's Spend The Night Together" to play it on BBC radio because it implied sex. The bowdlerised version was called "Let's Spend Some Time Together".
 * They were also forced to play this version when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States, but Mick expressed his displeasure with this by rolling his eyes and giving the camera exaggerated looks of disgust while singing.
 * D12's Purple Pills, a song about drug use, was rewritten to Purple Hills, a song about travelling while engaging in drug use. ("Blue and yellow purple hills?" Yeah, they're high.)
 * Rapper Styles P's song Good Times Pt. 2 (I Get High) has two versions, a milder version with slightly different lyrics that goes with the music video and the more explicit version on the CD (the drug use remains constant throughout both versions). The mild version is arguably of higher quality, as the hardcore version uses profanity and references to violence to sound 'gangster' but the music video version flows better with more assonance and consonance. (For example, "I get high 'cuz I ride, what's better to do/ and I'ma always stay live, 'cuz I'm better than you" rhymes better than replacing the second line with the explicit version's "and I never give a fuck, 'cuz I'm better than you".)
 * The Clear Channel version of What It's Like, by Everlast, replaces all "objectionable" words -- including "Chrome '45" -- with humorous sounds (well, the music execs probably find them humorous, at any rate).
 * Who else found the way they'd changed "Like cutting off his balls" to "Like cutting off his -" followed by the sound of a very loud pruning shears to be a lot more painful than the uncensored line?
 * Dr Demento has been known to use duck calls and other funny noises to drown out obscene words in some songs, such as over the repeated refrain of "What the fuck?" in The Fools' "Psycho Chicken".
 * He has also been known to cut-n-paste parts of songs to remove "offensive" material. The version of Dr. Hook's "Freaking at the Freaker's Ball" broadcast on the program, for instance, had the line "All the fags and the dykes are boogyin' together" electronically replaced with a copy of "White ones, black ones, yellow ones, red ones" from later in the song.
 * He also took out a brief snippet from "Ti Kwan Leep/Boot to the Head" where Ed Gruberman complains, "All this faggy stuff is starting to piss me off!"
 * The funniest Dr. Demento version is Frank Zappa's "Titties and Beer," in which most of the song is bleeped out, including the title, which Dr. D introduces as "Beepers and Beer." This hasn't kept the song from being a perennial Funny Five favorite.
 * The song "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails is a complete subversion. Aside from removing the word "fuck" 4 times, the song is left completely unedited when played on the radio. This may be because most Moral Guardians are scared shitless of Trent Reznor. There is an occasionally aired version that also cuts out "penetrate" (as in "you let me penetrate you"), though evidently "violate you" and "desecrate you" are still okay.
 * After the 9/11 terror attacks, several songs that mentioned bombs and war were censored -- among them was Electric Six's "Gay Bar", which included the lyrics, "Let's start a war, start a nuclear war!" In the United Kingdom, the offending words were replaced by the sound of whips cracking. In the American radio edit for alternative and college radio, however, the lyrics were replaced entirely with "Let's do an edit, do a radio edit!"
 * And of course, there are the Black-Eyed Peas changing "Let's Get Retarded" to "Let's Get it Started" for radio play. This is an interesting example, as the most heard version seems to be the bowlderized version, so much so that you can find many people that don't even know there's different lyrics. This wasn't an uncommon occurance at the height of the song's place in the public consciousness either. The "clean" version has almost Covered Up the original by the same artist. If that makes any sense.
 * The popular song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels has the final line where Johnny says "I told you once, you son-of-a-bitch, I'm the best there ever been." On the radio it usually plays as "son-of-a-gun." Not too noticeable considering the song is otherwise clean.
 * Even better, when this song was put in Guitar Hero III, it was censored... even though the official soundtrack CD has the line as "son of a bitch".
 * This particular edit seems to completely change the tone of the song. "Son of a Bitch" in the correct tone shows complete contempt, but no matter how you say "Son of a Gun", there's a feeling of affectation in it.
 * Then there's Charlie's song "Long Haired Country Boy" where the line "but I will take another toke" is replaced by "but I will tell another joke".
 * Charlie Daniels bowdlerized many of his own songs after becoming a born-again Christian.
 * Spoofed in "Oh Susie" by German singer/comedian Frank Zander, in which all the (still quite obvious) "dirty" words are replaced with random noises ostensibly due to Executive Meddling.
 * Some radio stations completely replace the second verse of the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" because of the repeated use of the word "faggot."
 * It's not just the radio. Their greatest hits CD also has the edited version.
 * No one mentioned "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio"? It's a Monty Python song entirely about this where there are very odd and obvious bleep sounds every few words about profanity censorship. And yes, it has been played on the radio.
 * Apparently, the B-side had the "un-censored" version.
 * The song "Seasons in the Sun" is a highly bowdlerised version of a French song "Le Moribund" ("The Dying Man") by Jacques Brel. Both are about a dying man saying goodbye to his friends and family, but in the original, it becomes pretty clear that all the people that the narrator is saying goodbye to were people his wife was having an affair with.
 * When Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" was originally released in 1967, a lot of radio stations objected to the line "Making love in the green grass" because of the sexual connotations, so the record company issued a version that poorly edited in the line "Laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey" (from earlier in the song) over the other line. That version was quickly forgotten and the uncensored version became the standard one over the years. Then, for reasons unknown, the censored version was included on the popular 1990 Best of Van Morrison comp.
 * Incidentally, both versions are available on iTunes, and not marked as "clean" or "uncensored". So, best of luck...
 * The song "Almost" by Bowling for Soup, a title quite appropriate in that after the edits it's almost a different song. For example:

Where I almost made out with the homecoming queen

Who almost went on to be Miss Texas

But lost to a slut with much bigger breastses"

"I almost got punked at school at fourteen
 * ...became...

Where I almost got a hug from the homecoming queen

Who almost went on to be Miss Texas

But lost to a girl who sewed her own dresses"

"Her boyfriend's a
 * Then we have this little number. Note the omission of "Drunk" and "fourteen" but the distinct presence of "slut with much bigger breatses". Seems like a stupid place to draw the line.
 * Radio Disney edits many of the songs they play. Some of the edits are rewrites, and others have lines completely removed. One example: Kelly Clarkson's "Walk Away" had the line "So before you point your finger, Get your hands off of my trigger" removed as well as an entire verse between the last two choruses for little more than having slightly sensual connotations.
 * So did Allstar Weekend's "Not Your Birthday" when played there: "Quit your bitching" was changed to "Stop complaining."
 * In the same song, "Before the drinks are gone" was changed to "Before the night is gone," and "Nobody gives a damn" was changed to "Nobody really cares."
 * When the Eels album Daisies Of The Galaxy was released, Dream Works Records requested they record bowdlerized lyrics to "It's a Motherfucker" for an edited version of the album to be sold at Wal-Mart. E complied, in a tongue in cheek Writer Revolt sort of way, by changing it to "It's a Monster Trucker", complete with unintelligible CB radio speak during instrumental breaks.
 * Songs with potentially offensive references to Jesus in their title frequently have it omitted. For example, "Trip with Jesus" by The Union Underground is frequently just referred to as "Trip...". Not so bad? British metal band Orange Goblin has a song called "Jesus Beater" (it isn't actually as offensive as the name would make you think). It got bowdlerised, though... into "Wife Beater".
 * Tool's "Stinkfist" has no offensive lyrics, but it is frequently referred to as "Track #1".
 * The words "knuckle" and "elbow" are also censored on the radio. Apparently people have issues with anal fisting...
 * The official edited version of the Beastie Boys album Ill Communication has some rather perplexing Bowdlerizations. (Many would also find the very concept of an "edited version" perplexing, but that's beside the point.) Aside from being poorly done in general -- portions of the entire finished mixdown are reversed instead of just altering the vocal track -- there are edits to completely innocuous words such as "shifting" and "funky". But the most humorously misguided edit on the album would have to be in "Get It Together", when the word "crack" is edited out of the line "Never ever ever smoking crack." So instead of getting a nice anti-drug message, the hypothetical listener of this family-friendly album now has to wonder exactly what it is that the Beasties will never ever ever smoke. (The same song has the word "shit" unedited in one lone instance.) A later song also has the word "Cheeba" edited out of the line "I stopped smoking Cheeba, that was part of the key."
 * The later To The Five Boroughs also has an edited version, but it's much less of a hack job, as almost all of the songs actually have alternate vocals recorded to mask the offending words. Hearing the edited version of "Ch-Check It Out" on the radio, for example, you would never guess just how profane the song really is. "Wait a minute, all you Klingons in the fucking house? Turn this motherfucking party out? Where'd all this come from?"
 * "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba goes from "pissing the night away" to "KISSING the night away."
 * In Karaoke Revolution 2, the Boys II Men song "I'll Make Love To You" is edited to say, "Throw your rose on the floor / I'm gonna take my rose off too," which makes absolutely no sense in a song that's literally about sex.
 * Another Cole Porter example: it's unlikely you'll hear singers nowadays launch into the first chorus of "Let's Do It" as it was originally written: "Chinks do it, Japs do it / Up in Lapland little Lapps do it..." (The replacement lyrics about birds, bees and educated fleas were taken from one of Porter's later choruses, but they spoil the nationality theme of the first refrain.)
 * Likewise, the line "Roosters with a doodle and a cock do it" was changed to "Even little cuckoos in their clocks do it".
 * The Drifters' "Under The Boardwalk" originally had the line "we'll be making love under the boardwalk" in the chorus, but radio stations objected, so it was changed to "we'll be falling in love." The Bowdlerized version has become the standard, although some oldies stations have started playing the original.
 * Mocked in Desorden Público's song "El día que prohibieron la violencia y el sexo en la tele" ("The day where sex and violence were banned from TV"), which is about what the title says. The result: all the programming is screwed, since everything Newscasts to Soap Operas is damaged when not outright off air, people stops watching TV at all since there is nothing to watch; and to appeal to those yearning for the lost things producers use those media not affected by the ban, so now people "can hear gunshots and moans on the radio".
 * The single version of "My Name Is" by Eminem featured substantially rewritten lyrics. They're generally either just slightly toned down or so intentionally ridiculous that you can easily figure out the original content anyway ("I just drank a fifth of kool-aid, dare me to drive?"), but a couple of lyrical substitutions are different enough for the real words to be a little surprising when you're used to the radio version. Even knowing his reputation, it can be kind of jarring to find out "If you see my dad, ask him if he's bought a porno mag and seen my ad" is actually "If you see my dad, tell him I slit his throat in this dream I had".
 * Another crazy censored line in 'My Name Is': 'Well, since age twelve, I've felt like a caged elf who stayed to himself in one space chasing his tail.'
 * Other Eminem songs, such as "Stan", were censored simply by muting half the song's lyrics. In one version, the word "trunk" was removed from the line "Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge/With his girlfriend in the trunk, and she was pregnant with his kid", as if such an action would have been perfectly acceptable if she had been sitting in the front seat.
 * The difference could be interpreted in the edited version (which should have replaced "trunk" with "car" instead of just blanking it) as Stan being tired and emotional and accidentally falling over the edge in their car, instead of shoving his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk whether he meant to drown her and the car and possibly himself or not (and was just trying to drive to meet Eminem).
 * That wouldn't work, other lines in the song outright state that he stuffed his girlfriend in the trunk.
 * The version of Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box" played on MTV contains the altered line "buried in my spit" (and later "shove my nose in spit"). Radio stations, which had actually been playing it uncensored previously, also switching to this version post-nipplegate. Thankfully, they've now started just cutting the word short rather than using the rather silly alternative.
 * Presumably for the sake of the singers among us, Rock Band 2 uses the version that replaces the instances of "shit" rather than removing them.
 * And let's not forget the edit of "Heaven Beside You", which included the line "that's fracked up".
 * Which is extremely ironic, considering that the song is about censorship in mass media.
 * The MTV version of Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" censored the line "Let's roll another joint" in an odd way, by just playing the offending word backwards (it sounded something like "let's roll another t'nohj"). Amusingly, when Tom Petty accepted an MTV video music award for the video, he couldn't help noting that whenever he saw his video on TV, there was one word of the song he could never make out.
 * Some radio stations present the lyric as "let's hit another joint," which could still mean what Petty wanted it to mean.
 * When the original Jesus Christ Superstar Rock Opera was released in 1970, Judas's first song, "Heaven On Their Minds," was released as a single. On the album, the song is Judas's critique of Jesus's growing role as messiah. In the single, seemingly half of the words are changed ("If you strip away the myth from the man" becomes "If you strip away the sleep from your eyes," for example). It also adds background singers for some reason. May or may not be deliberate Bowdlerization, when you take into account the pattern of Rewritten Pop Versions of songs from other shows by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
 * Also, I believe that there is a censored version of Coheed and Cambria's "Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness" where several words are cut out. Including the word "crush". Which leads (I think; I have yet to see the censored version) to "You're a selfish little (Whore, which goes here, may have been cut, also), I'm the selfish little (Whore), if I had my way I'd (Empty space/bleep) your face in the door... Wonder what that line could be...
 * A version of The Beatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko" distributed to American radio stations in 1969 blipped the word "Christ" from the line, "Christ, you know it ain't easy."
 * Subverted in M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". What initially seems to be Sound Effect Bleep is, in fact, the official, er, lyrics, to the song.
 * Those noises (a gun shooting then cocking and a cash register noise) have themselves been censored into less offensive noises, like a dull popping sound.
 * BBC Radio 1 played a censored version of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" during Christmas 2007, blanking the words "slut" and "faggot". They received complaints from angry listeners, from the Pogues, and from the late Kirsty MacColl's mother, and generally attracted much more attention than if they'd just played the song uncensored in the first place. (They quickly apologised and played it unaltered later the same day.)
 * Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" on both radio and music video versions mute out the sexual references and back-scramble the references to crystal meth. The radio version also edits out an entire sexually explicit verse, which is actually kept in in the music video version.
 * Pink Floyd's Money. Heard on the radio in New York, "do goody good bullshit". Heard on the radio in North Carolina, "do goody, good, bull".
 * The Stories' "Brother Louie", a song about the joy and pain of an interracial love affair turned marriage proposal, lost its unique punch when a brief spoken word interlude representing the fathers of the fated couple was cut out from the original Hot Chocolate version that it was a cover of. White voice: "No spook in the family." Black voice: "No honk in the family."
 * Wheatus' song "Teenage Dirtbag" was censored on UK radio by blanking words out of one verse:

He brings a to school

And he'd simply kick

My if he knew the truth"

"Braggin that you know, how the brothers feel cold, and the slums got so much soul"
 * Interestingly enough, this song was part of the UK soundtrack album for the anime series Beyblade V-Force. Even more interesting that only the second line of the aforementioned chorus has a censor blank on it.
 * Extremely interesting is how in most parts of the word, Beyblade is considering a typical stupid children's card game show. Perhaps that's why the album wasn't released in the US...
 * The MTV version just mutes out "" and "".
 * And the Vevo version only mutes out "".
 * Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know is a classic case of Bowdlerization not working. The song was very popular among teens, but of course, there's an F-bomb in it. At school dances and similar functions, the radio edit version would play where the offending word was simply muted. So what would happen when that spot in the song came up? Everyone in the room would shout out the offending word at the muted point.
 * To be fair, most radio stations played it such that it went, "When you ffffff- her." Which actually sounded good too.
 * A similar phenomenon happens with Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" when "Oooh, this my shit" becomes "Oooh, this my shhh".
 * Guitar Hero 3 comically censors the word "niggers" in The Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia":

""I can even fuck him in the ass!""
 * The same edit changes the line "Kiss ass while you bitch" to "Kiss up while you snitch".
 * When Serj Tankian and Foo Fighters covered the song for an appearance on MTV's Video Music Awards in 2007, they had to use the same altered lyric.
 * Speaking of Guitar Hero, when Activision released the Lighter and Softer "family friendly" spin-off Band Hero, they unfortunately had to censor many of the songs. But, they would not only get called out for even putting in songs that require censoring to begin with, they also got bashed for their edits:
 * "American Pie" does not want us to know what they were having with that rye.
 * "Pictures of You" censors "gun" from "a soldier and his gun", seriously now?
 * "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" blanks out "bedpost" and "in your jeans"
 * Even with all that, you can still "give a damn 'bout your bad reputation", and they included "Honkey Tonk Woman"
 * Dir en grey's song "embryo" had its lyrics changed entirely for radio play. The edited lyrics speak of wishing to join the narrator's mother in the afterlife. In the original, the lyrics (sung from a daughter's perspective) reveal that the narrator's mother has hung herself to save herself from an abusive relationship with her husband, who has now turned to raping his daughter. She ends up eventually killing her father during another rape, and yet decides to not abort the baby she is now carrying.
 * In the Nickelback song "Rockstar", the radio version bleeps out the word "drugs" in the line "The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap." The bleep, of course, only makes it sound worse.
 * Surprisingly missing in most classic rock songs.
 * The Who's Who Are You is almost never edited -- "Tell me, who the fuck are you?" -- twice in the song.
 * Similarly, the (admittedly barely comprehensible) "oh, fuckin' hell" from The Beatles' Hey Jude is always left intact, if only because the censors don't realize the line exists.
 * About half the time, Steve Miller's Jet Airliner escapes unscathed. The other half, they're getting "caught up in any of that / funky kicks going down in the city."
 * Elvis Costello's Oliver's Army never censors the line "One more widow, one less white nigger", even on stations who will censor the N word in other songs.
 * The Outhere Brothers -- "Boom Boom Boom" has two different sets of lyrics; the original which contain lots of sexual innuendo, and the bowdlerised radio version. I've occasionally heard the dirty version on after-hours radio shows.
 * Compare it to "FYITA". Given that bowdlerization would cut about 90% of the song...
 * Some radio versions of The Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch" have the words "sex", "pants", and "nuts" cut from the first verse, as well as removing "gettin' horny now" from the chorus.
 * And in "Fire, Water, Burn", the word "fucker" is replaced with a donkey's "hee haw" sound.
 * Fergie -- Glamorous : Usually, it either has "take your broke ass home" changed to "take your broke broke home", or has the intro lyrics completely removed. The line "i got problems up to here... fuck y'all" is also deleted.
 * The end of Marillion's Garden Party originally included the line "I'm fucking", changed to "miming" for the single release. When the single was performed "live" on Top of the Pops Fish shut his mouth for the pertinent word, letting the track continue playing.
 * In the broadcast version of Shiny Toy Guns' Le Disko, in addition to the obligatory removal of the F-bomb, the line "with loaded guns" is also cut.
 * The "clean" version of "Baby Got Back" has the intro removed, and "walking like hoes" changed to "walking like flo-jo".
 * NWA -- Boyz In The Hood: "Jockin' the bitches, slappin' the hoes" => "Jockin' the freaks, clockin' the dough", among other obligatory changes.
 * There is nothing quite so funny as living in a Mormon community where popular modern music of all stripes gets played on the radio... including incredibly popular foreign acts. The "rage" inherent in Rammstein's songs, and the romantic overtones of any suave latino dancer, reduced much non-English songs on the radio to karaoke versions, as the local censors only spoke English and a handful of French. Angry German guy? Must be lots of cursing. Iglesias serenading a hot girl? Must be lots of fucking euphemisms and entendres. Never mind that this is still going on even today, even with the internet and song lyrics available with a couple of clicks, it just sounds like the music'd-over words could be curse words.
 * The BBC edit of "Respectable Street" by XTC censored out all off-color references, without which the song doesn't make much sense. In the line about "which sex positions pleases her old man", "sex position" is replaced by "preposition", while "Saturday I saw him retching over our fence" becomes "...stretching over our fence". Don't even get me started on the video.
 * The version of Faithless's "Insomnia" played on the radio was almost always the "monster" alternate lyrics version, as the original lyrics had the line "I only smoke weed when I need to... where's my cess?". Both versions, however, had the innuendo "makin' mad love on the heath, tearing off tights with my teeth".
 * Supposedly, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had "my libido" changed to "jalapeño" for the radio. This may be a case of Mondegreens.
 * "My libido" also gets censored in The Muppets when the barbershop quartet sings it...by having Beaker sing the line.
 * The band James subverted this with the video for their biggest hit, "Laid". The third line of the song, for both the radio and album version of the song, is "She only comes when she's on top." In the video, the line is changed to "She only sings when she's on top" -- except the singer is quite obviously singing the original lyric, and the word "hums" appears on screen. Also, it's not quite clear why mention of a female orgasm had to be edited on MTV in the first place -- particularly when it passed just fine on the radio.
 * A censored version of Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys' "Get Low" would seem impossible, but they pulled it off. They substituted seamlessly a long "MODAFOCKEEEEEERS!" with "To all skit skit skit skit skit skit". Seamless.
 * The original version of Kanye West's "Gold Digger" has the line "But she ain't messin' wit' no broke niggaz." The radio edit changes it to "But she ain't messin' wit' no broke broke."
 * "I'll be burnin' rubber you'll be watchin’ me pass." The weird thing is, although it sounds stupid, it actually makes more sense this way.
 * And at least it's a lot more lyrical than the original's sloppy radio edit "kissin' my Benz"...
 * "Toes" by Country Music's Zac Brown Band was hit hard with this. The first line in the chorus get changed from "I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand..." to "...toes in the sand" and "ass in the lawnchair, toes in the clay" at the end of the song to "toes in the water, toes in the clay" on the radio edit. The line "roll a big fat one" also had "fat one" silenced. Other edits just silence the occurences of "ass"; still others use "toes" for "ass" but leave in "fat one"; still other stations just play the song uncensored.
 * Interestingly, the countdown show Bob Kingsleys Country Top 40 always played it completely uncensored when it was climbing the charts, but now censors it to "toes in the sand" whenever it's used for a retrospective.
 * Jason Aldean's "Johnny Cash" has several edits as well. The album version has a spoken "screw you, man" in one verse; depending on the station, this was changed to "I'm outta here," silenced or played as-is. Some versions also delete "Hear that train a-comin', rollin' around the bend / The man in black gonna rock your ass again" at the end.
 * Speaking of Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue" notoriously beeps "'cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you Sue." At the end, he says "And if I ever have a boy, I think I'm gonna name him... Bill or George, any damn thing but Sue!" The "Damn" is just snipped out of the radio version.
 * Taylor Swift has had this happen twice. "That's fine, I'll tell mine you're gay" in "Picture to Burn" became "That's fine, you won't mind what I say." In a somewhat weirder case, "I laugh 'cause it's so damn funny" in "Teardrops on My Guitar" was changed to "just so funny" on some stations.
 * Another really weird one. "Lookin' for a Good Time" by Lady Antebellum changed "Would you get the wrong impression / If I called a cab right now" to "...if I stood and danced right now." To avoid "dance" from occurring twice in this verse, "you shouldn't dance like that" earlier in the same verse became "you shouldn't move like that." Just what was wrong with calling a cab, anyway?
 * Another weird one: "You're in the corner with your boys, you bet 'em five bucks / You'll get the girl that just walked in, but she thinks you suck" Taken from the radio edit of Pink's "U + Ur Hand".
 * According to The Other Wiki, that last one was changed because of a Double Entendre.
 * And another totally baffling case of "so what was so suggestive about the original anyway?" in Jake Owen's "Eight Second Ride" changes the line "I said, climb on up, but honey, watch the cup that I'll be spitting my dip inside" to "...where I'll be spitting my dip tonight." There's absolutely no difference in meaning or possible suggestiveness, and this edit forces "tonight" to rhyme with itself.
 * Another oldie: "Big Bad John"'s climatcic line of "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man" became "one big, big man."
 * Even "Weird Al" Yankovic, a man known for keeping his songs family-friendly, has fallen victim to this. When "The Saga Begins" played on Radio Disney, they had to change the line "hitting on the queen" to "talking to the queen". When he preformed "Couch Potato" on Nickelodeon, they didn't like the lyric "TiVo now thinks I'm gay", so his band members shouted "HEY!" over the "offending" word.
 * When Jimmy Buffett plays "all ages" shows, his staple "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)" gets bowdlerised. Most noticeably the title line gets changed to "Why don't we get lunch in school?", though a number of other "family friendly" changes are made to the other lyrics as well.
 * The lyrics of Akon's "I wanna fuck you" were changed to "I wanna love you" for radio and TV broadcasting. I have no idea why...
 * When Da Vincis Notebook sang "Another Irish Drinking Song" in concert, a line about a Catholic priest who dropped dead "underneath the altar boy" was abandoned. Instead, they sang, "In respect to all our Catholic friends, we won't sing this line tonight."
 * Radiohead's song, "Creep," has a radio edit in which the line, "I wish I was special/You're so fucking special" is replaced with "I wish I was special/You're so very special." This is retained in the Rock Band version of the song. In one acoustic version performed for a radio session, Thom Yorke lampshaded it by deliberately croaking out "very" in a very different tone of voice from the rest of the song everytime the line came up.
 * Aerosmith's "Janie's Got A Gun" was subjected to this trope not once, but twice. The line "he jacked a little bitty baby" was originally "he raped a little bitty baby," but Steven Tyler changed it at the request of the record company. Which is a good thing, because the sexual abuse in the song is completely undetectable with that one little word taken out. (This also qualifies as Executive Meddling.) As if that wasn't enough, some radio stations have been known to change the line "and put a bullet in his brain" to "and left him in the pouring rain." The phrase "Completely Missing the Point" comes to mind...
 * An example where the title was bowdlerized, but the song remained intact, involved Nirvana's In Utero. Wal-Mart would not stock the CD until the cover art was changed (because medical drawings of the female body are so offensive) and the title of "Rape Me" was changed on the cover to "Waif Me." No attempt was made to censor the song itself.
 * In The Doors' "Break On Through," the line "She gets high/She gets high/She gets high" became "She gets/She gets/She gets" in order to pass Top 40 radio muster. Morrison still managed to get some crap past the radar by singing "She gets/Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh" and mushing the last word until it sounds like "Aaaaaaaaaaaah". Meanwhile, the censors at The Ed Sullivan Show asked Jim Morrison to change "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl, we couldn't get much better" in "Light My Fire," but Morrison, being Morrison, sang "higher" anyway.
 * Well, who wouldn't have? The bowdlerisation didn't even comply with the rhyme scheme, for crying out loud.
 * The Dresden Dolls song "Coin Operated Boy" has two versions:


 * vs.

""I can even take him in the bath!""

"I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
 * Hilariously, the music video uses the second, bowdlerised line, but uses the video (and a back scrubber, and facial expressions) to imply the first. Apparently Amanda's known to roll her eyes when performing live and being made to use the bowdlerised version line.
 * One band name that was bowdlerized was the Butthole Surfers. When they hit the Top 40 with "Pepper," many radio stations called them the "BH Surfers." Their name is even rendered as "B****h**** Surfers" on the clean version of the album Electriclarryland.
 * When Alice Cooper had a Top 40 hit with "Only Women Bleed," Casey Kasem introduced the song on American Top 40 simply as "Only Women."
 * Well, the single was released under the title "Only Women," so the Bowdlerisation wasn't Kasem's doing so much as it was, presumably, Executive Meddling. (Unless it was Alice's idea, which is doubtful.)
 * The radio version of Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat" replaces the line "Kiss my ass/I bought a boat" with "Adios/I bought a boat".
 * When Sawyer Brown covered Dave Dudley's Signature Song "Six Days on the Road," "I'm taking little white pills" became "I'm passing little white lines" because the Country Music audience of the late 1990s was presumably less accepting of a drug reference. (Although with some imagination, the bowdlerized line kinda sounds like a drug reference just the same.)
 * When it first became a hit, Bush's "Everything Zen" generally got the line "Should I fly to Los Angeles, find my asshole brother?" by uncensored, but now more often it's replaced by "...find my in-law's brother", or else the word "asshole" is just played in reverse.
 * Weezer had to re-record "We Are All On Drugs" as "We Are All In Love" in order for it to get played on MTV. Despite the fact that it wasn't a pro-drug song, and in fact wasn't even about taking drugs in the literal sense. Oddly, in the video itself, Rivers Cuomo is seen reading a newspaper with the headline clearly reading "WE ARE ALL ON DRUGS", and this goes completely uncensored.
 * A somewhat more minor case with Weezer: Certain stations refused to play "El Scorcho" because the first two words of the song were "God damn". They compromised by doing a radio edit they informally called "the dog damn version", where the word "god" was played backwards.
 * Asher Roth: "I danced my face off and had this one girl completely naked. Drink my drink and smoke my..."
 * The song "Daddy Cool" was shortened by about 10 seconds by Portugal radio broadcasters to remove the squick feminine voice.
 * The Song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a supreme example of this, in its original form it was about a hobo convincing a young boy to follow him with tales of mountains made of candy, who he then [forced to "sit on his peg". The original ending of the song even went like this:

And I'll be damned if I hike any more

To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

"Pretty pretty please, don't you you ever ever feel
 * On some radio stations the line "Praying to a God that I don't believe in" in the song Breakeven by the Skript was changed to "Praying to a God that I barely believe in."
 * Other stations will repeat the line from later in the song, "But no wise words gonna stop the bleeding."
 * Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," has two edited versions for the line that says "Read between the lines, what's fucked up and everything's alright," one says "what's messed up" which makes sense, and one substituting "what's freaked up" which just sounds absolutely ridiculous in the context of the song.
 * There are at least two more edits of the song, one in which the F-word is played backwards and one in which the word is simply spliced out.
 * The single version of The Beautiful South's song "Don't Marry Her" is bowdlerized, changing "Don't marry her, fuck me" to "Don't marry her, have me" as well as changing "sweaty bollocks" to "Sandra Bullocks".
 * In the Canadian band One to One's major hit, "Angel In My Pocket", the album version refers to the angel as a "she" (e.g. "She's forevermore mine") while the single version says "He's forevermore mine". A case of Hide Your Lesbians for radio and Much Music, perhaps?
 * The radio edit of "In One Ear" by Cage The Elephant naturally cuts short the refrain's repeated references to "people talking shit", but more interestingly the line "the crowd will only like me if they're really fuckin' drunk" becomes "the crowd will only like me if they're all smacked up". That's right, the band got rid of the f-bomb, but also turned a reference to alcohol into a reference to heroin, apparently just for the sake of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
 * The single version of Marilyn Manson's song "The Beautiful People" has the rather awkward line "There's no time to discriminate/Hate every mother hater that's in your way." Almost makes you long for a melonfarmer.
 * For their performance of "Dope Show" at the Video Music Awards, MTV insisted they alter a lyric mentioning "cops and queers" (which MTV also censored out when playing the music video itself). The band complied... by changing it to "the pigs and the fags", which was apparently okay (even though it means the same thing as the objectionable line).
 * It was of course completely inevitable for this to happen with Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You". There are actually two different radio edits, "Forget You" and "F You" - the latter at least has the same amount of syllables. Some versions even have "Fuck You" changed to "Fox News".
 * This was lampshaded in a sketch on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow with Cee-Lo Green as musical guest in a sketch where Cee-Lo Green's record managers speak in Gosh Dang It to Heck-style euphemisms ("fuck" and its variants are replaced with "forget," "forgetters," and "forgetting"; "asshole" is changed to "Sasquatch," "nigger" is changed to "Nintendo" {complete with a white character trying to say "Nintendo," people getting offended, and the white character remarking that it's not cool when someone like him says it}, "shit" changed to "sugar," "dick" changed to "Dixie cup," and, in a bit of Actor Allusion, "cunt" is changed to "Country Strong" {the movie episode host Gwyneth Paltrow was recently in}) and try to come up with a new title for "Fuck You" so that way it can air on live TV without repercussions from the FCC. In the end, Cee-Lo's record manager (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) won him the right to say... for his song. The sketch was of course immediately followed by his performance of the "Forget You" version of the song.
 * Some editions of Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster" have all instances of the word "bitch" truncated into "bit".
 * The Mikado's "punishment fits the crime" song used to have a vain lady "blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice". These days, she is more usually "painted with vigour".
 * The title of Snoop Dogg's "Sexual Eruption" is changed to "Sensual Seduction" for radio play. The words, however, are not changed.
 * Sean Kingston's song "Beautiful Girls" has the word "suicidal" blanked out of the chorus when it plays on more family friendly stations such as Radio Disney, which makes the chorus incomprehensible, because instead of going "You'll have me suicidal, suicidal/when you say it's over" it is "You'll have me (silence), (silence)/when you say it's over". Other times, it may be substituted with "in denial".
 * In "Runaway Love" by Ludacris, the word high in the line "Momma's on drugs, gettin' high up in the kitchen" is cut out, but that whole verse is about a girl who is being molested by her mother's boyfriend, and in general the song is about runaway teens.
 * Comedian Billy Connolly's parody version of the song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." contained a line about the singer's wife calling him "an F-ing C". This was beeped out on the single.
 * P!nk's recent song "F**kin' Perfect" was changed for the radio, obviously. The lyrics change from

Like you're less than, f**kin' perfect

Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel

Like you're nothing, you're f**kin' perfect, to me"

to "Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel

Like you're less than, less than perfect

Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel

Like you're nothing, you are perfect, to me"

""Fuck SNL and the whole cast
 * May cause quite a surprise for fans searching for this song online.
 * In addition to that, the title was shortened to "Perfect". And don't even get me started on the music video.
 * The admittedly Contemptible Cover of Roxy Music's Country Life features two women in transparent underwear standing in front of a forest. A version made for stores that otherwise wouldn't carry it cuts the girls out altogether, leaving... a picture of a forest.
 * "Smoke a Little Smoke" by Eric Church contains the line "Dig down deep, find my stash / Light it up..." twice. To skirt the drug reference, the first one becomes "Dig down deep, find my glass / Fill it up..." (which fits nicely with the last line, "break out the wine, forget again") and the second, "Dig down deep, strike my match". This makes it a rare example of a lyric-swap that doesn't dilute the original meaning.
 * Alan Jackson's "I'll Try" opens with the line "Here we are, talkin' bout forever / Both know damn well it's not easy together". Even though it wasn't his first time swearing in song, the "damn" became a "too" on the radio edit.
 * The 1979 David Bowie song "Boys Keep Swinging" has the lines "When you're a boy/Other boys check you out" in the first chorus. When Bowie performed the song on Saturday Night Live later that year, censors muted that second line, and the vocal remains muted on the Season 5 DVD release. At least he got to perform the song -- RCA chose not to release it as a single in the U.S. (also counts as Values Dissonance, as it was not subjected to this in the U.K.).
 * Kidz Bop is a series of cover albums sung by little kids. The lyrics are changed to be more kid-friendly. An egregious example is the cover of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way", which edits out all references to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, making the song utterly meaningless.
 * Some of the edits actually make the songs sound dirtier than before, like "Wrap it up / Can't stop 'cause it feels like it's really close" (Wrap it up / Can't stop 'cause it feels like a overdose," from Cascada's "Evacuate The Dancefloor") or make no sense in the context of the song, like "And you out when you ain't got anyone" ("And you wild when you ain't got nothin' on / haha," from B.o.B. and Bruno Mars' "Nothin' On You").
 * Bob Carlisle's album Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace) has a song called "It Is Well with My Soul" (not the hymn), that borrowed a few lines from a well-known James Brown song for the bridge. Problem: Carlisle's mostly Christian audience (at the time) likely wouldn't have appreciated the term "sex machine". So the lyric becomes: "Get up (get on up)/Stay on the scene/Aww, you know what I mean."
 * Kanye West's "Power" originally had a second verse that started with a somewhat unwarranted Take That against Saturday Night Live and a much-needed Take That against Kanye himself:

Tell ‘em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass

More specifically, they can kiss my asshole

I’m an asshole? You niggas got jokes

You short-minded niggas’ thoughts is Napoleon

My furs is Mongolian, my ice brought the goalies in

Now I embody every characteristic of the egotistic

He know, he so, fuckin’ gifted

I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts

Got treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault

My childlike creativity, purity and honesty

Is honestly being prodded by these grown thoughts

Reality is catchin’ up with me

Takin’ my inner child, I’m fighting for it, custody

With these responsibilities that they entrusted me

As I look down at my dia-mond-encrusted piece""

""The brown hero, live from Ground Zero
 * Naturally, when Kanye West was chosen as the musical guest for the season 36 episode hosted by Bryan Cranston, the entire second verse had to be changed. One would expect the SNL Take That to be altered and some of the profanity to be replaced with euphemisms, but instead a completely new verse was written (and, in some reviewers' opinions, a better verse than the original one). The new second verse goes like this:

Machine gun flow, made her get a Ross Perot

And this is disestablishmentarianism

With my night goggles on, got military vision

And it’s still a very Christian way to think about livin’

When you prayin’ for freedom ’cause your mind been in prison

‘Cause they tryin’ to control every single big decision

You ain’t effin’ the system, then why the eff is you livin’?

Look, dawg, you can cop whatever suits you on

Three-piece, cuff links and the accoutrements

They been feedin’ us ish without the nutrients

So I’m back with another hit to let the truth be known

And your boy still fresh with the Gucci on

Them Italians sure know how to make what the moodies want

And they really can’t take what Doobie on

But I be on the same thing ’til you prove me wrong.""

"Cut my life into pieces, this is my last [no audio]. Seriously!"
 * Some stations edited the reggae-rap bridge from Sugarland's "Stuck Like Glue", either because it was mildly suggestive ("Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, feelin' kinda sick / Just a spoonful of sugar make it better real quick"), because it was so bizarre sounding, or both.
 * Averted in the Green Day album "21st Century Breakdown". Wal-Mart attempted to get Green Day to record a censored version of the album, as the store does not sell explicit albums. The band refused.
 * Canadian music video channel Much Music has a history of censoring references to suicide. It is therefore unsurprising that the word "suicide" was removed from Papa Roach's "Last Resort." More surprising was the removal of the word "resort", despite being part of the title!

""Curse like a sailor/Drink like a mick/My only words of wisdom are/""
 * "No News" by country music band Lonestar. "Joined a cult, joined the Klan" became "Playing guitar with the band".
 * "Alright Guy" by Todd Snider. In at least the official music video, the line "Now maybe I'm dirty, and maybe I smoke a little dope / Hey, it ain't like I'm goin' on TV and tearin' up pictures of the Pope" silenced the word "dope". Later on, "Hey, I was only kidding when I called them a couple of dicks" (in reference to a couple police officers) reverses the word "dicks".
 * And when Gary Allan covered the song, the "pope" line was changed to "This one time for medicinal purposes, they forced me to smoke some dope / I'm pretty sure I can still be the President / But I don't think I'll ever get to be the Pope". Changing the second half is at least justifiable to remove the now-dated reference to Sinéad O'Connor's controversial performance on a 1992 episode of Saturday Night Live (similarly, "that new book with pictures of Madonna naked" becomes "that old book"), but that first half is rather egregious. Even more strangely, Gary left the "dicks" line unchanged.
 * Apparently you can't even say "ass" on country radio anymore. Rodney Atkins' "These Are My People" changed "Lovin' and laughin' and bustin' our asses" to "...bustin' our backs", which also messes with the AABCCB rhyming scheme.
 * The Enrique Iglesias song "Tonight I'm Fuckin' You" is called "Tonight I'm Lovin' You" on the radio, which makes the singer sound less sleazy. Plus, those who are used to hearing the radio version would be pretty surprised listening to the uncensored version for the first time.
 * There are even two further edits, one which blanks out damn and ass, and another that re-records Ludacris's part, replacing it with an entirely new bridge sung by Enrique.
 * As hard as it is to believe, rock and roll songs from the 1950s were considered menacing enough by the (non-teenage) audiences of the day that, for a while, Pat Boone was able to become very successful by recording bowdlerised covers of popular songs.
 * The Jonas Brothers cover version of "Year 3000" by Busted cuts out any lines judged to be unsuitable for their audience (which, ironically enough, is pretty much the same demographic Busted was popular with in their native UK).
 * The Jonas Brothers did the same thing to Busted's "What I Go to School For". The Jonas Brothers just have a crush on a girl, Busted was Hot For Teacher. Apparently, Disney doesn't like the idea that boys with a hot teacher might fight over who will "get the best view of her ass."
 * You'd think that the song "Remember The Name" by Fort Minor would be a pretty hard song to preform live on The Tonight Show without bowdlerizing, given all the swears in the original version, but they manage to avert this trope rather gracefully. It also helps that they didn't have to censor the words "buzzed", "vodka", and "shot" like they did on the radio version.
 * Britney Spears had a brush-in with this on "If U Seek Amy." Some radio stations just trimmed the "ek" from the chorus (rendering the infamous line as "All of the boys and all of the girls are beggin' to if you see Amy" ) The "If U See Amy" version was also officially released as a radio edit. Some stations (including BBC Radio) went further, censored most of the line entirely, and just called it "Amy"
 * When Moby covered Mission Of Burma's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver", MTV had the policy of censoring all gun references in music videos, so the video version became "That's When I Realize It's Over".
 * Even S Club 7 has this happen to a few of their songs when they were performed on their TV shows. In "All in Love is Fair," the line "Get your ass on over here" is changed to "Get your act together" which is the line in a different part of the song. At another point, one of Bradley's raps is completely blanked out of "Do it 'Til We Drop." Any time they mentioned "making love" was cut as well ("Show me Your Colors" and "Summertime Feeling.") The fact that they made all these minor cuts, then let them perform "Hey, Kitty, Kitty" at all is especially baffling.
 * Some editions of The Lemonheads' It's A Shame About Ray render the title of "My Drug Buddy" as just "Buddy". The lyrics receive no editing whatsoever though.
 * Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks held a contest on their website to determine how their single "Senator" would be bowdlerized: The original line was "what the senator wants is a blow job" and the winning entry was "what the senator wants is a corn dog".
 * Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow's "Picture": "I've been fueling up on cocaine and whiskey" is either changed to "water and whiskey", or just mutes "cocaine".
 * Speaking of Kid Rock, he also parodied this in the song "Cowboy".

"A war is raging that we don't understand
 * Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" has all the gun references (mostly the words "bullet" and "gun") removed from radio edits and the rare times it appears on a music video channel.
 * The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Gimme The Loot" includes a line about robbing a pregnant woman at gun point. Apparently, this was considered beyond the pale by either album producer Sean Combs or someone at the record label, because even the otherwise uncensored version of the song still censors that line. It's somewhat bizarre to listen to a song that's full of cursing and violence and realize you've just heard the word "pregnant" bleeped out. "Machine Gun Funk" also Sound Effect Bleeps out the phrase "the blue suits" with police sirens for unknown reasons, though the line is so relatively innocuous that this might have even just been done because it sounded cool.
 * Nicki Minaj's "Superbass" is a victim of this. However, no two stations can seem to agree on what is and isn't profanity. If one hears the songs on enough different stations, they might as well have heard the uncensored version of the song.
 * In Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup", the line "And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles / If you prefer drinkin' from glass" changes the word to "vegetables". The word "ass" is also censored in the next line, even though Toby notoriously said that word uncensored in "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue" 10 years prior.
 * Trace Adkins' "Rough & Ready" changes "'what are you lookin' at, asshole' smirk" to "'what are you lookin' at, pretty boy' smirk" and "That's a bitch, it makes me itch" to "It don't fit, it makes me itch" (in reference to a suit) on the radio edit.
 * The band Kick Axe contributed two songs to Transformers: The Movie - because executives deemed their band name inappropriate for young audiences, the soundtrack album credited them as Spectre General instead.
 * A radio edit for Panic! at the Disco's song "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" censored "god" but not "damn" from "goddamn" (a word frequently used in the song). In fact, the music video also lampshades the need to censor it by having Brendon Urie cover his mouth on "god".
 * Blake Shelton's "Drink on It" changes "Man, he sounds like such a prick" to "Man, I'd like to bust his lip".
 * The radio edit of Down with the Sickness cuts out the whole "Every night I dream..." part because of implied child abuse and massive use of the F-word. In Rock Band 2, the solo is left intact, but the lyrics are removed.
 * The radio edit of Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name removes the entire "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" part and immediately cuts to the end. The cover in Guitar Hero 2 simply changes the lyrics to "Now you're under control, I won't do what you tell me!" and "UNDER CONTROLLLLLLL!!!".
 * After Lee Hazelwood threatened to sue them over their lyric changes, the only way Megadeth could include their cover of "These Boots" on subsequent releases of Killing is My Business... and Business is Good! was to censor every changed lyric, resulting in a remastered version with about half the words being bleeped out, which makes their version seem much filthier than it actually was.
 * NWOBHM band Tank have an odd subversion. The booklet in the 2005 reissue of Honour and Blood blatantly changes the lyrics of many of the songs to remove violent or controversial content. However, the actual audio remains unaltered aside from the remastering, leading to numerous situations where what the booklet says is clearly not what Algy is actually singing. While some of the changes may well be a case of the people making the booklet trying to write out the lyrics by ear instead of looking them up and ending up with a Mondegreen, others definitely seem to be deliberate, such as the removal of all references to Islam in "The War Drags Ever On" (which plays the "all Muslims are terrorists" card so hard that many people would be shocked to learn that it was written over a decade and a half before 9/11). For example, the lyrics for the first verse of the song are actually:

And I doubt that we can

There's no mistaking the mad sons of Islam

As they spill blood on the sand

A strange religion that destroys through the Koran

Freedom's lost in this land

Hades or Heaven, they're under its command

Whatever rights had a man"

"A war is raging but we don't understand
 * But according to the booklet, what he's singing should be heard as:

And I doubt that we can

There's no mistaking the terms of this land

As they spill blood on the ground

A strange religion spreads through the crowd

Put them out of this land

Hades or Heaven, they're under their command

Whatever rights have a man"


 * Brazilian comedy group Casseta & Planeta has a song that the chorus roughly translates to "I am so sad/I am a fucking wreck/I'm in the shit/Became a card out of the deck". The G-rated version featured on this televised performance has an impressively funny array of bowdlerization. Said chorus is translated first to a quite risqué version (I am a goddamn wreck/I got down to pick up the soap), another alludes the original line "eu me fudi" ("I've fucked myself") with "I've made a fondue", and the final one is a Stealth Pun lampshading that they're running out of words to replace the cuss word "caralho" ("I bought a dictionary, couldn't find a word that rhymes with baralho").
 * According to The Other Wiki, Lily Allen, while performing the song "Not Fair" on The Graham Norton Show in 2009, changed the lyric about how she spent ages "giving head", to instead having spent ages "kneading bread".
 * Oddly, the lyric sheet to the self-titled album by OK Go has a line in "Don't Ask Me" listed as "Don't waste my blasted time" instead of "Don't waste my fucking time". The actual song isn't censored though.
 * OK Go have covered "Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello live - instead of singing it's one N-Word Privileges-averting section ("All it takes is one itchy trigger / one more widow, one less white nigger"), they replace it with a line from a previous verse ("If you're out of luck or out of work / we can take you to Johannesburg")
 * Invoked in the video for Raghav's "Top Of The World", in which he covers his mouth in the line "you would think that I'm fucked, but I'm not" (the offending word is blurbed out as well, and only the edited version is available on iTunes).