Censorship of Music - Censorship of Pop Music

Censorship of Pop Music

In order to allow songs to be played wherever possible, it is common to censor particular words, particularly profanity. Some music labels or artists produce censored versions themselves, sometimes with alternative lyrics, to comply with the rules set by various radio and television programs. Some stations decide to censor them themselves using one of several methods:

• Blanking; when the volume is muted for all or part of the word.
• Bleeping; playing a noise, usually a "beep", over all or part of the word.
• Resampling; using a like-sounding portion of vocals and music to override the offending word.
• Resinging; Replacing a word with a more appropriate word.
• Backmasking; taking the offending word and reversing the audio, sometimes the whole audio is reversed (often because it is a home-made job), but more usually only the vocal track is reversed.
• Repeating; repeating the word just said before the explicit word was used.
• Skipping; deleting the word from the song without a time delay.
• Echo; instead of saying a word, it echoes the last word(s) said in the line.
• Disc scratching; in hip hop, scratching on the word, making it sound like another word, or make the word said faster or slower.
• RoboVoicing; making the word totally non-understandable by overpowering a robovoice effect (usually used as a last resort for home-made jobs).
• Distorting; Usually in Hip-Hop, less offensive words such as "shit" or else is distorted. It is usually done by shifting down the pitch.