Criticism
The total censorship of a song is often reported in the mass media and often has the effect of drawing more attention to the song than it would have received had it not been banned. Equally, the censorship of a word can highlight it to such a degree that it makes it more obvious what the singer has said.
In 1993, when Nirvana's In Utero album was released, it was forced to be censored by their label as well as by distributors Walmart and Kmart. Nirvana's frontman, Kurt Cobain, responded by saying "I just feel bad for all the kids who are forced to buy their music from big chain stores and have to have the edited music". The name of the song "Rape Me" was changed to "Waif Me" for these stores. The name change only appears on the back cover. The original title is still stated in the liner notes and the album insert.
Read more about this topic: Censorship Of Music
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)