What was the most recent song to be banned by the BBC?
The BBC is no doubt a household institution in this country, sitting at the crux of the national media landscape in everything from radio to TV to news.
Of course, the broadcaster holds its stringent standards which, despite its best efforts, have on occasion ruffled a few feathers along the way. Music is no different in this sense. Across all the BBC’s radio networks you can take your pick of genres and eras, but that doesn’t mean that every one of your favourite songs will make it to air.
In fact, over the 102-year history of the BBC, there has been an extensive list of songs banned for various reasons – some more straightforward, serious, or funny than others. There are also the ones where the ban has been surreptitiously lifted over time, like classic cases that the Beatles fell victim to, including ‘A Day in the Life’, which was initially banned for the lyric “I’d love to turn you on” – scandalous in 1967 – but eventually started getting played again on BBC radio years later without any explanation.
Everyone from Bing Crosby to Bob Dylan and Billy Fury has fallen foul of BBC standards over time, and with such a wide range of companies, it’s not exactly an exclusive badge of honour. Some songs are more obvious – things like ‘Fucking in Heaven’ by Fatboy Slim or ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ by The Prodigy never made it to air for their overtly explicit content; it’s not as if that’s going anywhere near a breakfast show. But others have moved with the times – in 2007, ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl was banned for its alleged homophobic reference but was subsequently lifted again due to public backlash.
The BBC has said since the early 2000s that they have stopped banning songs, which is true to a certain extent as there’s only intermittent entry post-1999. The only exception is, of course, songs that breach the organisation’s gold standard of impartiality. Tracks geared satirically at political or other public figures aren’t making it to air, which includes ‘Prince Andrew is a Sweaty Nonce’, the most recent banned entry from 2022 by punk rock dark comedy parody artist The Kunts.
However, it’s fortunate that not all BBC bans are permanent. Looking back, some of their justifications for songs that faced the cutting room floor were simply bizarre. Take the first lot they banned, for example – during the course of World War Two, the then director of music, Sir Arthur Bliss, forbade any songs that were “slushy in sentiment”, which among them included songs from musicals like ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows’ from Oh, Look!… because it’s not as if the nation could have been afforded a little bit of joy, could they?
Regardless, it seems that the wrath of the BBC-banned song is largely a phenomenon of the past. Whether some artists got enraged by the censorship or others wore the label with rebellious pride, they’ve all earned their own small place in the musical history of the country – even though the radio listening figures might not always get boosted by the ones they really annoyed.
