Mandatory: "The Most Controversial Songs of All Time"

[JamesG]

The Most Controversial Songs of All Time
by K. Thor Jensen
July 15, 2013


Music has charms to soothe the savage breast, but it can also inflame the passions. In this feature, we’ll share ten songs that kicked up serious controversy. Some were banned, some inspired government regulation and some killed careers.

From sexual content to racial unpleasantness, these tunes are guaranteed to piss somebody off.









'Smack My Bitch Up' (The Prodigy)






The third and last single from British electronica act The Prodigy’s 1997 album ;Fat of the Land' instantly turned the band into tabloid fodder. Everything about 'Smack My Bitch Up' seemed designed to grab tabloid headlines, from the profane title to the repetitive lyrics (sampled from an Ultramagnetic MC's track).

The video just put a cherry on top of the shock sundae, depicting a ribald night of drug use, sex and violence from a first-person view (that ends up being a young woman).

The BBC banned it, the video was banned by MTV, and the album was pulled from Wal-Mart and K-Mart.









'Je t’aime … moi non plus' (Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin)






French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg has dabbled in many controversial topics in his long career, but 'Je t’aime … moi non plus' really pushed things over the edge.

The track, which was written as a duet for Brigitte Bardot but eventually released with ingénue Jane Birkin, is essentially just an orgasm on record. It was barred from being sold to anybody under the age of 21 and speculation began to circulate that Gainsbourg had just recorded he and Birkin making love in a studio.

It was banned from radio airplay in multiple countries, including England, Italy and Portugal. Even the Vatican got in on the act, officially condemning the track.









'Cop Killer' (Body Count)






The only way you could make hip-hop less acceptable to grown-ups in the 1990s was to mix it with heavy metal, and that’s just what rapper Ice-T did with Body Count, his crossover group.

The band came to infamy with the 1992 release of 'Cop Killer', an excoriating song written from the perspective of a victim of police brutality who embarks on a revenge spree against the cops. The track received harsh rebukes from Charlton Heston, Dan Quayle and others.

Death threats were sent to Warner Bros. executives and the song was eventually removed from future pressings of the album.









'God Save the Queen' (Sex Pistols)






The reverence the British have for the Royal Family is perplexing to us Americans, but there’s no denying that they love their monarchy. So when the Sex Pistols dropped a brutal takedown of Queen Elizabeth on the year of her Silver Jubilee, there was widespread shock across the nation.

The band attempted to play the song from a boat on the Thames on the Jubilee holiday itself, only to be arrested. The BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority also banned the track.









'Darling Nikki' (Prince)






One of the most notoriously sexual songs of all time, 'Darling Nikki' was never released as a single from Prince’s Grammy Award-winning 'Purple Rain' album, but it still stirred up a ton of controversy.

The track tells the tale of a “sex fiend” who Prince meets in a lobby pleasuring herself with a magazine. 'Darling Nikki' was the track that inspired Tipper Gore to create the Parents Music Resource Center to fight against explicit lyrics in pop tunes.

When Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness in 2001, he stopped playing the song in concert.









'Dear God' (XTC)






British new wave pop band XTC weren’t known for grabbing headlines, but their 1986 track 'Dear God' did just that. An unflinching anti-religious song that vividly explores the extent of human suffering and asks how a just and loving God could allow it to happen, the track was condemned by many religious figures.

One Florida radio station played the track on-air and immediately received firebombing threats from Christian zealots, and many stores refused to carry the album for fear of protests.

Ironically, it was also the band’s biggest hit in the U.S.









'Bush Killa' (Paris)






Making threats against the life of a United States president will get you a visit from the Secret Service, so it’s not surprising that San Francisco-based rapper Paris got into some trouble in the early '90s for his song 'Bush Killa'.

The track off of his sophomore album 'Sleeping With the Enemy' is an explicit revenge fantasy against George Bush, Sr., and when his label found out about the content they immediately dropped him.

He eventually started his own label to release the record, including album art that depicted a machine gun-toting Paris hiding behind a tree to ambush Bush.









'They Don't Care About Us' (Michael Jackson)






The King of Pop courted controversy multiple times throughout his career, both intentionally and not. One song that got him in serious hot water was 'They Don’t Care About Us' from 1996’s 'HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1'.

The song featured Jackson striking back against the world, and contained seriously anti-Semitic lyrics like “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me / Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me.”

An embattled Jacko claimed that he didn’t have racist intent, but there was huge backlash from the media, and Jackson was forced to re-record the track with changed lyrics.









'Killing in the Name' (Rage Against the Machine)






It’s fitting that Rage Against the Machine’s most iconic song is also their most controversial.

'Killing in the Name' is the highlight of the band’s self-titled debut album, a scathing, brutal takedown on the U.S. military industrial complex, police brutality and institutionalized racism. Oh, and it also features liberal use of the F word, which got the band in trouble on multiple occasions.

In 1993, a British DJ played the uncensored version in full during his Top 40 countdown, drawing hundreds of complaints from listeners.









'Louie Louie' (The Kingsmen)






It’s hard to believe that a three-chord wonder from the 1960s could have inspired a full-blown FBI investigation into the obscenity of its lyrics, but it was a different time.

When Portland, Oregon, rock band The Kingsmen put out a cover of Richard Berry’s 'Louie Louie' in 1963, it hit #2 on the Billboard charts. Singer Jack Ely’s nasally vocals were so muffled and hard to understand that moral crusaders imagined they heard all kinds of nasty stuff in there, and the song was banned by radio stations across the country.

The FBI took 31 months to go through the recording, only to finally admit that they couldn’t understand a single word.

http://www.mandatory.com/2013/07/15/...-of-all-time/1

[Zoneboy]

Another lame opinion by an even lamer website, yay.

[MrCleveland]

What...no Chuck Berry's most controversial song?...



Not only because it's about Johnsons...but the term Alma Mater raised some eyebrows!

[robyrob]

the most obscene thing on that list is that the FBI wasted time listening to any of this nonsense

[UMFaninMD]

I'm surprised Madonna's "Justify My Love" didn't make that list. It was a huge controversy back in 1989. MTV wouldn't air it and Nightline did a whole show on it, airing the entire video. I liked the song (still do) and after seeing the video, couldn't understand what the big deal was. Watching it now, it's tame compared to some of the stuff that is aired now. Speaking of Madonna, she was a big defender of "Smack My Bitch Up," which I also like. No accounting for taste with me.

[ABlairican Pie]

Practically the entire catalogue by Cannibal Corpse. Banned in seventeen countries.
Most songs by black Norwegian metal bands.
Bloodhound Gang gets up there often.

Oh wait, I'm not naming the songs, am I?

[JamesG]

To name some others, Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails are some groups that have had banned/edited songs.


The video for 'Mein Teil' caused controversy in Germany and MTV wouldn't play it there until late-night.