Britney Spears Prepares For A Very Dirty Spelling Bee

noah | January 12, 2009 2:30 am

The next single from Britney Spears’ Circus is going to be the phonetically naughty Max Martin composition “If You Seek Amy,” according to Spears’ official site. And the possibility of getting FCC sanctions once some semi-clueless commissioner in Washington figures out how to really spell out the song’s title isn’t sitting well with radio stations, who, let’s face it, are cash-strapped enough already these days. From MTV:

“It’s OK to put in on an album, have fun with it, but we’re publicly owned, you know?” said Patti Marshall, program director at Cincinnati’s Q102, a pop station in a decidedly conservative Midwestern market. “We have a responsibility to the public … you put this … out and act like we’re all fuddy-duddies, like we’re trying to make moral judgments. It’s not about us. It’s about the mom in the minivan with her 8-year-old.”

Like several programmers we talked to, Marshall said she had not yet been told that “Amy” was the next single from Circus. She’s still busy playing the album’s title track, which was recently released as the second single. Asked if she would play “Amy” if it came to her as a single, Marshall said likely wouldn’t. She likened its chorus (which she has not heard) to “a little boy in sixth grade doing arm farts.”

Harsh! (Yet not totally untrue—right, Sammy?) The FCC didn’t return MTV’s requests for comment, but other program directors expressed similar reservations:

Sharon Dastur, program director at Z100 in New York, also had not yet heard the song and said she’s not sure what the station’s plans are for it. She compared its possible problems to those faced by her station in 2005 upon the release of the Black Eyed Peas single “Don’t Phunk With My Heart.”

“Listeners thought it was the other word, and so we had to change it to ‘mess,’ ” she said. That example was also the first that popped to mind for KIIS FM Los Angeles program director John Ivey, who said he knew he couldn’t play the Peas’ song as originally recorded but felt that censoring it would make it sound more nefarious, so he asked the group’s label for a new version.

“It’s a potential issue for every station,” Ivey said of the Spears single. “I’m certain that I would run it by my legal department first. My first job is to protect [the station’s] license. … It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Indeed it is, especially when the possibility of one of pop’s biggest stars trying to pull one over on the stations who ignored most of the singles from her last album arises. Perhaps we can soon look forward to a digital edit of the track where the titular “amy” is replaced by, oh, I don’t know, “Blame-y”? It would sure be a neat way to cast guilt, too!

Britney Spears’ ‘If U Seek Amy’ Poses Censorship Problems For Radio [MTV]