In Utah, Salt Lake City and Provo radio stations banned Olivia Newton-John’s chart-topping peppy tune “Physical.” It was 1981, at the dawning of the conservative “Reagan Revolution,” when the line, “Unless it’s horizontally,” was deemed as an intimate suggestion. The music video for “Physical,” released the same month as the premiere of MTV, was also banned.
The ending of the video revealed a gay theme. MTV censored it by cutting it short, and some broadcasters in Canada and the U.K. banned it altogether. The song won a Grammy for Video of the Year and was the most popular song of Newton-John’s career.
"Juicy" by The Notorious B.I.G.
Today, when “Juicy” plays on the radio, there’s an awkward silence in place of the line, “Blow up like the World Trade.” This is despite the fact the song was released years before the 9/11 tragedies. Notorious B.I.G. was referring to the 1993 World Trade Center disaster in the underground parking area that took six people's lives, but his metaphor “blow up” refers to explosive personal success and getting paid.
It wasn’t until after 9/11 that the song was censored for radio play. Notorious B.I.G., though some believe his lyric was prophetic, would never even know about the censorship of his song or the catastrophic event. Tragically, Biggie lost his life in 1997.
"Lola" by The Kinks
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the line “Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man / But I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man / and so is Lola,” that caused the fuss. It was the BBC’s policy against product placement that forced The Kinks to rewrite part of their popular 1970 chart-topping song, “Lola.” The radio version replaced the “Coca-Cola” brand name reference with the words “cherry cola.”
Lead singer Ray Davies had to fly from N.Y. to London to sing the radio edit to get the song on the air. Song fact: Davies wrote this song in jest after the band’s manager went to a club and danced with a transvestite. He was so plastered that he didn’t notice “her” stubble growing back in the wee hours of the night.
"Greased Lightning" by John Travolta
From the Broadway musical to the movie, "Grease" has been widely adopted as family entertainment, which is curious considering it’s about wild teens and illegal street racing.
On the radio, the word “sh*t” in John Travolta’s 1978 version of “Greased Lightning” had to be censored with a bleep. Although the line, “You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream for grease lightning,” remained untouched. Besides that, it’s a virtual course in auto mechanics about stylin’ up some wheels with overhead lifters and four-barrel quads, dual-muffler twins, and chrome-plated rods.
"Baby, It’s Cold Outside" by Frank Loesser
During its day, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was a perfectly acceptable song. Frank Loesser wrote and recorded it with his wife as a duet in 1944. It won an Oscar for Best Original Song in "Neptune’s Daughter" after Loesser sold it to MGM for the 1949 film.
Today, in 2018, the tune has been washed up in the #MeToo movement and faced radio play censorship for being a very controversial song.