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The Editor Speaks: When offensive swear words become acceptable

Maren Morris – “Rich”

“Is money falling from the sky…(ka-ching, ka-ching) s**t I’d be rich

FACEBOOK: Country singer Maren Morris fantasizes about living large in the new song “Rich,” off her upcoming debut album ‘Hero.’ She also tosses a few colorful words into the lyrics: “S**t, I’d be rich,” she sings. “I don’t get this whole glossing over fun little tidbits of people’s personalities. That’s not how we talk,” Morris says. “But it’s also just fun to throw in colorful language, whether it’s a cuss word or not.”

Old Dominion – “No Such Thing As A Broken Heart”

“What am I gonna tell my kids when they see
All of this bulls**t that goes down on TV”

So Morris doesn’t say foul swear words are offensive, her logic says they are ‘colorful’!

I have honed in on these two songs, not only because they both contain the swear word “s**t, but one got bleeped out on most of the air waves, including our own Radio Rooster, but the other one didn’t.

Old Dominion’s “s***t was bleeped because it had the word “bull” in front of it and therefore the meaning, according to the radio stations was clear.

However, in Morris’ song “Rich” the word “s**t” is on its own and therefore its specific meaning is unclear.

It is without doubt that an average of 0.66% of all words in lyrics of these artists are swear words. 1 in every 152 words is a swear word. This is higher than the percentage of profanities in everyday speech (which is around 0.5%).

The overwhelming number of swear (sorry – I mean ‘colorful’) words are in the lyrics sung by Hip-Hop artists with s**t” being the most used.

Artist Lil Wayne uses a swear word on average every 31 words. But he is beaten by Chief Keef who has the dubious distinction of using them for every 20 words.

Even worse, Diplo, an artist in the Electronic Music category that I thought was mostly instrumental, manages one swear word every 14 words!!

Swear words are used far less in Rock, Pop, Indie Rock and Folk.

The least category is Country, although Morris seems to want to change that. She has to beat Eric Church and Miranda Lambert.

None of these so called ‘colorful’ words will ever be acceptable to me whether the radio stations say they are acceptable if their specific meaning is unclear. They are offensive SWEAR words

Shame on you “Rooster”. I hope when Maren Morris gets to sing here next year she is not allowed to sing any of her colorful words. Even though the precedent has now been set.

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