an infodump about music banned by the bbc

hello, friends!

as i mentioned in my previous blog entry about “trainspotting”, i will try to speak about as many of my interests as i can on my blog in the near future and because of that i am very much aware that i have not talked much about one of my strongest interests, public broadcasting. i felt that writing about a topic i am fairly knowledgeable about, music banning done by the bbc, would satisfy my want to share what i know and, possibly, interest some people, as most people, including me, are rather curious about censored and controversial things (thinking about this, i think i have been interested in censorship since i was twelve years old, actually, when i read about the music video for the song “jeremy” by pearl jam (a song i really loved (i like the music video a lot, too, actually) at the time and still do, as i still love the album it comes from even though i am not as interested in grunge music as i was when i was twelve and own it on cd too now), which was banned by mtv (i still find this a massively interesting instance of censorship because, initially, when the video was aired, part of it was edited out and this made the audience misinterpret the video’s and, therefore, the song’s message. i will not go into this in detail as it does not really have anything to do with the actual topic of this blog entry and going into this in detail will lead me to talk about school shootings and suicide and these are topics i do not exactly want to talk about)).

i will primarily mention music listed in this list, even though it is missing some songs (i do not know how to add sources to wikipedia articles. if i could, i would edit it). if you need my opinions on any song not part of the songs temporarily banned during the gulf war listed in this list, i will also be happy to share them with you too, as i have heard all of the songs and also wrote reviews for them when i was fourteen (though, i cannot say i agree with all of the opinions and commentary i wrote back then because it was, well, two years ago).

so, for what exactly was music censored by the bbc?

sex and sexual suggestivity

the list of what songs could be banned for starts with the fairly obvious; much media including sexual content tends to be censored in public media in some way and this has been the case for bbc radio since 1930, when the song “love for sale” by cole porter was banned off airplay (it is rather curious to me that, for the bbc, banning sexual music, which has existed for centuries (i am mentioning this because some of benjamin britten’s classical repertoire (especially “the foggy, foggy dew”) was affected by this ban and was only restricted to being played on cultural programmes about benjamin britten), started specifically with a song about sex work: how puritanical would their views on sex have to have been for this to have been the worst for the british population at the time (also, considering that, in modern standards, “love for sale” is not particularly concerning)?) the vast majority of banned songs are banned for this reason: two particularly famous examples are “relax” by frankie goes to hollywood (as the song was a massive commercial success at the time it was released in 1984 and received heavy airplay by other radio stations, despite only being played by some night-time djs on bbc radio 1, which made banning the song rather embarrassing for the bbc. this is relatively well-known, i think, as i saw a question about it in a pub quiz book once) and “je t’aime… moi non plus” by serge gainsbourg and jane birkin (there were definitely many more radio stations, not only the bbc’s, that banned this one, even though the radio station my dad used to put on in the car when i lived in moscow played it!) the bbc was also very concerned with moaning and this led to the ban of some songs with rather amusing amounts of it in them (“love to love you baby” by donna summer includes 23 (though, this concerns the original 16-minute version of it, which i doubt the bbc would play even if the moans were not there (but, anything can happen: i have once heard a radio station in frankfurt play the full version of “autobahn” by kraftwerk, which is 23 minutes long and have heard the album versions of “stairway to heaven” and “riders on the storm” on france bleu’s music show “decibels” (wonderful show, by the way!) in order for the host to fill in time which would have been otherwise taken by an interview with a performer who fell ill before the programme)) and to the banning of songs that still cannot be played on radio in the uk today: “french kiss” by lil’ louis is banned not only by the bbc, but by ofcom, the british telecommunications agency which controls every licensed radio station in the uk! however, this specific ban is really funny to me because cybc radio 2, an, i must say, public government-controlled radio station in my country, plays it at night.

the musician with the most song banned by the bbc was judge dread (every single he released that entered the uk charts was banned, leading to a total of 11 songs) and all of them were banned on the grounds of sexual suggestivity or drug references. this is not upsetting in any way to me (i personally do not find his music pleasant in any way and find some of his work, especially his cover of “je t’aime… moi non plus”, offensive. he profited quite a lot from being famous for having his music banned: he covered “relax” too, ans also “take off your clothes” by peter sarsedt (another annoyingly catchy banned song)), but just really funny.

in the 1970s and 1980s, the bbc also banned music including the word “gay” from daytime programming that children could have listened to due to believing that it has sexual connotations (knowing the bbc’s modern transphobia, i cannot say i am surprised, to be honest) (i believe that, if most people believe that children can understand and accept heterosexual relationships, why can that not apply to others? heteronormativity is disgusting) which led to a very famous (and also very funny, as the “gay” in this song is part of a name of a bomber plane that dropped the atomic bomb on hiroshima) ban on this song (i may add hyperlinks for songs i like particularly and would share if this was not a music-related blog entry). to be honest, if i were to have children, which i, personally, do not want to, i would still not play this song to them when they are very young and, therefore, unable to react maturely to learning about the bombing: i still think of this ban as absolutely unreasonable!

drug references

taking drugs is also very risky and are, therefore, also a very obvious and very common target of censorship when depicted in media. the bbc began banning drug-related songs in 1931 with “minnie the moocher” by cab calloway, which includes several references to marijuana. while i cannot say anything particularly notable has been banned for this reason, there are a lot of very amusing pieces of music banned for it: my personal favourite is this song (while i do not listen to this casually and cannot say i really love this song, i cannot fail to laugh whenever i listen to it because it falls very strongly into the “so bad that it is good” category of music for me. i also love how, in the lyrics of this song, ebeneezer goode (the end of the name is supposed to sound like “es are good”. ebeneezer is a personification of the drug ecstasy) is referred to using the pronouns “e/es”, during a time when neopronouns were not commonly used too!)) (this song can actually be played by the bbc now, as i have heard it on a dance music programme on bbc radio solent last year!)

consumption of alcohol is not particularly concerning to the bbc, but seemed to be when “gimme a pigfoot (and a bottle of beer)” by bessie smith, a song about drinking a lot and causing mayhem, was banned: i have no idea whether other songs about this existed at the time, but would be unsurprised if the bbc only banned this one solely because it was a black woman singing about this.

instrumental music, funnily enough, did not escape this ban: in 1956, the instrumental theme from the film “the man with the golden arm” was banned solely for its association with a film about a man taking heroin. i am somewhat glad that this ban has not persisted to other media, as, if it did, the bbc would never play anything from the “trainspotting” soundtrack, which would have been a little disappointing, and the bbc would have dug their own grave even deeper with banning a lot of acid house music and would lose quite a bit of younger listeners in the late 1980s.

pop and rock versions of folk and classical music 

this ban is, obviously, rather outdated, still very funny and mostly applied to music released in the 1950s and 1960s when the bbc’s music director was arthur bliss, who was a conductor and believed that pop and rock versions of older music “distorted rhythm and harmony” (yes, this is a real quote!) while some people may have agreed with this (see john w.’s contribution concerning the banned conway twitty version of “danny boy”), i find this ban unreasonable, though understand why bbc could have enforced it. though, i, contrastingly, really love some of the music that was subject to this ban, including this surf rock version of “greensleeves” and this modernised version of the moderato from “swan lake”! both of these pieces of music were produced by joe meek, whose work as a producer i really enjoy, by the way, alongside two other songs found on the list. i personally have no idea how a person who experienced extreme paranoia and delusions among other distress could have reacted to having his music banned and feel awful when it comes to this (this is the reason for which i also refuse to classify his, or any music, to be honest (i cannot say anyone included in the compilation that established this term enjoyed being in it) as “outsider music”. this ban is also very funny when it comes to music, such as spike jones’ version of “the blue danube”, that was not very serious in its original version either, as the “blue danube” waltz is sarcastic as it was written by an austrian composer shortly after austria lost a war to prussia, where almost all of the danube, which the waltz praises, was in the 1860s.

religious references 

the bbc’s heads of religious broadcasting were very strict in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, which led to the banning of virtually any song that mentioned god, the devil, heaven, hell, adam, eve, the garden evening, praying or christenings. this ban was very extreme: a famous example is the banning of the song “baby, let me follow you down” by bob dylan, for the single mention of god in the lyric “i’ll do anything in this god-almighty world”. funnily enough, this ban has persisted to modern times, though concerning more ornate religious descriptions: in 2013, “walking on water” by eliza doolittle was banned for a simile in its lyrics, comparing a run its narrator was taking to jesus walking on water.

advertising

the bbc has always had a strong anti-advertisement policy and this led to a number of songs mentioning brand names, such as coca-cola, kodachrome and hush puppies, among others i cannot remember, being banned off air (there is a very funny story about ray davies having to travel from minnesota to london in 1970 to re-record “lola” for the bbc to play it, replacing “coca-cola” with “cherry cola”). some of the re-recorded song versions this ban produced are also hilarious (those are, apparently, bbc djs screaming “radio times”!)

however, perhaps, the funniest instance of this ban is concerning an instrumental piece of music called “radio times” in 1935. “but wait?” you might ask, “is the “radio times” not the bbc’s own newspaper?” it is and the content published in it has always been theirs; however, the newspaper was printed and distributed by a company unaffiliated with the bbc before 1937. this led to this piece being banned. but what makes this especially funny is that the choice of musicians led to the recording being credited to the bbc dance orchestra. so, the bbc managed to ban themselves off air once, somehow (though, a freestyle rap recorded on air on bbc asian network by frenzo harami (including the usual references to sex, prostitution and drug use) was also banned immediately after it was aired).

political opposition and criticism of the british government (or the british in general, if we are talking about “the battle of new orleans” by johnny horton) and just, generally, anything that makes people uncomfortable

this one is very obvious for any public broadcaster, as public broadcasters are literally run and funded by the government of whatever country they are present in (i am remembering when, in march last year, gary lineker was fired from the bbc for one day for a tweet opposing sending asylum seekers in the uk to rwanda (i am absolutely against this too) and many people i have seen talking about this were surprised that the entirety of the bbc’s leadership is conservative. i understand why one could be surprised if they learn this for the first time, but, to be honest, seriously? would you not have realised?) and it would be questionable (yet very, very, funny!) for any western government to openly air criticism of themselves. the bbc has dealt with this in music since 1943, with “don’t let’s be beastly to the germans” by noël coward (even though the song is sarcastic, the bbc believed that not all of the british public, who strongly believed in punishing germany harshly after world war ii, would understand that).

something that is very prevalent in its political bans is that the bbc, generally, wanted its listeners to feel unconcerned and comfortable, which is, in my opinion, not always a good thing (they often ban music i find offensive for other reasons and ban music i do not find offensive for being offensive. i am sorry, bbc, but banning “fairytale of new york” (they tried to do this in 2013!) does nothing for queer rights!) (this same reason led to the bbc being very concerned for people “of a nervous disposition” in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to “dinner with drac” and “monster mash” being banned from airplay during this time (this is the funniest thing in the world to me), alongside many teenage tragedy songs, which were popular in the late 1950s and 1960s, being banned (this song (also produced by joe meek!) alongside the shangri-la’s “the leader of the pack” (i recently found out that, when that song was performed live, an actual motorcycle was brought backstage to produce all of the engine sound effects present in that song and find that pretty cool), are my personal favourites). this led to the banning of several songs concerning nuclear weapons and nuclear war in the 1950s (one, “a russian love song”, sang by the bbc’s own comedy troupe, the goons) (…yeah, i do not think a 1950s audience would be exactly thrilled to hear “we will all go together when we go” on the airwaves, as much as that song fascinates me (though, i really wish i could not agree with it, but capitalism and colonialism have kind of lead to all of us being eradicated to be the only imaginable form of peace…)), one of my favourite anti-war songs in the 1960s and several songs concerning the troubles later on (i find it oddly funny that, when there was a bomb scare in london in 1973 and 1974, of all songs, “urban guerilla” by hawkwind was banned (that song, by the way, is about the angry brigade, who were a non-violent (though, i think some of their members joined the inlo later on and those people were not non-violent) property destruction anarchist group whose work only managed to slightly injure one person)).

during the troubles, the bbc heavily restricted all programming concerning ireland in general (this, i assume, led to the battle of the bogside not being well reported on, as most british people’s vivid memories of the troubles seem to only start in the 1970s), arguably, to paint the british government as innocent, which led to a lot of unprecedented fervour when the bloody sunday of 1972, an even in which absolutely no one can hold the british army as innocent, happened and was being actively reported on in the news. this led to the banning of the song “let the people go” by mcguinness flint and “give ireland back to the irish” by paul mccartney and the wings (as much as i think this song was well-meaning, please, please, please read the lyrics to this one! they sound like they were written by a nine-year-old!). strangely enough, the next song to be banned was “soldier” by harvey andrews (british army personnel are still advised to avoid singing this song in pubs), which is considered to be offensive by republicans rather than unionists (and i agree with that because i find it offensive too. michael willetts might have saved some people from a bombing, yes, but that does not excuse the british army’s actions in northern ireland as a colonial occupying force and does not give any reason for northern irish people to trust the british army. it is unsurprising to me how much unionists used this song when it was released, even though its songwriter was shocked by this use).

perhaps, the most well-known instance of mass censorship during the troubles was the sinn fein broadcast ban, which lasted from 1988 to 1994, during which no content related to the ira or sinn fein could be broadcast on any television or radio channel in the united kingdom (it is confusing to me as to why this ban only started in 1988 (though, 1988 was the year in which there was a very significant media controversy concerning the troubles, when thames television decided to produce a documentary about operation flavius (when three ira members were shot in gibraltar by sas), which suggested that, because all three were killed for planning a bombing when no bomb or weapons were initially found, that the british government had a shoot-to-kill policy in northern ireland (as much as people love to call people who think so due to this “terrorism supporters” (i detest the ira’s tactics and feel massively sorry for the members of their own irish republican community they killed, as perfectly understandable their motivations were), they did) (this, alongside the milltown cemetery attack (the funeral of the three ira members was stormed by a notorious unionist, michael stone, and some people were killed. this is not where it ends: the funeral of these people was also stormed by two british army corporals, but that time it was not those attending the funeral who were killed. these two incidents were filmed on camera) made such a conclusion very reachable and wonderfully offensive to the british forces) and this could led to concerns over what the media could say about northern ireland) and the voices of all belonging to these groups could not be broadcast (but could, unlike in the republic of ireland, where a similar ban was enforced from 1968 by gerry collins (a strong unionist sympathiser) and also applied to non-northern ireland-related programming (for example, as the wikipedia article on censorship in ireland states, an rté radio broadcast on gardening was once cut because a call-in guest was a member of sinn fein), be dubbed by another person. gerry adams was often dubbed by stephen rea, which is really funny because his wife was in the ira and famously hated gerry adams). this ban led to the banning of the 1988 pogues song “birmingham six/streets of sorrow” (the birmingham six were imprisoned until 1991 and, if you know even the slightest thing about the pogues, it is fairly obvious that they would not have liked that) from channel 4 and the songs “genius move” by that petrol emotion (with gerry adams on the record sleeve!) and “sad affair” by marxman (marxist irish republican hip hop sounds lovely) (with a “tiocfaidh ár lá” in the lyrics!) from bbc radio.

of course, the troubles were not the only political topic the bbc were concerned with. my absolute favourite song on the list is about the british government, police, public and press’ treatment of the gay community (please read the lyrics to this one too! they are amazing!). several songs criticising the british army were banned during the falklands war (during which, funnily enough, the song “six months in a leaky boat” by split endz, which is a song about immigration to australia and new zealand, got temporarily banned because of how much its lyrics resembled soldier complaints) and the gulf war (during which most war-related music was banned off air, similarly to iheartradio’s clear channel memorandum of 2001) (this is a favourite of mine. as trashy as it is, i love carter usm’s music!). and, of course, obvious criticisms of the british government were banned as well: i assure you, you will never hear “boris johnson is a fucking cunt” on air (when people made “ding, dong, the witch is dead!” chart when margaret thatcher died (this was awesome), they refused to play it too… “liar liar” by captain ska, which charts often during general elections also similarly receives no airplay)! i have a favourite in this category too and it is this song about celebrating margaret thatcher going out of office (this band, sadly, broke up before that actually happened!)

other, less notable reasons for banning:

• alert sirens cannot be broadcast on air on any radio station. “landing of the daleks” by the earthlings clearly did not benefit from that.

• “creep” by radiohead was banned off air in 1993 for being “too depressing”.

• fatboy slim is fucking in heaven fatboy slim is fucking in heaven fatboy slim is fucking in heaven fucking and fucking and fucking and fucking and (“fucking” is repeated 101 more times. excessive swearing is clearly not the bbc’s cup of tea!)

• “gloomy sunday” was banned for… well, what you would expect “gloomy sunday” to be banned for.

• some songs, such as “celebrate the bullet” by the selecter (great band!) and “summer smash” by denim were banned on the grounds of having an unfortunate release date, the first being released a few days before ronald reagan’s attempted assassination and the second charting when princess diana died.

• “lili marleen” by lale anderson was banned in 1939, as the bbc were wary to broadcast a german-language song by a german singer due to, well, world war ii. the funny thing about this is that “lili marleen” is an anti-war song and was banned from broadcasting in nazi germany too!

• “my generation” by the who was banned because the bbc assumed that people with a stutter would be offended by the stutter roger daltrey imitates in the song.

• and, of course, if you dare to criticise the fact that the bbc bans music, you get no airtime too, as happened with “we can’t let you broadcast that” by norman long.

as always, i really hope this was somewhat enjoyable and that i did not bore you to death.