bleepwatch - Idolator

Posts Tagged “bleepwatch”

bleepwatch

Superheroic Christina Aguilera Can't Save Her Song From Target's Censor-Bots

Christina Aguilera's Target-only greatest-hits comp Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade Of Hits (which, cough cough, leaked today) is being advertised with the above ad, in which our heroine turns into a flying, bad-guy-fighting, overly eyelinered superwoman who can't quite fly her rocketship. Pity, however, that two of the key words in the chorus—"bitch" and "damn"—are too sensitive for the purposes of pushing it at the big-box retailer because you have to protect the ears of the children, I guess. Although I'm pretty sure that if they flip on their closest radio—or, hell, if they actually decide to buck recent trends and pony up for the CD while on a run for these super-cute flats—they can hear the song in all its bitchy, damning glory. [YouTube]

10:45 AM on Thu Nov 6 2008
By Maura Johnston
458 views, Comment

Update

"Weird Al" responds to the controversy over "Kazaa" and "Grokster" being bleeped out of the MTV-approved video for his track "Don't Download This Song": “[MTV] told me that they would refuse to air my video” otherwise. “Instead of subtly removing or obscuring the words in the track...I made the creative decision to bleep them out as obnoxiously as possible, so that there would be no mistake I was being censored.” He helpfully adds: "The uncensored, ‘nonridiculous’ version can be seen on my YouTube and MySpace pages.” Don't download, but do stream from official sites. OK, got it. [NYT]

3 comments

bleepwatch

In The Eyes Of MTV, "Kazaa" Is Now Just As Bad A Word As "Shirt"

Who knew that the names of nearly obsolete file-sharing services were considered dirty words by the bigwigs at MTV? Well, "Weird Al" Yankovic does now, thanks to the version of his Bill Plympton-penned video for "Don't Download This Song" that's on MTV's new video-only site MTVMusic.com having the words "Morpheus," "Grokster," "Limewire," and "KaZaA" dropped out of its lyrics. The bigger insult? MTV's online standards and practices department didn't even go the "dropping the vocal track when the offending words hit" route that has turned so many other pop songs into stutterfests—they actually stick in answering-machine-quality BEEPs, so you know something's being blocked from sensitive ears. I think this might be the first time that's ever happened to the stringently PG-rated Yankovic. Yay, Internet? [TechDirt via Artists Paid]

8:53 AM on Fri Oct 31 2008
By Maura Johnston
287 views, 11 comments

Latest by BladeRunner11: the cops in the video have worse aim than the A Team. more »

bleepwatch holiday edition

The Pogues Fall Foul Of The BBC's Censors (20 Years Later)

After two decades of airplay, the BBC just noticed that the Pogues' classic Christmas jam "Fairytale Of New York" has a naughty word tucked into it—you know, the one singer Kirsty MacColl rhymes with "maggot"—and has excised it in order to keep its audience from fainting or getting the vapors or whatever uptight British people do when aghast. Naturally, many of the song's millions of fans think the Beeb is being a bit silly, including the late MacColl's mum, who pulled out the Mark Knopfler defense to put Radio 1 on blast. More »

11:30 AM on Tue Dec 18 2007
By jharv
489 views, 2 comments

Latest by Jfrankparnell: I wonder if incensed street drunks and prosties light up the phones when the BBC spins the Pogues' "Old Main Drag:" [under 18, turn away and imagine Santa] There the he-males and the she-males paraded in style And the old man with the more »

bleepwatch

M.I.A. Last Artist On Earth To Find Out About American MTV's Squeamishness Regarding Firearms

M.I.A.'s awesome day of topping critics' polls was ruined early thanks to someone putting a version of the sandwich-filled video for her hazy single "Paper Planes"—which samples the Clash, a cash register, and some gunshots—with an altered audio track up on YouTube this morning. You can probably guess which sample of the above three was removed for the edited version, which happened to be the "MTV edit" of the clip (hint: it wasn't the cash register). (The "official," uncensored version is above.) That sleight of sound pissed off M.I.A. so much, she decided to take to her blog and call all-caps shenanigans on MTV, David Letterman, lazy bloggers (oh snap!), and anyone else who might get in her way: More »

6:15 PM on Mon Dec 17 2007
By mjohnston
1,433 views, 18 comments

Latest by NotPop: People who like disliking music make me dislike liking music. more »

bleepwatch

The Breeders Get Stripped Of Their Bong

bleepwatch

Adam Levine Of Maroon 5: I Still Kill

bleepwatch

50 Cent's Martyr Complex Overshadows His Kinda-Valid Point

50 Cent is telling anyone who'll listen that he's pissed off at MTV and BET for forcing a name change on his new single, the Akon collaboration/best track on Curtis "I Still Kill," in order for it to get airtime on the two stations' video shows. In response to the song being rechristened "I Still Will" by the higher-ups at Viacom, 50 actually made kind of an astute point about the channels' malleable standards regarding the English language, although he couched it in so much "look at me, ma, I'm dangerous! rhetoric that it's impossible to not roll your eyes at the whole thing. More »

8:53 AM on Fri Nov 2 2007
By mjohnston
688 views, 2 comments

Latest by dog door: I think the kinda-valid point is overshadowing the martyr complex here. Is there anyone out there that DOESN'T think MTV is a joke? more »

I almost forgot to mention that Maura chimed in from her vacation to let us know that Chicago radio is bleeping out the word "Uranus" from the family-friendly edit of R. Kelly's "Sex Planet," proving that R. can even make radio programmers nervous over something as innocuous as a large ball of gas.

5 comments

pornography?

Limp-Dick MTV Censors Worry That You Can't Handle Genitalia

Eagle-eyed Idolator reader shelo noted in in the comments section of today's entry on an MTV article about kids who were on the covers of famous alt-rock albums that MTV had snipped off the little Nirvana baby's wang for their accompanying graphic. That's in addition to feeling the need to chop off the word "p—-s" in the article itself. So apparently it's kosher for teenagers to make carpet-munching jokes on MTV dating show Next, but a baby's ding-a-ling and a word any sixth-grade health student knows are now off limits.

1:33 PM on Wed Aug 15 2007
By jharv
2,023 views, 8 comments

Latest by Jim Treacher: Looks like they put the baby's dick back. Which is... good? more »

For those of you keeping score: MTV2 didn't cut the word "murder" from a 2-ish a.m. viewing of Chamillionaire's video for "Hip Hop Police"—despite its dropping the same word from "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance approximately 24 hours earlier. Can't someone over at 1515 Broadway give Gerard Way a break this month? [MTV2.com]

4 comments

edited for content

God May Have Given Rock And Roll To You, But AT&T's Blueroom Wants To Take The "Profanity" Away

The controversy over AT&T's blueroom chopping out some anti-administration rhetoric from Pearl Jam's performance of "Another Brick In The Wall" at Lollapalooza heated up over the weekend, with Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis tying the incident into his tireless complaining about Lollapalooza's overwhelming corporate sponsorship, the Daily Swarm scouring message boards for incidents of the sound dropping out on other blueroom performers, and Wired's Listening Post blog finding that there was no "editing for content" clause in the release handed out to performers. One question that remains, though: Why is AT&T censoring for content in the first place, when its site makes no mention of the fact that live content is pre-screened before being beamed to the world? More »

12:15 PM on Mon Aug 13 2007
By mjohnston
349 views, 1 comment

Latest by Halfwit: I'm surprised that the artists weren't informed about this (and the political censorship is disturbing), but I thought it was assumed that a multinational (read "family friendly" corporations stream of any even would include a dump button. I remember watching more »

MTV's standards for Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" seem to shift each time the song is played: Kingston's performing live on TRL right now, and "suicidal" is coming out of my speakers, untouched by any censor's hand. Also, uh, it's quite obvious that dude is a more than a bit pitch-challenged. Nice suits on his backup singers, though. [TRL]

Comment

Today's TRL brings an important lesson about the word "suicidal" as it appears in Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls": It's dropped out of MTV's plays of the video, but 100% OK for commercials touting Kingston's debut album, which hits stores tomorrow. My Chemical Romance, you know what to do! [TRL]

3 comments

The seemingly arbitrary censoring policies at MTV continue: The network is bleeping "dope" (as in "the dope boy's turning me on") from the video for 50 Cent/Ciara's "Can't Turn Me On." Judging by the rest of today's TRL, though, "4:20," "masturbation," and the "stoned" half of "LoveStoned" are still a-ok! (At least for now.)

8 comments

lyrics

MTV Now Bleeping Words That Have Unfortunate Fortune Of Sharing Letters With Swear Words

Today's TRL had at No. 7 My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers," a track that we've sung the praises of in the past. But as is the case with much of the music that sees actual airtime on MTV, the song was pockmarked with bleeps. While some of the x-ed-out words were to be expected, tallying up which words were and weren't blocked by MTV's standards and practices department led to some odd results: More »

1:57 PM on Mon Jul 2 2007
By mjohnston
4,977 views, 2 comments

What Use Are "Best Of" Lists, Anyhow?

Posts Tagged “bleepwatch”