Radio edits of songs are the bane of my existence. They beat out PETA representatives, political pundits, and midgets by a long shot, and they are even worse than the media's love for Brett Favre.
Not only are radio edits disrespectful to the artist of said song, but they are just terrible to listen too. Granted, some artists have no taste, class, or dignity, and this shows in their music. But for the artists that don't curse every other word and actually have lyrics worth hearing, the radio ruins their visionary creations in the name of "public decency".
An example of this is the Black Eyed Peas' song "Don't Phunk With My Heart". The word "phunk" is in the title, and yet the radio requires a version that changes the lyric to "Don't mess with my heart".
Everlast's song "What It's Like" is an even more potent example of radio's bad influence on the creativity and power of music. The lyrics (seen here) tell three dramatic stories of people that the majority of society would look down on. But the chorus repeats the same idea: "God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes/'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues."
The effect of the song is greatly diminished when the lyrics are edited to remove curse words and references to drugs or guns. It's no longer a song with a message about putting yourself in someone else's position before condemning them; it simply becomes a song with a good beat and some noises in place of the words that give the song meaning.
Radio needs to stick with what it does best: providing [bleep] reports and inane [edit] amid the [bleep] [bleep] [edit].
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