The Power of An Expletive | Teen Ink

The Power of An Expletive

March 22, 2011
By shawn johnson BRONZE, Coventry, Rhode Island
shawn johnson BRONZE, Coventry, Rhode Island
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Over the years and mostly the the most recent decade music is starting to become more full of swears which are what make the song what it is. What I mean is that without certain words in a song or having them replace makes the song lose purpose. But the main reason why we censor songs is because of moral, political, military or religious motivations. The government actually steps into to censor music because of the certain things that can be said on them or private or voluntary removal of content when a musical work appears in a certain context.
When music artist edit their music it is usually because they want to get more popular by putting it on the radio. Radio stations wont want to play songs with any kind of profanity because they could get sued by an listener if they catch it. So in that case radio stations don’t want to take that kind of a risk. There is many kinds of ways to censor music that goes up on the air. these ways are called:

Blanking; when the volume is muted for all or part of the word.

Bleeping; playing a noise, usually a "beep", over all or part of the word.

Resampling; using a like-sounding portion of vocals and music to override the offending word.

Resinging; Replacing a word with a more appropriate word.

Backmasking; taking the offending word and reversing the audio, sometimes the whole audio is reversed (often because it is a home-made job), but more usually only the vocal track is reversed.

Repeating; repeating the word just said before the explicit word was used.

Skipping; deleting the word from the song without a time delay.

Echo; instead of saying a word, it echoes the last word(s) said in the line.

Disc scratching; in hip hop, scratching on the word, making it sound like another word, or make the word said faster or slower.

RoboVoicing; making the word totally non-understandable by overpowering a robovoice effect (usually used as a last resort for home-made jobs).

Distorting; Usually in Hip-Hop, less offensive words such as "shit" or else is distorted. It is usually done by shifting down the pitch.
The people who control the airways and television ar the FCC or other know as the Federal Communications Commission. This portion of our government is who gives immense fines to people who disregard the rules of the radio and television. To show what I mean ill show you their 7 biggest fines ever given out.


Univision is fined $24 million for lack of children’s shows

Qwest gets slapped with $9 million fine for thwarting competition In 2004

Univision pays another $1 million for accepting payment to play recording artists

Without a Trace’s teen orgy scene prompts $3.6 million fine for CBS In 2004

Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction earns CBS a $550,000 fine

Bubba the Love Sponge’s shows draw $755,000 fine against Clear Channel

FCC fines lead Howard Stern to satellite radio for $1.7 million for various violations In 1995
(All of these were quoted from “Naked Law.com”)
Now I will admit that some of these charges are understandable but not all of them I mean just look at the first and biggest charge it is ludicrous and just for lack of kid shows.
This is why I think that profanity on radio and television should be more lenient and tolerated.


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