Entertainment For Lively Minds
Surprise Swearing
Posted by Fraser Lewry on 2 May 2009 - 7:00pm.
Believe it ir not, there's a track on the new Demis Roussos album called Who Gives A F**k. Not since Engelbert Humperdinck released Lesbian Seagull has one of rock's elder statesmen come up with such a surprise track title, but that's not my question.
While it's generally accepted that gratuitous swearing is often neither big nor clever, there must be examples in song where its use is still shocking, yet entirely appropriate, used only to drive home a point when no other word will possibly do. Can the Massive suggest any examples of worthwhile foul language?
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Some examples...
Shane MacGowan always gives good swear - 'Bottle of Smoke' being a particularly sweary favourite.
Of course no discussion of swearing in music would be complete without mentioning Ian Dury's 'Plaistow Patricia'
But the most shocking recently (for me) was The Boss's use of the F-word in Queen of the Supermarket on the last album - only because I cannot recall Springsteen swearing anywhere else in his weighty back catalogue......cue Massive proving me completely wrong within the hour, no doubt!
Well, within 4 hours anyway...
...and I'm not sure that this completely proves you wrong as technically it's not part of his back 'catalogue', but the only other instance where I can recall hearing Springsteen using the F-word is during that long semi-improvised section that he used to do as part of Backstreets back in the late 70s ('Slipping down and down and down...on the inside' indeed - astonishing version at Winterland 1978). Only the once mind - I think it appears on the most widely circulated bootleg from Boston Music Hall in 1977, and though I can't remember the exact line it shocked me the first time I heard it precisely because I don't think there were any other instances of him swearing (in song) at that stage.
Though, of course
He turns up declaiming verse on Lou Reed's Street Hassle, the sweariest thing ever committed to vinyl at the time.
That flipping trapeze
Bruce also gave it a bit of eff in Man On The Flying Trapeze for some of the Seeger Sessions shows.
Bruce swears
Only clocked this from the weekly email. The first but none the less shocking f**k from Bruce on released material was on Long Time Comin' from Devils&Dust. A song from the Tom Joad era a decade earlier, it makes the point of a second time round father not 'going to f**k it up this time'. It is a touch less shocking than the recent Queen of the Supermarket as it has more context.
And lest we forget, he has also forgone the potential sales in Starbucks by indicating that a whore had offered to take it up the *ss for $250 on the track Reno.
The Perfect Fuck
appears for me on Come Pick me Up - Ryan Adams.
The wrong kind of love that feels more right than any right kind ever could.
Tenderness and rage in perfect tension.
swearing on records guilty as charged
Bury's finest Elbow have a surprise guest swearer on one of their tracks myself and several hundred others recorded at Glastonbury can be heard on the end of "grace under pressure" which is a great song where the swearing is entirely appropriate. It's a rebuke to naysayers and doer downs in life.
Marianne Faithfull - 'Why D'Ya Do It'...
fuck, cock, fanny, snatch, bitch, cunt... they're all in there. Nice work!
The Prentenders
I always remember as a callow youth being absolutely thrilled the first time I listened to the Pretenders first album, first track (Precious) and about 2 and a half minutes in Chrissie Hind lets rip out of the blue. I don't think I'd ever heard a female swear before on a record.
Its gratuitous but absolutely perfect.
I like the swearing on this.
Surprise Sur-f***in' -prise
Our Cilla can apparently turn the air bluer than the Goodison Park terraces when she has a mind to it. She has a very polished and wholesome TV persona but you just know that a cussing fishwife is screaming to get out.
I would be taken aback if the lovely, smiley old bloke in Antiques Roadshow sudddenly let rip with a volley of abuse, calling on old lady's teapot a pile of fucking crap, for example.
Beautiful South - Dumb
I'm pretty sure that when this song first appeared, as the B-Side to "Liar's Bar", it featured the line:
"It doesn't take a labrador
To show a blind cnut sun"
This was subsequently changed to:
"It doesn't take a labrador
To show a blind man sun"
when it was added to the Quench album (and eventually released as a single in it's own right).
Always seemed an odd use of the word...
advice on re-thinking your current relationship
from The Pottymouth South
She'll grab your sweaty bollocks
Then slowly raise her knee
Dont marry her, fuck me
B&Q
I swear I heard that version by The Beautiful South whilst browsing in B&Q a few years back.
It was played on Daytime RTE Radio 1
a few years ago by the normally unflappable Pat Kenny; you'd think that you couldn't detect somebody blushing on the radio.
You can.
I suspect the work experience kid in charge of lining up the records that day got a right bollocking!
and the radio friendly version
She'll grab your Sandra Bullocks
Then slowly raise her knee
Dont marry her, have me
must be one of the most gratuitous uses of an actress's name
I love the subtle lyric change
in this cover.
Cake: bad name
dreadful band, were they having a laugh?
Thanks, Lee
I was scrolling down to the bottom, hoping to post this very song, where the F bursts thru' any ligering memory of the original, like a knife thru' liver. Sorry, Jimmy, but it is no laugh, it is a corking example of quite how to rework a song to hit all possible advantage, from the laconic vocal, loping bass and, finally, the masterstroke, the mariachi trumpet.It is, true, the bands finest moment, but their e music selection is well worth the cheapness of download. They also do a much finer "Ruby, don't take your love to town" than do the Killers.
Cake
were pretty good I reckon. Check out Frank Sinatra by them. Fine band. Much underrated.
Lets Hear it For The Cake!
I love Cake, they're full of surprises and great melodies. Fashion Nugget is a brilliant album.
Good use...
...of 'He's Going the Distance':
My Mother in Law...
... owned a Charlie Aznavour tape. One of the tracks was called 'Pretty Shitty Days'. Being a bit short-sighted I don't think she ever noticed.
First swearing I remember hearing
on a record was Lennon on Working class hero and it made the song much more powerful as a result. Also Steely Dans Showbiz kids - you know they don't give a fuck about anybody else. Perfect fit and Costello with 'if it moves then you fuck it, if it doesn't then you stab it' is a memorable line.
Working Class Hero
Enuff said...totally appropriate
Appropriate?
Not sure. But quite frankly it's the swearing which makes this song work...
Well I'm Shocked!
My dear Mr. Sprocket, everyone kens the Metallica cover version is superior.
well really!
<---goes back to Sunday Post letters page
ANL
Saw them supporting *blush* Rancid last year and it was a rather spirit-crushing experience seeing them perform this live along with 'tongue-between-the-fingers' theatrics and much rolling around on the floor. Bad times.
The Auld Goth again
Eh, may I point you at Mr. E's perfect "f-word" usage on Driven Like the Snow from the remarkable Floodland ellpee, it also made it onto much sought after t-shirts
In the middle of
Kathryn Williams' 'Glass Bottom Boat' the sweet voiced lady
reveals 'We've been fucking all afternoon. burning like fossil fuel' in the middle of a languid pool of a song. Always refreshingly frank, unexpected and a little bit naughty.
And no, its not about THAT sort of Glass Bottom Boat....i think
I find this little sweary cover version very, erm, invigorating
I may be naive but...
what does a "Glass Bottom Bo.... oops! think I just got it, as you were
talk about not being able to 'unsee' things....
Cliff Richard's
'Piss off honey, now we don't talk anymore' was a a bit of a shaker back in '76. Mrs Whitehouse can't have been pleased.
Exceelent!
well I laughed
Cool as fuck ........
Ben Folds - Fired
Mr. Folds is not a man averse to swearing in his songs, but my favourite moment has to be the massive, multi-harmonised wail of "MOTHERFUCKER!" right at the end of this song.
However, I think possibly the best use of expletive in song has to be The Specials' "Pearl's Cafe", with the magical chorus:
"It's all a load of bollocks,
it's all a load of bollocks,
it's all a load of bollocks,
and bollocks to it all".
This is how you swear in a movie
This is the long suffering Steve Martin finally losing it in Planes Trains and Automobiles. Stick around, you get to hear it in German too!
Beeks
it's a motherf*cker
by eels - one of their prettiest songs, and all the more effective for the resigned, weary way E delivers it.
if it its mofo cussin'
you're looking for - then, of course, the libretti of the Hip-Hop genre are replete with examples.
but it's not surprising
it's punctuation and rhyme, not hearing it sometimes would be more shocking?
True, dat
Much as I love Dr Dre, it's hardly a surprise when the gentleman is uncouth.
Surprising?
- perhaps not, yet - even as a classic armchair liberal and broad-minded cove - I am still shocked at the level of sheer abusiveness, violence and misogyny in a great deal of hip-hop. That's the purpose I suppose. To be shocking, yes - but also to use language as a means of inclusion and exclusion through a variety of layered meanings.
Separately, I always think Amy Winehouse is a good swearer - in the sense of aposite - in her songs.
Sadly true
But so is the opposite. Hip-hop is probably the only genre where you'll regularly find stay-in-school, respect-your-parents, work-hard, improve-yourself, women-are-equal lyrics. That's it's a reaction to the stuff at more unsavoury end of the spectrum is undoubted, but it is there. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to appeal to folk in the way that the more violent stuff does.
Ben Folds
...cover of B*tches ain't sh*t does rather show up the Snoop dee-oh-double-gee's potty mouth though, eh?
John Cale's Guts
How about this for an openng line - "the bugger in the t shirt fucked my wife, did it quick and split" ?
Short sleeves
I believe it's "short sleeves" rather than "t shirt"; this, to me, makes the cuckolding far more ignominious.
Sorry
you're quite correct. Interesting that in later versions it becomes "fucked his wife" which somehow doesn't seem to have the same effect!
Aimee Mann
isn't short of an 'f' or 2 - a bit surprising giving the literacy of most of her lyrics.
The surprise is in '(Believed You Were) Lucky' from 'Til Tuesday's 'Everything's Different Now' - right at the end -'Life could be fucking great.'
Great track and lyrics though on what was a near perfect '1st side' (in old album money).
Also
'You fucked it up, you should have quit' opening 'Long Shot' on 2nd solo album.
I like D'Angelo's 'Sh*t Damn, Muthaf*cka' - totally meaningful in the context of a song about infidelity
Aimee again
On her song How Am I Different? on Bachelor No 2
Just one question
Before I pack -
When you fuck it up later
Do I get my money back?
Just remembered!
Nuclear War as covered by Yo La Tengo. Mainly because it features a wonderful choir of sweary children.
Doesn't seem to be on youtube, probably on spotify. Features children singing "It's a mutherfucker, don't you know, baby push that button, your ass got to go" over and over.
Mummy's Listening
I always remember the panic setting in when I was just too far away from the family gramophone to turn the giant bakelite volume knob as Daltrey headed like a locomotive for Quadrophenia's extremely apposite take-on-the world 'Her fellow's gonna kill me? Oh, fucking will he!"
In later years, I was therefore always ready with the rotatory finger in the car when Alanis Morrisette would otherwise have assailed the first child's ears with "And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?".
The second child saves me all this trouble. As a soon-to-be-blue track from, say, Lily Allen begins she calmly announces "I'm not allowed to listen to this".
End of a retail career ?
I can still remember being in a small-ish branch of John Menzies back in the 80's when "Who Are You?" by The Who came on - but not the radio edit. It came off pretty sharpish mid-play, presumably followed just as quickly by someone losing their Saturday job. Of course, no-one would bat an eyelid (earlobe?) now.
Surprised?
As Dostoyevsky said, "What the fuck!"- Carbon/Silicon
The single version of Dance Stance
or maybe the slightly different speed LP version (aka Burn it Down), one of them anyway, but it was still sufficiently a shock, all those years ago for Kevin Rowland to be singing "Shut your fucking mouth......."
Put this in your pipe and smoke it, Gordon Ramsay
I know The Wire is not a show to fight shy of the odd profanity, but here's a fine bit of dramatic swearing.
Oh fer Fuckin' Fuck's sake...
Rambo's Kitchen Nacht Traumes have become 'appointment' telly for me and my mates, we watch them and chat online about how heinous things are. Rambo's sweariness flies o'er oor heids.
I think it was Matt Hall
who made me snort tea down my nose when he said in a podcast how watching The Wire for too long in one stretch makes you talk like the characters in the show. "Do you want a cup of tea, motherfucker?"
Super Furry Animals: The Man Don't Give A Fuck
is my favourite song with effing and jeffing in it.
Excellent song but hardly surprise swearing
since it's in the title.
Do I get bonus points for knowing it's based on a sample from a Steely Dan song?
Swearing good. Mrs Whitehouse bad.
"While it's generally accepted that gratuitous swearing is often neither big nor clever" - I beg to differ, Mr. Lewry. I find it to be both, and funny too. But anyways... I agree with previous comment about The Pretenders "Precious" (very cool swearing) but I think my biggest swearing surprise was on first hearing Ian Dury's Plastow Patricia beginning with the immortal opening line "arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks". A true poet.
Uncle Frank Z
on Just Another Band from LA, his wee rap towards the end of Call Any Vegetable never fails to crease me up in it's appositeness and delivery, ye just know the man means it.
Swearing: big, clever and very funny when used properly.
You have to work for this one ...
John Lennon's "Meat City" - appears on a 7" B-side and on the 'Mind Games' album. Aged around 14 or so when these things seem very important a friend and I noticed that the two versions sounded very slightly different. About 33 seconds in on the 7" a backwards message says 'check the album'. Wind the LP backwards and at the same point it says 'fuck a pig'.
Well, it probably seemed worth the effort back in 1973.
Surely the best swearer in the business?
The don of profane, Malcolm Tucker. Ladies and Gennlemen of the massive, I give you Tuckers Law.
Keep on Tuckering
Mike Brearley, master tactician
turns in a time of need - opposition cantering to victory - to his senior pro- John Emburey who offers the sage counsel:
"Skip, we're fucked - the fucking fucker is fucking fucked".
My friends band "Eagleowl" have quite a charming song..
http://www.myspace.com/eagleowlattack
'mf' - third song down.
Marti Wild?
(sorry about the 'subject' but I feel the necessity to enter a title lends itself to a puntastic response)
Wet Wet Wet - Temptation. Early versions included the line 'they won't waste my fucking spirit'. Later sanitised - exactly how I can't be bothered to remember.
Fuck all that....
...appearing as a Doo-Wop backing in Floyd's "Not Now, John", alomg with Gilmour's seemingly gleeful rendition is a bit of a surprise. Then I suppose they'd already called Mary Whitehousea "Fucked up old hag" in "Pigs - Three Different ones" (for ages, I thought the line was "Fucked up old HAM" which seemed strangely more appropriate.
Of course, the best surprise swearing is Roger Daltrey's "Sweeeeeeeet Fuck all!" on "Young Man's Blues" (Live at Leeds).
I'd say that
swearing in a doo-wop style is about as unrepentant as it gets - as long as they're harmonising
Going back to the top...
My Best Was Never Good Enough from the 1995 album The Ghost Of Tom Joad is, I believe, the first example of Bruce swearing on a studio song...
His "western" albums are full of all kinds of earthy language... must be all that fresh air.
thanks
Liz Phair
Fuck and Run?
Rage Against the Machine
"Killing in the Name Of" Is there a single more Rock n roll statement than "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me"?
Campfire version
Excellent!
Can't wait for the Belle and Sebastian version...
All the funnier
when I remember listening to Bruno Brookes doing the UK Top 40 on Radio 1 (when I was younger tha now) and mistakenly playing the full, unexpurgated album version that repeated the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" line for about 45 seconds at track end.
Clearly he'd nipped out for a piss otherwise I don't think the track would have finished.
I just sat there with a big dumb grin on my face thinking, "Bruno, you are so fucking fired, mate"
The Police...
...were the first band I heard using the C word. On Rehumanize Yourself (off Ghost in the Machine, 1981):
(Talking about someone in The National Front)
"He always was a little runt
He's got his hands in the air with the other c**ts
You've gotta humanize yourself"
Great track actually - written by Copeland & Sting, I think.
It's not "surprise swearing"
since it's in the song title (unless you buy it on iTunes) but to hear Inara George's sweet voice singing in a rather world-weary manner "Will you ever be my, will you be my fucking boyfriend?" is quite a radical use of four letter words. It's almost like Karen Carpenter casually saying "fuck" into Close to You.
(On iTunes the song is called "F-cking Boyfriend (Explicit)", presumably to assist those who forget that coffee is hot and that bags of peanuts cannot be guaranteed to be nut free)
"Hiya boys I'm the chosen one
can't you fuckin see?"
is a great Pistols line. Doesn't he yell "Elton John - utter cunt' over the end bit? Not much of a surprise mind...
...another great bit of swearing here:
I'm peretty sure
there's also a comment about Mick Jagger's skin color ambitions
Nina Gordon
Obviously 'Straight outta Compton' is going to be a bit sweary, but it's always suprising when it's delivered so sweetly.
Ed Harcourt
Ed does a nice line in suprise swearing at the end of born in the 70's with a Coda of 'born in the 70's, they dont really give a fuck about you.
Also, Nick Cave's Green eyes, with its sudden 'twinkling c*nt' line in a beautiful song also always suprises at dinner parties.
"Arthur", the Dudley Moore film
John (dear, dear Johnny) Gielgud's impeccable delivery of:
"Shall I wash your dick for you too, you little prick?"
That nice boy Josh Groban
using the f-word was a surprise. Well, as it's american network TV it's beeped, but anyway.
My Idea, Evan Dando
From "Baby I'm Bored", easily the most accessible song on the album, having a nice radio-friendly melody and being just two and a half minutes long. Cue Jonathan Ross cutting to the track after a short chat with Evan. One minute eight seconds in, "The experts won't know what the fuck to do."
He'd get sacked if it happened now!
The Kinks 'Apeman'
Way back in 1969 (I think) Ray Davies sings "...the air pollution is a-fuckin' up my eyes'. On Top of the Pops too, but nobody seemed to notice.
Mr E's marvellous potty mouth
Despite the number of examples given in this thread, Mark Everett seems to have an uncanny ability to surprise with his gutter talk. Another fine example is the sweetly named "Fucker", a short and charming tune seemingly describing a melancholic passion, only to end with
"Something about you
Something about spending the afternoon
Asleep in your arms
I hate you
Fucker"
"all you young cunts"
The Clash, Give Em Enough Rope, All The Young Punks...you talkin' to ME?
Yes they were.
Less is more, more or less.
It's still Al Stewart's Love Chronicles for me. An 18 minute build up to hear a swear word, but worth the wait-even now.
Family Reunion - Blink 182
Gloriously juvenile!
Ultrafucks!
It was only many years after the event that it dawned on me that the chorus to early Ultravox! single Rockwrok goes:
Come on, let's tangle in the dark, dark
Fuck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
When it's wet and hot you want to rockwrok, rockwrok, rockwrok
For some reason you just don't notice it, which is presumably why it didn't stop the song occasionally being played on the radio.
And isn't there a bit in the chorus of EMF's Unbelievable that goes 'What the fuck was that?' Or am I mishearing that?
Vintage Commander Cody
The swearer's swearer
Waldorf, you f(*^( c(*&^...only joking - it's just that you beat me to mentioning Malcolm Tucker from the thick of it....swearing that is often horrible using *gasp* even the c word and ALL others but ohhhhh sooo funny.
I particularly like the one in answer to a knock on his door 'come the fu** in or fu** the fu** off'
BIG DOGS COCK
.. is that enough surprise swearing for you?
Sweet Helena !!
David Sylvian swears shocker!
This is only really surprising given the public profile that David Sylvian has so assiduously cultivated over the last thirty years (particularly his noted long term interest in peace and forgiveness based Eastern religions), but it still sounds a bit shocking to hear the youthful Dave yell the following words on 'Television', the closing track to Japan's glam punk tinged debut, 'Adolescent Sex':
"You got glorious colourless motion
From reel to reel you run
Nocturnal television
...It's on all night and day
Your fucking television
It's all you ever wanted"
Seems rather prescient in retrospect...this was from the days (1978) when there were only three channels and tv always shut down before midnight. Goodness knows what the aesthete David would think of the little magic box in the corner these days...
Don't think Sylvian then swore on record for nearly another 30 years, until 'Sleepwalkers' which was released on a tour only cd in 2007: "The underglimmering/something to wake us/from cultural slumbers/you fucking sleepwalkers/go on and sleep".
It's not a great song, but boy does he sound cross! There's something quite chilling and unsettling about hearing such a mellifluous croon whisper expletives (especially when he's been holding it all in for three decades!)
We are all forgetting
Ian Dury on New Boots and Panties shouting the top of his voice 'ARSEHOLES, BASTARDS, FUCKING CUNTS AND PRICKS'
Classic.
This takes some beating
Tony Slattery having a nervous breakdown mid-game when he can't guess correctly on this episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway due to an unfortunate mix of his bi-polar depression and his then-cocaine habit all too evident in this clip. His select use of Anglo Saxon aimed towards Clive Anderson at the end is a gem.
And the immortal
Football and swearing
Not unusual bedfellows by any means. However, seasoned football-watchers were surprised when Roy Hodgson - a dapper, suave and urbane gentleman of a certain age, who one suspects has spent many days holding doors open for ladies - reacted rather angrily to Jamie Redknapp's suggestion that Champions League referees should only come from countries with the most successful (read: indebted) teams...
http://fourfourtwo.com/news/championsleague/30689/default.aspx