Jan 21, 2009

"...Even When She Was Given Suede"."

On my way home last night, I was in the car listening to the radio (as I often do) and Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" came on.

I like that song, but they don't play it all that often on the radio. And they especially don't play the second verse if they do.
It's a rare occasion if you catch that version of the song on the radio.

So imagine my surprise when...
"Candy came from out on the island"

Oh sweet! They are going to play the complete version!
"In the backroom, she was everybody's darling."

Yeah! Singing along a little bit louder now.
"But she never lost her head, even when she was giving suede."

Wait. What? "Suede?" Huh?
Did he just say suede?!?

I know there are edited versions of much raunchier or explicit songs so that the radio can play them to hook listeners.
Ususally they delete the offending verse or just scramble the word so it sounds garbled.
But I've never heard of a radio version having a totally new word replace the "bad" one. Especially one that doesn't even make sense.

Well, no. That's not exactly true.
There is one other song with a replacement word in the song, but at least it made sense in the song.
Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner" has a lyric that goes:
"... I don't want to get caught up in any of that funky shit goin' down in the city."
But for radio play they change 'shit' to 'kicks'.
It's kinda stupid, but it at least makes some sense when you listen to it.

But "suede"?
C'mon.

2 things people had to say:

Elwood said...

I hate it when they do markerfarthing stuff like that, man.

Unknown said...

They do that shiznoz a lot more with rap music... a perfect example is David Banner's "Play", the unedited version is unplayable pretty much anywhere, but the radio edit was a hit...