I just had to hear it. Apparently the 2004 track Real N***a Roll Call by Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz holds the record for the most swearing in a studio-recorded song. 329 cuss words. The song is 5:09. That’s 309 seconds. So the rate of swearing is actually greater than once per second. That’s why the clean version (above) is actually pretty hilarious after the first 15 seconds
But RN Roll Call wasn’t exactly a big hit, so. What I wanted to find was popular songs with loads of swearing or sneaky — and thus uncensored — swearing. Personally, I’ve only recorded one song with swearing in it. Son Of A Bitch Song from my latest album Phosphene tells you so right from the title. But really, SOB isn’t all that bad. In a different context it’s not even a swear. Like Jesus Christ, for example. Heck, The Rolling Stones got away with Bitch on Sticky Fingers — what makes them so special? Lol. Anyway, let’s round up a few of these spicy hits.
City Girls had a hit in 2019 with their song Act Up — it reached 77 on Canada’s Top 100 and No. 26 on the U.S. Billboard Top 100. By my count, there are 61 swears in it. Here’s a sample:
“Real-ass bitch, give a fuck ’bout a n***a
Big Birkin bag, hold five, six figures
Stripes on my ass so he call this pussy Tigger
Fuckin’ on a scammin’ ass, rich ass n***a.”
Staying with the N-word, I’ve never managed to embrace Patti Smith the way I’m supposed to. One problem is my favourite song of hers is one I can’t really play anywhere but the car, and can’t sing along. I love the song Rock N Roll N****r from 1978’s Easter album. But goddamn, Patti. Woman Is The N****r Of the World by John Lennon & Yoko Ono is almost as harsh. Like, I know what he’s trying to do — but no. Find another way to say “second-class citizen” John.
CeeLo Green had a No. 2 hit with his monster 2010 song Fuck You. In fairness, it’s the clean versions that topped charts all over the world. In fact, there are several versions of it — the original, the Forget You version, a cleaned-up edit called FU and another “semi-clean” version with the same title. No matter what version, the cool thing about this song is it is otherwise such an R&B throwback — sunny and upbeat.
Nobody would use either those adjectives to describe West Coast rap icons N.W.A. They had the N-word right there in their name — the other two initials stand for With Attitude — along with a slew of expletive-filled songs, perhaps none more notorious than their immortal 1988 hit Fuck Tha Police, whose incendiary lyrics were penned by a teenage Ice Cube.
Like CeeLo, Lily Allen also had a hit with a song called Fuck You. This will make you feel old, but it first appeared on her MySpace page. The song, with it’s “fuck you very much” chorus, wasn’t issued as a single in the U.K. but did well in both Canada and the States. Parlophone did make a video for it in the U.K. though.
Just the other day I got a hankering to hear White Punks On Dope by The Tubes. Man alive, what a song. What a performance. But I never realized all the F-bombs in it — only one appears in the actual lyrics: “I go crazy ‘cuz my folks are so fucking rich.” There are others accentuating the chorus in the extended outro.
Elton John’s 1975 hit The Bitch Is Back topped charts in Canada and was a Top 5 hit in the States. The lyrics by Bernie Taupin were inspired by Elton’s infamous tantrums. There are 43 bitches in it. When I was a kid, I knew where all the swears were on me and my brothers’ records. The Bitch Is Back was on my copy of Greatest Hits Vol. II (I didn’t own Caribou). Goodbye Yellow Brick Road has two swears on it — “someone grab that bitch by the ears” in Dirty Little Girl and “you can really kick the shit when the sun goes down” in Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock & Roll).
Roger Daltrey clearly sings “who the fuck are you?” at 2:12 into The Who’s 1978 hit Who Are You. It wasn’t a hit, but he also sings “he got sweet fuck all” to the lyrics of Mose Allison’s Young Man Blues on the Live At Leeds album.
Precious — the first track on the first Pretenders album — was released as a single in a handful of European countries, but did rather well on dance charts when re-released in medley form with two other songs from that same self-titled debut. That version didn’t have the legendary line “but not me baby, I’m too precious — fuck off” in it.
Steely Dan’s Show Biz Kids from 1973’s Countdown To Ecstasy has the line “Show business kids making movies of themselves. You know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else.” The song was a minor hit for the band (No. 61 on the Top 100), but the sweary line was sampled by Super Furry Animals in 1996 for their hit song The Man Don’t Give A Fuck. Songwriter Donald Fagan didn’t want SFA to sample the song and initially refused permission, eventually relenting as long as SFA agreed to pay him 95% of the proceeds. Despite the song getting hardly any airplay, he did all right because the “don’t give a fuck” sample was repeated 50 times. It was still a hit critically and commercially.
Rage Against The Machine’s L.A. riot song Killing In The Name got to 25 on the Billboard 100, but not when it originally came out in 1993. It got there thanks to a 2009 U.K. campaign to make the song No. 1 at Christmas so England would be spared the usual garbage from the X-Factor TV show, which had topped charts in the U.K. at Christmas several years in a row. Killing In The Name and its beloved “fuck you I won’t do what you told me” chorus did, in fact, become the U.K.’s No. 1 song at Christmas that year, with proceeds going to charity.
My brother had Welcome To The Club by Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson. I loved listening to Bastard, which in the context of the song is definitely a swear.
I spent a great deal of time making “dub mixes” of songs when I first got a dual tapedeck — crafting crude loops in both senses of the word. One of the first songs I cut up and edited was Hair Of The Dog by Nazareth so I could make it’s “now you’re messin’ with a son of a bitch” chorus repeat. There are also spoken-word “son of a bitch” backing vocals at the very end of the song. They’re too buried in the mix to dub — but easier to hear than the “fuck-a-me” backing vocals on The Knack’s monster hit My Sharona.
All my friends at school loved Piss On The Wall by J. Geils Band. We’d play it on a boombox at recess, cranking the volume for the chorus to see if we’d get in trouble. Speaking of stirring it up, both Little Feat’s The Fan and Warren Zevon’s Lawyers Guns & Money contain lyrics about the shit hitting the fan.
I remember the day my brother bought Love You Live by The Rolling Stones, with its Andy Warhol cover. I was particularly taken with Star Star — the first time I’d ever heard it. Of course the song was originally called Starfucker, but record label brass forced the band to change the name for inclusion on the 1973 album Goats Head Soup. It was, however, released as a single — and charted decently well in Europe, especially Switzerland where it hit No. 7. The Stones have Starfucker and Bitch, but the opening track from Exile On Main Street — Rocks Off — also has a doozie:
“I’m zipping through the days
At lightning speed
Plug in, flush out
And fire the fuckin’ feed.”
I also remember the day my other brother bought the legendary Frampton Comes Alive! double album. This was my introduction to talk box, I believe. Even as a kid I knew Peter slipped the f-bomb into his talk box solo in Do You Feel Like We Do?
My enduring fandom of Pink Floyd dates back to age 8 or so when The Wall came out. I can think of six Floyd tunes with casual or not-so-casual swearing in them. Money (“do goody-good bullshit”), Candy and a Currant Bun (“please just fuck with me”), Speak To Me (“I’ve been mad for fucking years”), Pigs (Three Different Ones) (“you fucked-up old hag”), Not Now John (“fuck all that”) and The Trial (“you little shit, you’re in it now”).
Van Halen’s songs were pretty clean for a band which eventually put out an album called For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. There’s one I love on the excellent Fair Warning album — Sinner’s Swing:
“The menace is loose again
She looks so fuckin’ good
So sexy and so frail.”
VH aren’t the only band spelling things out in their titles: Ronnie Wood’s 1979 album Gimme Some Neck includes the cheeky rocker F.U.C. Her — which also includes references to an “A.S.S. licker,” a “C.O.C. teaser” and more — while April Wine’s Power Play from 1982 features the punny If You See Kay.
The MC5 weren’t playing it cute when issued Kick Out The Jams as a single in 1969. The banger of a song did pretty well, all things considered — 51 in Canada and 81 in the States. But the version of the song issued as a single had a drastically different opening rallying cry than the album track — “Kick out the jams motherfuckers!” or “Kick out the jams brothers and sisters!”
Back to Lennon, his Working Class Hero was never issued as a single, but graced the flipside of Imagine a year after it was originally released on Plastic Ono Band. The album was largely the result of Lennon and Ono’s participation in primal therapy. No surprise Working Class Hero contains two f-bombs — “Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules” and “You’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
We’ll end with a mystery f-bomb — the one you can clearly hear at 2:59 in Hey Jude. The “Whoa! Fucking hell” is either McCartney’s response to a bum note he hit on the piano, or Lennon’s response to his headphones being too loud. Regardless, it was Lennon, of course, who insisted it get left in the mix.
Just trying to make a sad song better, I guess.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
