15February
Bad language wasn't usually cause for anything short of A-list rotation - in 1990, EMF managed to suggest that listeners to Unbelievable
should copulate and travel, while Kylie sung about being fucked to my very foundations on her 1991 hit Shocked
. Yes, the Super Furry Animals did find that calling your hit The man don't give a fuck
was a bit too much, even for 1996, but bad language has never been a show-stopper. Heck, witness the inexplicable rise of incomprehensible rappers such as Emma Nem, 28 New Pence, and Akron.
If there's one common thread in most of the songs Radio 1 failed to play, at least before the liberalisation of the Beerling and Bannister eras, it was sex. The innoccuous There ain't nothing like shagging
, a minor hit in late 1987 for the Tams who were promoting their dance craze, somehow fell foul of Bruno Brayne's producer at the time. We've already spoken about George Michael, but the heyday of the ban was in the early years of Radio 1. There was a good reason not to play such dreck as Max Romeo's Wet dream
and Ivor Biggun's Winker's song (Misprint)
, the reason being that these records were atrocious musically. But when such arguable classics as the Stones' Let's spend the night together
and Donna Summer's Love to love you
are completely removed from the playlist, it's clear that the BBC is not basing its judgements entirely on musical merit. That's not an argument we can use against their refusal to play the Prodigy's 1997 hit Smack my bitch up
in daytime; again, that particular record is worth its weight in air.
Contrary to popular belief, only one record has been completely banned while the number one selling single. It's not Relax
. Though Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 1984 best-seller would never have spent five weeks on top if Mike Read hadn't been short of time before the news one morning, Tommy Vance received special dispensation to play the record at the end of the Top 40 show in the weeks when it was number one. The tune was also played in Richard Skinner's end-of-year countdown, without a mention of the ten-month gap since it had last been heard.
No, the single number one never to be played on the Top 40 is Je t'aime... moi non plus
, in a version recorded by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. There were many competing versions doing the rounds at the time, because old Serge had been liberal in his choice of recording partners. Miss Birkin's was one of the later recordings, and she said that she only did the song because everyone else was doing it.
The version of this song we present for your review is not the original. It's topped and tailed as though part of a BBC World Service programme, and the announcer gives a literal translation of the lyrics, in an effort to explain exactly why it's not being played on the domestic service. We believe that this particular version was recorded as a spoof by staff at Bush House, probably during the early 1970s.
