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Song you wondered how they they ever got played on Top 40 radio

Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind is probably the filthiest song that got huge airplay in the last 30 years. It contains some pretty direct references to cocaine, crystal meth, anal sex, oral sex, suicide and Methodists. But it has such a poppy, happy go lucky sound that nobody ever really listened to the lyrics. Plus they are somewhat dificult to hear, unless you are really listening to them.

Good Girls Don't by The Knack was the follow up to My Sharona. Fairly nasty. Album version was "sitting on your face" and the AM radio cut was "putting you in your place" but in both cases the protagonist yells that "it hurts!" Only if you're doing it wrong, guy.

LOL
 
The New Chico said:
Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind is probably the filthiest song that got huge airplay in the last 30 years. It contains some pretty direct references to cocaine, crystal meth, anal sex, oral sex, suicide and Methodists. But it has such a poppy, happy go lucky sound that nobody ever really listened to the lyrics. Plus they are somewhat dificult to hear, unless you are really listening to them.

Good Girls Don't by The Knack was the follow up to My Sharona. Fairly nasty. Album version was "sitting on your face" and the AM radio cut was "putting you in your place" but in both cases the protagonist yells that "it hurts!" Only if you're doing it wrong, guy.

LOL
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Methodists?
 
The New Chico said:
I just figured after a list like that I HAD to cap it off with..."and Methodists." This is the sort of humor that has kept us going in my household for 30+ years.
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That reminds me, the last line of the first chorus of Johnny Cash's novelty song "The One On The Right Is On The Left" from his album of goofy novelty songs "Everybody Loves A Nut" is...

"...the guy in the rear ... was a Methodist"


c
 
yeoldeschool said:
Did Saturdays at 9 PM on NBC not count as family viewing time in the '80s? I used to watch that show on weekends during its original run thanks to adults who were in command of the remote control. Clearly, it never did anything to warp my brain later in life...
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8 PM was family hour.

As much as I enjoyed the show I never considered it family viewing. A person can object to how crude Blanche was.
 
yeoldeschool said:
Was "son of a bitch" ever as taboo on radio as "bitch" by itself?

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Harry Anderson was in "Harvey" on CBS. I think it was a TV movie, about the man who saw a rabbit no one else could see.

He used the expression and yet the V-chip rating was TV-G.
CentralFL said:
I guess my point is that the word bitch was common to the point that a song was actually titled bitch, but now most stations have back pedaled to the extent that they bleep or omit it.
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Another example: "Clueless" on UPN. The mean girl yelled,"You &$#@!" Episode still got a TV-G.
 
gr8oldies said:
I'd read years ago that Charlie thought calling the actual devil "son of a gun" was kind of mellow, so went with SOB. In my area, WMEE, Fort Wayne flipped from AM to FM when "The Devil" was topping the charts. On the AM,they ran the "Son of a Gun" version but once the flip to FM happened, they. played the SOB. The AM launched a country format at the same time and they still played the Son of a gun lyrics.
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Two country stations where I live played the SOB version. Charlotte's more established WSOC and Winston-Salem's WTQR probably played the other, though I can't remember for sure. But both markets had a more aggressive "new country" outlet back in the 90s.
 
michael hagerty said:
It's a sex song. The toes get the attention because of the title and the chorus, but there's a lot going on there:
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The only time I ever heard it was on an AC countdown. I don't know why I bothered with that, but I used to listen to some of Casey's show too. While I never actually heard these lyrics, I thought AC was supposed to be family-friendly.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I thought AC was supposed to be family-friendly.
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There are a lot of things you think are one thing that are something else. After all these years of various people addressing misconceptions (not just yours but others as well, to be fair), I would have thought you would know things like what AC means and its target demographic by now.

michael hagerty said:
It's a format aimed at people between the ages of 25 and 54. Adult Contemporary.
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vchimpanzee said:
Yes, but this was way back when the format actually sounded adult, unlike today when even the adults seem to like what the kids like.
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It was called MOR (middle-of-the-road) or Easy Listening back then. Having been one of the pioneering AC program directors, I can say definitively that our goal was "top 40 for adults". Your definition of "the adults seem to like what the kids like" goes back to the late 1970s, when the AC format was created and refined.

Please file this response, as well as Mike's, for future reference next time you want to define a format as something it is not. It has become tedious explaining this ad nauseum.
 


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