List of songs banned by the BBC

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The following list of songs banned by the BBC is an alphabetical list of songs that the BBC has at one stage or another, considered controversial enough to ban. As the United Kingdom's public service broadcasting corporation, the BBC has always felt some obligation to standards of taste and decency, to varying levels, at different times in its history. Its "auntie knows best" attitude earned it the nickname of "Auntie BBC" or "Auntie Beeb".

Files at the BBC's Written Archives Centre in Caversham now available for public inspection show that the Dance Music Policy Committee, set up in the 1930s, took the role of Britain's cultural guardian seriously: one 1942 directive read:

We have recently adopted a policy of excluding sickly sentimentality which, particularly when sung by certain vocalists, can become nauseating and not at all in keeping with what we feel to be the need of the public in this country in the fourth year of war.^[1]

The BBC's director of music, Sir Arthur Bliss, wrote wartime instructions for the committee banning songs "which are slushy in sentiment" or "pop" versions of classical pieces such as "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", from the 1918 Broadway show Oh, Look!, which made use of Chopin's "Fantaisie-Impromptu"; The Cougars' 1963 version of Swan Lake, "Saturday Nite at the Duckpond" or "Baubles, Bangles and Beads",^[2] from the 1953 musical Kismet and which was based on the second movement of Alexander Borodin's String Quartet in D.

Other justifications for such bans have included the use of foul language in lyrics, explicit sexual content, supposed drug references (a particularly controversial issue during the late 1960s), controversial political subject matter, maintaining a strict ban on advertising, as in the case of The Kinks' 1970 hit, "Lola",^[3] as well as some much less common and unusual justifications. This policy has been seen as highly controversial and heavily criticised at times, sometimes within the BBC itself.

Satire was another reason for banning: in 1953, 10 of the 12 tracks on Songs by Tom Lehrer were banned.^[2]

In some cases a ban has been imposed by an individual DJ who refused to play a particular song, whilst colleagues would continue giving it airplay. That was the case of Radio 1's Mike Read who, in January 1984, refused to play Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" on his mid-morning show, declaring it "overtly obscene".^[4]^[5]

While the ban on some of these songs has been lifted, other songs have never been officially cleared for airing on BBC radio, and their status is uncertain - in some cases, records which have been banned have since been played on BBC radio without any official announcement that the ban has ended (such as the Beatles' "A Day in the Life").^[6]

Although the BBC has claimed in recent years that they no longer ban any records^[7] - as in the controversy over The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in 1996.^[8] - there have been cases of direct or indirect censorship. According to a BBC spokesperson, no official ban was imposed in the case of Linda McCartney's posthumous "The Light Comes from Within" despite Sir Paul McCartney running advertisements in the national press criticising the ban.^[9] In 2007 BBC Radio One banned the full version of The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York", replacing it with an edited version, though due to public outcry the ban was quickly lifted.^[10]

[edit] Censored vs banned

In some cases, it was considered sufficient to censor certain words rather than banning a song outright. In the case of The Kinks' "Lola", once the offending word had been changed (Coca-Cola to "Cherry cola"), the song was given airplay. In other cases, it was not necessary for the BBC to formally ban a particular song since both parties were well aware of what would be acceptable or not, as was the case of George Formby's 1937 song, "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock".^[11] The "restricted" list included Barry McGuire's 1965 hit, "Eve of Destruction".^[2]

This article lists songs which have been banned by the BBC over the years. Some were banned for only a limited time, and have since received BBC airplay. Others were banned many years after having been first aired, as was the case of The Cure's 1979 single "Killing an Arab", which was banned from BBC airplay as the first Gulf War began,^[3] or Lulu's "Boom Bang-a-Bang", the United Kingdom's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 - more than two decades later.^[1]