Terrestrial Radio and the End of TinyLetter

Tinyletter will be shutting down at the end of February, meaning I need to either find a new platform or just go back to blogging here. I’ve been going through all 285 posts I’ve written so far, moving the full content to this site, and it’s a pain but it’s also neat to look back and reflect.

Back to your regularly unscheduled programming: I have Some Thoughts about terrestrial radio.

First, of course, we have to say “terrestrial radio” now, of course, to distinguish it from satellite and streaming services, the same way we have to say “acoustic guitar” and “postal mail” and “acoustic bicycle.” It’s almost charmingly obsolete. Who still listens to terrestrial radio? Well, “people who can’t figure out how to work Bluetooth in their cars” turns out to be a pretty big audience.

And with the persistence of terrestrial radio, we must of course have the persistence of the radio edit. Sure, we’ve come a long way since the FBI investigated whether the lyrics to Louie, Louie were obscene, but the radio edit – the one without the swears – persists. However, it makes almost no sense, because merely taking the swear words out of a song doesn’t truly render it “safe for kids.” For example, the radio version of Lil’ Nas X’s Montero changes “cocaine” to “champagne” in one place, but the line “shoot my shot on your face while I’m riding” is a little harder to finesse. The result is “put a smile on your face while (mumble mumble).” Either way, it’s a song about celebrating your identity by getting absolutely railed.

It’s inconsistent, too. Radio versions of the Akon fuck jam “Dangerous” bleep out even metaphorical swearwords like “snake” and “kitty,” but Ariana Grande’s song 34+35 (the sum is 69, get it?) leaves in phrases like “give me those babies” and “hold it open like a door for you,” as well as an entire verse celebrating the cleanliness of the singer’s butthole. Does this discrepancy have anything to do with race or gender, or is it just the result of different editors having different standards? Who’s even going to check?

Similarly:

  • Cardi B hated having to do the radio edit for Bongos because seriously, how does the phrase “eat these peaches and plums” make it any less obvious about what’s getting eaten?
  • Farruko’s stylophone-heavy club banger Pepas was inescapable on Spanish-language FM radio last summer. The clean version drops “fumando y jodiendo” from the intro and squelches the actual word “pastillas” but leaves the slang for pills (pepas) in place both in the song and in the title. The whole song is about doing molly and there’s no way to make it family-friendly, and yet here we are, singing a song about taking (….) in the club and being sure to drink plenty of water for your hangover tomorrow.
  •  “WAP,” the ode to vaginal moisture by Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion, may one of the filthiest songs to ever reach #1 on the Billboard charts. It may also the #1 song with the least play on terrestrial radio, because both radio edits are absolutely awful. One eliminates all the filth, which is to say it has lyrics about how “my (….) make that (….) game weak.” The other replaces the title phrase with “wet and gushy,” which somehow manages to be even dirtier.
  • The original radio edit for Notorious BIG’s 1994 “Juicy” elides the n-word, of course. However, after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks they had to cut out a metaphor involving the 1994 World Trade Center bombing (“time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade”). Since the artist was dead by then, the producers just cut out the vocals for the whole verse, leaving a bar or so of inexplicably unadorned bass line.
  • Spanish-language stations might censor it, but English-language ones don’t know what to do with the Pitbull x Lil’ Jon collab “Culo.” They just… leave it all hanging out there. CULO!


Elsewhere

Joy

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