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Essay on Music Censorship

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Music Censorship

The tall, lanky fifteen-year-old ambled slowly up to the counter and tossed his music selection toward the clerk. The salesman began to ring the sale up in his routine manner, but just then something caught his eye. It was a small black sticker on the corner of the CD. This sticker plainly read "explicit lyrics." As the teenager fumbled through his pockets searching for a method of payment, the clerk gave him a questioning glance. "Could I see some identification please?" The clerk's voice cut through the silence like a knife through butter. Immediately the boy's face went from something of a blank stare to a frown. "I'm sorry this particular CD is not available to minors," the clerk apologetically stated. "Yeah …show more content…

By removing the libretto of La Traviata Verde's opera has lost at least some of its impact or meaning. Though we can not be sure what this particular libretto's content was, we can be sure that we have missed out on some of Giuseppe Verde's work of art.
The issue of censorship has been with us for centuries. Due to the argumentative nature of the human race, this issue will in all probability remain with us for centuries to come. Radio broadcasters in the Nineteen Fifties regularly altered and removed certain lyrics that were determined too offensive for listeners. " The Billie Holiday song 'Love for Sale' was banned outright by the ABC radio network in 1956 because of its prostitution theme" (Volz 2). In other cases lyrics were changed in order to allow these hit songs some guaranteed air time. "ABC changed a line in the Cole Porter tune 'I get a kick out of you' from ' I get a kick from cocaine' to ' I get perfume from Spain'"(2). Sure, these lines may well rhyme, but they totally lack the artist's intended meaning. Cole Porter was deprived of a main point he was trying to get across. Once again the unjust act of censorship has robbed the meaning of a song from millions.
In 1966 an Irish group named "Them" wrote, and sung, the top selling European song "Gloria." One line in this song, "she comes in my room" was marked offensive by WLS, a radio station in Chicago. This song was so

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