First of all, I have no problem with swearing, I swear myself and personally I think if you get offended by swearing then you need to get a life. I've also never seen the point in censoring swear words for children, even with my sheltered upbringing in the countryside I knew pretty much every swear word by the time I was 8, and they're only words anyway.
What's prompted my to write this post is the amount of swearing I've heard on top 40 hits this year, the latest being this weeks new entry from a One Direction member. Maybe he's doing the Robbie Williams thing of being controversial post-boyband, but it certainly sounds like him and his collaborator are swearing just for the sake of it. I can say the same for some other records that have been hits in recent times.
The issue of swearing in pop music has been flagged in recent times, but is it really an issue?
First of all, what is pop music in a modern sense? This year we have had 4 acts flood the charts with multiple records at various points, Ed Sheeran, Drake, Stormzy and Kendrick Lemar. Three of those four are rappers, so one would expect swearing on their music. In fact I would hazard a guess we've had more records in the top 40 so far this year with rapping in them than not.
Although rap is the genre most likely to be associated with swearing, it's not the only one where you would expect it. When I was listening to rock and metal music back in the early 90s I think pretty much every band I listened to swore, some more so than others. It was my parents discovering "Get In The Ring" by Guns n Roses contained the lyric "suck my fuckin dick" that made them ban me from owning any Guns n Roses music. I did however own it courtesy of a copied tape from a mate at school.
Then there was Rage Against The Machine, who caused outrage with "Killing in the Name". Some people say this is just lots of needless swearing because of the "fuck you I wont do what you tell me" part being repeated multiple times, but every line in the song is repeated multiple times and it fits in with what the song is about.
When Green Day started to make a name for themselves in this country, they had the single "Longview", a song about masturbation with swearing in it. I knew somebody several years ago who wasn't familiar with Green Days music so I said he could borrow my "Dookie" CD. He said no, because he didn't like music with swearing in. Aside from "Longview" though, only three other tracks had swearing on them. What's more ironic though is that the man was a Pink Floyd fan who I've since discovered were swearing on records before it was commonplace to do so.
When I started getting into dance music I wasn't really expecting swearing, but there was. More often than not it was the MC's on the tape packs doing it. One particular MC, Junior, swore so often that some started calling him MC Fuckin Junior.
It's probably fair to say that most genres outside of pop have their fair share of swearing and have done for quite some time now. But what about swearing in pop music itself?
Around the turn of the century I was part of an Alisha's Attic e-mail group. I sent out my first e-mail to the group and then received an e-mail from one of the moderators giving me a bollocking for swearing in the e-mail. I thought the no swearing policy for the group was a bit ridiculous, particularly as Alisha's Attic had a song called "Angel Eyes" which had the lyric "fuckin bitch". So there is an example of a pop song with swearing from over 20 years ago.
Back in 1994 though, East 17 had a track on their "Steam" album called "MF Power". Whilst the track had the swearing edited out, the lyric sheet contained the lyric "Love ain't nothing but mother fuckin power". So there you have it, a boy band put swearing on their lyric sheet 23 years ago.
So whilst I do see some of the swearing on current pop records a bit pointless and there is arguably more of it than there used to be, it certainly isn't anything new.
I shall leave you with the East 17 track in question, MF Power.
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