I know when I started listening to music with explicit lyrics they would still play the songs on the radio and show videos on TV of the songs. They'd have minor tweaks to bleep out the words or sub in something else that may or may not have made sense. The differences changed the song a little, but they weren't drastically different.

Now I can think of two instances where the song or video is completely different that what gets aired publicly. Is that something that has happened since the internet took over? Or has this always happened and just been less exposed to the general public?

My examples are "Fuck You" versus "Forget You" and the two video versions of Blurred Lines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwT6DZCQi9k

7/31/2013 9:43:13 PM

well hello there

7/31/2013 9:46:09 PM

"Fuck You" is a bad one. Totally ruins the song.

I think absolute worst one, though, is "Sober", by Tool. The original song has a line that goes Jesus blows his fucking whistle. There is an edited version that I've heard on the radio several times where they don't bleep or garble the word, or change the lyric--they just chop it out, accompanying music and all! It totally destroys the rhythm and meter of the song to make it just go "Jesus blows his whistle", with a beat missing from a measure, haha.

7/31/2013 9:49:25 PM

Definitely some of the chops are ridiculous or don't make sense, and a lot do affect the cadence of the music. But that's a little different than what I'm noticing in these cases, where it's the entire song or video that is fundamentally different. Not just one line.

[Edited on July 31, 2013 at 9:53 PM. Reason : technically fuck you is just a different word, but it's the titular word; kinda heavy change]

7/31/2013 9:52:57 PM

7/31/2013 9:53:04 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac1yrHzAcz4

7/31/2013 9:57:51 PM

three 6 mafia - stay fly

7/31/2013 10:24:26 PM

8/1/2013 4:34:47 PM

the clean/dirty versions of Play by David Banner are fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qld7WvHa5kc

http://www.metrolyrics.com/play-clean-version-lyrics-david-banner.html
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Play-Dirty-lyrics-David-Banner/45E25EB765745E064825706D002674CC

8/1/2013 5:32:51 PM