Back before the days of the witch hunt and Janet Jackson's now infamous nipple, 96 Rock (may god rest her soul) played just about everything in it's original form. "Who are you" either went widely unnoticed, or nobody really cared. It is just a word, after all.
I remember the first time I heard "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits on Z-93, which was top 40 at the time of the release of "Brothers In Arms". I got used to hearing the whole song on 96 Rock, but there was a whole verse missing on Z-93!
Z-93 had also been playing the "drumbeat" version of John Cougar's (was he Mellencamp at the time?) "Play Guitar", where the absolutely obvious S-word was replaced by a drumbeat. The first time I heard that, I thought the record must have skipped. Then, when I realized what they had done I laughed my (insert sound effect here to cover blatant obscene word for the human posterior) off!
Self censorship is nothing new. For years, radio ststions have been able to tailor their content to what their audience would like to hear. If you didn't like what you heard on a station, you'd just turn the dial. Nowadays, one word can ruin a career.
Imagine if actual content was being policed instead... If every drug reference, violent act, "adult situation" etc. was censored from song lyrics, a lot of stations would have to chop their playlists in half.
I even heard Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" censored recently. Where the lyrics say "Makin' love in the green grass", it was replaced by "laughing and a-runnin'", from another verse, so that it actually said "laughing and a-runnin' behind the stadium with you...". Do enough people relly find the lyrics of "Brown Eyed Girl" offensive enough to warrant an edited version? Those folks really need to get a life, and quit ruining it for the rest of us who aren't going to grow up to be axe murderers because we heard the next song that they forgot to censor. Imagine Simon and Garfunkel "laughing and a-runnin' in the afternoon with Cecelia, up in my bedroom".
