I spent most of yesterday huddled under a pile of blankets on the couch-- being feverish and light-headed is great if you're in a Pink Floyd song, but not so much if you're trying to be a functioning adult. It seems to be the Thing That's Going Around this term, though, and while I'm feeling better today, I have a lot of catch-up to do.
So, no Deep Thoughts today, but here's a pop-culture topic to pass the time: I recently found myself buying the Radio Edit for "Toe Jam" by "The Brighton Port Authority," a Fatboy Slim side project. It's a bouncy little song with silly lyrics ("A boy looks at a girl, and a girl looks like a pony") that's perfect for bouncing around with SteelyKid, except for the out-of-left field f-bomb in the second verse. (Well, that and the godawful rapping in the Dizzee Rascal version, which appears to be the only thing last.fm has.) We don't really want SteelyKid to pick up that vocabulary too soon...
Around the same time I bought that, I bought the new Springsteen album, which is pretty mediocre, really. One of the songs on it is "Queen of the Supermarket," about, well, a guy pining for a cashier, which is sort of sweet and dopey, and also drops a completely unexpected f-bomb in the last verse.
I don't think of either Springsteen or David Byrne as artists who require radio edits. I'm hard pressed to think of another song by either of them containing obscenities, and these two are really jarring.
So what's up with this? And can you think of any other examples of random curse words dropped into otherwise family-friendly songs?
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The often bland Billy Joel dropped an F-bomb in "Laura", the second song on The Nylon Curtain. I don't know of any other Billy Joel song with profanity.
CAKE did a great version of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," dropping a single eff-bomb in reference to the lock that should have been changed. Not really a family friendly band, but pretty awesome anyway.
I saw Genesis live for the "Way We walk" tour, which included a few F-bombs from Phil Collins is otherwise radio-friendly songs, such as "And though she will f*** up your life, you love her just the same" In Invisible Touch.
None right off the top of my head (although I'm sure they'll come flooding in after I leave my computer), alas. Really odd that the random effinator shows up like that, though.
For kid-friendly pop-stuff, though, I do have an odd (and oldish) suggestion: "Ponderous" by 2nu. Nice and clean, good sound and has random shoe squeaks throughout -- which should get any kid giggly.
Bon Iver's Blood Bank does this, although the EP version slurs it out slightly. It is a quirky song anyway but pretty mainstream otherwise. It is an everyday usage of the word though, common enough.
I can think of at least three David Byrne songs with "sh*t" in them: "A Walk in the Dark," "Tiny Town," and "The Cowboy Mambo."
Springsteen used f*ck in "Long Time Coming."