Censorship of Music - Criticism

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.

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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.
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    Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
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    A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)