Song medleys that some radio stations purposely leave out or cut parts out

[Brian556]

"The Last Worthless Evening" by Done Henley, and "Secret Lovers" by Atlantic Starr both have entire lyrical portaions cut out of the beginnings, but not for cencorship purposes. There is nothing bad in them. I guess it's just to shorten the songs. It's really annoying. Currently, the radio stations cut out a portion of "I Like It" by Enrique Iglesias towards the end.

[agentsteel53]

I've actually heard all of those lyrics on the radio, along with the word "shit" by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Green Day. And System of a Down's Cigaro uncensored, before the radio realized what it had done and censored every subsequent replay.

which Skynyrd song has "shit" in it?  I've heard "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains uncensored on the radio, and that has several fairly blatant shits.

[kurumi]

I've actually heard all of those lyrics on the radio, along with the word "shit" by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Green Day...

which Skynyrd song has "shit" in it?

Surprisingly, it's not "That Smell".

[hbelkins]

Back in the days of vinyl, the area's album rock station (WKQQ-FM in Lexington, then 98.1, now 100.1) played "Living Loving Maid" and "Ramble On" as a medley.

When they went to CDs, it became "Heartbreaker" and "Living Loving Maid."

Not sure why they made that change.

[roadman65]

Censored songs: Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner" has the single edit (which also appears on his greatest hits album that every college kid owns) that changes "funky shit goin' down in the city" to "funky kicks." I've only heard the uncensored version on XM, never on FM. First time I heard it I was surprised because I had only heard the single edit, but the censored lyric doesn't make any sense anyway. "Heart of Glass" is usually played as the single edit to avoid the "pain in the ass" line, but the single edit sounds better in my opinion because Debbie Harry's voice is recorded strangely at the end of the full version.

Oddly, "Who Are You" with its "who the fuck are you" is seldom censored even on FM in my experience. But many radio stations play the shorter single edit that leaves out the verse at the end and I find that jarring. The single edit of "Won't Get Fooled Again" is even worse, just destroys the song. Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" often has that long interlude near the end edited out, the part that goes "every-body, every-one" over and over again; the reason I dislike hearing that omitted is that it contains the best line in the song when that guy sings "Can you tell me what a Wang Chung is?"

One song medley I do NOT mind hearing cut off on the radio is Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away." While the edit is a little awkward if it's not faded properly, I've always thought the "Get Away" coda is utterly unnecessary and messes up a pretty good song and that the band should have just found a better way to end it on the first part.

Does anyone know if The Pusher by Steppewolf was aloud to be played when it first debuted?  For some of you who do not know the song, it has the GD word in it several times and the Gd is not Grand Rapids, MI like on I-96 either.

[agentsteel53]

it has the GD word in it several times and the Gd is not Grand Rapids, MI like on I-96 either.

yes, I distinctly remember "grid" being part of that old George Carlin sketch.

[OracleUsr]

1.  Bringing on the Heartbreak was two versions on the album.  I would imagine radios play the remix (that doesn't segue into Switch 625).

2.  My beef with Jet Airliner is when they play the preceding song, Threshold, then cut out the guitar part at the beginning of Jet

3.  "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger.  So many stations cut out the second part of choruses 2 and 3. 

4.  Can someone explain why the orchestral parts of Nights in White Satin are so often cut out?  Breathe deep, the gathering gloom...

[The High Plains Traveler]

Censored songs: Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner" has the single edit (which also appears on his greatest hits album that every college kid owns) that changes "funky shit goin' down in the city" to "funky kicks." I've only heard the uncensored version on XM, never on FM. First time I heard it I was surprised because I had only heard the single edit, but the censored lyric doesn't make any sense anyway. "Heart of Glass" is usually played as the single edit to avoid the "pain in the ass" line, but the single edit sounds better in my opinion because Debbie Harry's voice is recorded strangely at the end of the full version.

Oddly, "Who Are You" with its "who the fuck are you" is seldom censored even on FM in my experience. But many radio stations play the shorter single edit that leaves out the verse at the end and I find that jarring. The single edit of "Won't Get Fooled Again" is even worse, just destroys the song. Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" often has that long interlude near the end edited out, the part that goes "every-body, every-one" over and over again; the reason I dislike hearing that omitted is that it contains the best line in the song when that guy sings "Can you tell me what a Wang Chung is?"

One song medley I do NOT mind hearing cut off on the radio is Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away." While the edit is a little awkward if it's not faded properly, I've always thought the "Get Away" coda is utterly unnecessary and messes up a pretty good song and that the band should have just found a better way to end it on the first part.

Does anyone know if The Pusher by Steppewolf was aloud to be played when it first debuted?  For some of you who do not know the song, it has the GD word in it several times and the Gd is not Grand Rapids, MI like on I-96 either.

I never heard it on the radio, but keep in mind that when this album was released most rock was on AM. FM was kind of subversive for a while. The juiciest cut I ever heard on radio was an El Paso FM station that played "Billy the Mountain", a cut which took up one entire side of The Mothers' (of Invention by Frank Zappa) "Just Another Band from L.A." The DJ introduced it saying, "We just got this new album by the Mothers in, and I haven't had a chance to hear it yet, so we'll all be hearing it for the first time." This was back in the day when a radio station would play a single 25 minute piece of music. Let's just say I was amazed they didn't take it off part way through.

A few weeks later, the same DJ played another song from the album and said something like, "You may have heard the cut of 'Billy the Mountain' from this same album when we played it. You also know why we'll never play it again".

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

When speaking of songs that have parts chopped off before "censorship," record labels would send out (and sell) the radio edit version, to whichever radio stations they chose, in which the song would be limited to 3 minutes or less, while the album version (sent to general population) would contain the entire song. That's how some radio stations got to be labeled as "Album Oriented Rock" while others were the "pop" station in town. Some radio stations decided that they would play the "album" version of songs (which go beyond 3 minutes), instead of the "shorter" version.

[mgk920]

More recent stuff - a few days ago I caught a local station playing Let It Rock by Kevin Rudolph with a sex act reference word near its end silenced out (that was the first time I heard t that way, even when played at Lambeau Field during Packer games).

OTOH, I have always wondered how Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love got all of the airplay that it did when it first came out in late 1969, especially with the mores of the day.  Yowzah!

Mike

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

OTOH, I have always wondered how Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love got all of the airplay that it did when it first came out in late 1969, especially with the mores of the day.  Yowzah!

Mike

The "mores" of the day were much looser on FM radio back then than AM radio then, and either band today.
See Radio Daze: Stories from the Front in Cleveland's FM Air Wars as example.

[texaskdog]

Lou Reed "Take a Walk on the Wild Side"

The pop station in 1987 made replaced "Sex" in "I Want Your Sex" with "Love"  I want your love, I want your love.

[roadman65]

I was noticing that WMMO in Orlando has been playing the original version of Lola by the Kinks with Coca Cola and NOT Cherry Cola because of the advertising thing.

One thing I cannot figure out, why Anheiser Bush made a big stink over Neil Young's This Note's For You and made the old MTV pull the video off.

Also, if I am not mistaken, but the line in Take It To The Limit by the Eagles "You can spend all your time making money, you can spend all your love making time" was most likely edited cause it does not make sense!  If money had love in it, the phrase would and be a neat one at that.

[golden eagle]

Two songs that I think should be played together but aren't all the time, is Def Leppard's Bringin' on the Heartbreak and Switch 625. The second song is completely instrumental, but the first leads right into the second, with no break. I used to hear them played together all the time, but rarely anymore.

On another slightly related note, Mariah Carey's cover of Bringin' on the Heartbreak is one that should have never been done, and every copy of it should be blown up in a re-enactment of the Disco Night at old Comiskey Park. That's gotta be one of the worst covers ever.

I think Club Novea with their rap version of the Bill Withers tune Lean On Me is the worst do over ever!  Then there is that one rap group ( do not know their name) that redid Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning that rated high on Billboard's Top 40, but to me it ruined another good song.

Club Nouveau. There version of "Lean On Me" is not a rap song, though the extended version that radio doesn't play goes "Pump it up, what, pump it up who, pump it homeboy just like that".

Shaggy sampled "Angel Of the Morning" on his hit "Angel".

[Takumi]

It's only recently (10 or so years, off my lawn) that I've heard Pink Floyd's Money censored.

I heard it uncensored earlier tonight. The same radio station also plays Money For Nothing uncensored (but not uncut...they play the 7:04 edit)

[Brian556]

The pop station in 1987 made replaced "Sex" in "I Want Your Sex" with "Love"  I want your love, I want your love.

That would just sound awful.. I've only heard the real version of that song.
That sitiaton is very similar to the current song "Tonight, I'm F***ing You" by Enrique Inglesias. The radio version is "Tonight, I'm Loving You". I sounds alot better than the modified George Michael song probably would.

[roadman65]

You know what songs that are not played together, but should be played somewhere on radio.  The China Cat Sunflower and I Know You Rider medley from Grateful Dead off their Europe 72 album.  I love the transition between the two songs with the long intro jam for I Know You Rider.

It would also be good to hear the album version as well of Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely as this version has a longer outro that is longer than the songs three verses.  The song is almost 7 minuets verses the 3 plus on the single radio version, but I think it is cool.

Of course, Skynyrd's Live version of Freebird totally rules!  That has the longest outro of all.  I wonder why classic rock always settles on the studio version, when the live is more popular (I think) than the original which is nearly 3 minuets shorter and lacking the grand ending?

[hobsini2]

Of course, Skynyrd's Live version of Freebird totally rules!  That has the longest outro of all.  I wonder why classic rock always settles on the studio version, when the live is more popular (I think) than the original which is nearly 3 minuets shorter and lacking the grand ending?

That's not always true, at least by me. The Drive, 97.1 FM in Chicago, will play a lot of live versions of songs. I have heard live versions of Tom Petty's Breakdown, Eric Clapton's Cocaine, and yes even a live version of Freebird.

[hbelkins]

I always thought the controversial line in "Money for Nothing" referred to Boy George.

[Stratuscaster]

When The Loop (WLUP-FM) and The Drive (WDRV-FM) in Chicago were owned by Bonneville Media (wholly owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), they played the edited/censored versions of most songs. Both were recently sold, but I still think they play the censored versions. It's been a while since I listened at length.

When in high-school Radio class (Elgin U-46 had an FM station - they still do - WEPS-FM), all our preconceptions about "being a DJ" went out the window. FCC logs, bottom and top-of-the-hour required station IDs, scheduled PSAs and sponsorship "ads" (no commercials, just sponsorships), and yes, pre-selected and timed-out musical selections. In today's computerized radio, it's even more formatted.

WDRV at least runs a "Deep Tracks" format on their HD-2 signal, which tends to play the uncensored and full-length tracks. Good news for the 6 of us that own HD Radios, I guess.

[roadman65]

I always thought the controversial line in "Money for Nothing" referred to Boy George.

Did not David Lee Roth's Just A Giggillo/ I Ain't Got Nobody have something in Dave TV's video of a reference to Boy George with a look a like of him during a certain line of the song?

[Brandon]

I was noticing that WMMO in Orlando has been playing the original version of Lola by the Kinks with Coca Cola and NOT Cherry Cola because of the advertising thing.

That was due to BBC rules, nothing in North America.  The BBC decreed that the Kinks couldn't have the "Coca Cola" version due to the possible advertising; a BBC prohibition at the time.  Hence, we have two versions of the song.  I've rarely heard the "cherry cola" version here.

[Brandon]

Of course, Skynyrd's Live version of Freebird totally rules!  That has the longest outro of all.  I wonder why classic rock always settles on the studio version, when the live is more popular (I think) than the original which is nearly 3 minuets shorter and lacking the grand ending?

That's not always true, at least by me. The Drive, 97.1 FM in Chicago, will play a lot of live versions of songs. I have heard live versions of Tom Petty's Breakdown, Eric Clapton's Cocaine, and yes even a live version of Freebird.

Gotta love The Drive.  They even play the original part of Jet Airliner by Steve Miller Band with "funky shit goin' down in the city" instead of "funky kicks goin' down in the city".

[xonhulu]

Gotta love The Drive.  They even play the original part of Jet Airliner by Steve Miller Band with "funky shit goin' down in the city" instead of "funky kicks goin' down in the city".

These days, the word "shit" has lost a lot of its shock value, just like the word "ass" (compared to when I was a kid in the 70's-80's).  I'm really surprised that anybody is sensitive enough anymore to play the sanitized version, but you do still hear it a lot.

What gets me is when you buy a digitally-remastered CD from a group and some songs have been edited shorter.  For example, I recently bought the remastered Chicago 16, and at least one (maybe a 2nd) song was shorter.  When I burnt it onto a disk for the car, I went back to original version of the CD for that particular song.  You also see this a lot of Greatest Hits CD's where they put the radio edit or a pared-down version of a song instead of the album version.  Examples include Here I Go Again on Whitesnake's Greatest Hits, Here Comes The Feeling on Asia Gold, and a bunch of Commodores songs (Three Times A Lady, Easy, Sail On, Still) on many of their various collections. 

If given a choice, I'll always take the original longer version of a song.  I even went to considerable bother to hunt up the rare Canned Wheat remastered Guess Who CD so I could have the longer original version of "No Time." That's one I've never heard on the radio!

[roadman65]

Look at Law and Order with the fictional character of Jack McCoy consistently using the phrase "Son of a bitch" or Detectives Ed Greene or Rey Curtis saying lines like "piss me off" or some other things that Elliot Stabler says on Law and Order SVU that are worse.   

Remember Jack Parr, one host of the Tonight Show long before Leno, got fired for mentioning the word "water closet."  Then because of Norman Lear and his famous All In The Family sitcom, where Archie Bunker would flush the toilet on air, that became forgotten except for Parr who paid the price at his time of glory.  Also, Norman Lear was the first person to allow contraversial propaganda and  issues like racism, abortion, atheism, and politics to be subjects on a TV program.  If you recall from other reruns, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, and even Gomer Pyle did not bring up subjects like that.  Gomer Pyle even took place during the Vietnam War in a show about the USMC.  Not once did the war make mention as the show was about a situation that a young naive man who made it to Marine Private got himself into, where he or his Sergeant who was annoyed by his goofy attitude had to get himself out of.

Then the Brady Bunch, that was about kids growing up, never even made sex an issue once.  It was all about dating, school problems, crushes, and things that happen among families in an unknown town and setting.  Not once was a location of where they were mentioned, although we can assume they lived someplace in Southern California.  Full House was the same, although it was suggested that John Stamos' character of Jessie Konstapolis was a lady's man who went wherever in the first few seasons.

We can actually say many people over the last three decades of broadcasting have changed things, but still you have many fundamentalists or religious people who still balk at this and some do want cleaning.  I too will not listen to some songs if I feel the lyrics are not right in my opinion and turn the dial away just like I do when some lawyers over advertise and annoy you with their contraversial ads.