Radio edit

A radio edit is a major remix of a musical performance to make it more suitable for broadcast to the public via commercial radio. When compared with the original version, a radio edit is usually shorter, or free of profanity, among other features. Sometimes the term can be a misnomer since not all songs with radio edit versions are even played on the radio at all. The hits containing a radio edit are tracks via CD singles.

Synonyms

• Radio Version,
• Radio Mix,
• Radio Edit,
• Radio Remix,
• Single Version,
• Single Mix,
• 7" Mix,
• Single Edit,
• 7" Edit,
• Clean Edit/Version,
• No Rap Edit/Version,
• (Producers Name, e.g. Freemasons) Remix,
• 'Edit.

Editing for time

A radio edit is often just a shortened arrangement that makes a song conform to a more traditional (2 1/2 to 4-minute) pop structure. Some radio edits are just "early fades", the song not being played to completion. A professional radio edit may shorten the track by removing many short sections of the track, such as long guitar solos or instrumental sections rather than simply fading out at the end. Since it is usually shorter than the original version, a radio edit is more cost-effective for commercial radio stations, allowing more time for commercials, talk, news and other content to be programmed.

Radio editing for length started in the 1980s, when many pop songs had an original, 12" version of sometimes over 7 minutes in length. Examples are "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Ultravox, which was originally 9:52 in length, and "Gold" by Spandau Ballet, which was originally 7:11 in length. These long versions were popular with those buying singles and with club DJs, but were useless for airplay, and thus record companies began to create radio edits.

On rare occasions, however, very long songs do not have a radio edit, despite sometimes being six or seven minutes in length. Famous examples of these include "Hey Jude" (1968) by The Beatles at 7:11, "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) by Led Zeppelin at 8:03, "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) by Queen at 5:55, Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" (1971) at 6:13, and Legião Urbana's "Faroeste Caboclo", at 9:03, which were never radio edited in their day (despite still receiving considerable radio airplay today). Many metal, progressive, classical, college radio and specialist dance stations also play long, unedited versions of tracks.

On other occasions, radio stations may favor the longer version of a song than the radio-edit version, for whatever reason. One famous example is "El Paso" by Marty Robbins. The full-length version was 4:44, while the single edit came in at around three minutes. Although radio stations had the option of playing the more radio-friendly shorter version, the full-length version (despite its long-running time) was overwhelmingly favored.

Rarely, usually in the pop, R&B and dance genres, the radio edit is longer than the original song.

Editing for content

Radio edits are also created to conform to decency standards imposed by government agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, and by radio authorities such as Ofcom in the United Kingdom. As some songs would violate these standards in their original form, record labels often provide censored versions intended for radio broadcast or purchase by individuals who do not wish to listen to the unedited versions (as seen by the many "clean" versions of songs on online music services such as iTunes).

In such edits, swearing or explicit lyrics are "bleeped-out", silenced or replaced with sound effects. Since the editing is often performed by studio mixing engineers using the original multi-track session recordings, usually only the vocal track is affected (an example of this is the Fall Out Boy song This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race, where "goddamn" is censored by the "god" portion being removed and the heavy drum crash heard behind made louder). In this case, the less-distracting option is to lower the volume quickly. When radio station staff edit the song themselves, they don't have as many options as the studio does, and most often play the explicit words in reverse. In cases where the song's subject matter may also be deemed inappropriate, an entirely new version of the song may be recorded for radio. An example of this is D12 and Eminem's "Purple Pills", which was recorded as "Purple Hills" featuring greatly altered lyrics which removed many references to drugs and sex.

Another example would include the 1994 single released by R.E.M. entitled, "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?". The last line of the regular chorus is, "I never understood the frequency" but at the end of the song, the line is "I never understood, don't fuck with me." The 'radio edit' for this track copies a sample of the previous, more friendly line ("I never understood the frequency") to the end of the song, making the last chorus just the same as the previous choruses, and omitting the word "fuck".

Yet another example can be found on James Blunt's "You're beautiful" which has two versions: One which has the line "She could see from my face that I was fucking high" and the radio/video version, which replaces that line with "She could see from my face that I was flying high". On the other hand, Internet radio stations are allowed that DJs play the regular version which includes the word "fuck".

Some songs are also released to radio stations with more than one radio edit. Examples of this include Eminem's "Ass Like That", which had a radio edit censoring "Ass" and a more lenient one leaving it intact, and Vanilla Ninja's "Cool Vibes", which had a 04:38 radio edit and a shorter, three-minute version for use in the build-up to the Eurovision Song Contest 2005.

Some sections of Robbie Williams's "Come Undone" were re-sung, changing two lines' entire meaning as one contained the word "shit" and another contained the word "fuck"..

Radio edits which shorten the original version of a song but do not censor language are also sometimes referred to as "dirty edits". This is due to the annoyance of some radio programmers at seeing songs that contain profanities still being labelled as a "radio edit". Dirty edits are most often used by digital hip-hop stations, where licensing laws often allow dirty tracks to be played. Many record labels now distribute songs to stations and note whether it is a "clean edit" or not, however, resulting in the term "dirty edit" falling into use.

In recent times, almost all major single releases that contain profanities in the original version are released to major radio stations with a clean radio edit, often via promotional compilations (such as the Promo Only series). On rare occasions, however, songs have not been radio edited due to the profanities either being seen as "too weak" to make it worthwhile, or due to them not being audibly clear in the song. The best recent example of this is Mylo's "Drop The Pressure", which contains a profanity throughout the track, but was never radio-edited because it is difficult to tell what the profane lyric actually says.

While convenient and legally necessary for radio stations, radio edits are disliked by music purists, and can be unpopular among hip hop fans as if they have many edits they are almost unlistenable. An example of such is the radio edit Lil' Jon's "Get Low", which ultimately edits out half of the lyrics in the chorus, taking away significantly from the song. Radio edits can also cause problems for programmers searching for uncensored versions of new single releases (if their rules permit them to play uncut versions, e.g. American satellite radio stations).

Artists have been known to satirize the process; Kid Rock's Cowboy is played on radio in a version which replaces the latter half of the lyric "My only words of wisdom are just suck my dick" (including the music track) with someone saying "Radio Edit" along with the beat; this is also an example of breaking the fourth wall

Single version

A single edit is a different form of a song that a band has already released on an album. These are sometimes newly-performed or newly remixed to get a "hotter" or more radio-friendly song. An example of an album track which was carefully edited, resulting in a shorter, but otherwise identical arrangement, is the radio edit of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence". Another example is the 1973 song, "Montana" by Frank Zappa and "The Mothers of Invention", in which the 1-and-a-half-minute guitar solo was taken out to instantly lead into the hard vocal.

A version of a song being wiped over

Sometimes a song is remade in order to be suitable for radio play. One such song is Akon's "I Wanna Love You" featuring Snoop Dogg. The version appearing on the Konvicted album contains the lines, "I see you winding and grinding up on that pole I know you see me looking at you and you already know I wanna fuck you." A different version was produced for radio play where those line is replaced with the titular "I see you winding and grinding up on the floor I know you see me looking at you and you already know I wanna love you." This changes the meaning of the song drastically, yet both versions are released under the same title. It should be noted that the song also appears on Snoop Dogg's Tha Blue Carpet Treatment as 'I Wanna Fuck You'.

Other examples of this are the Black Eyed Peas "Let's Get Retarded" being re-created as "Let's Get It Started", and Khia's "My Neck, My Back" being significantly modified for commercial release, due to the derogatory nature of the word retarded in the former song, and due to the extremely profane and sexual lyrics in the latter song.

Clean version of an album

Some albums (mainly in the United States) have been released for sale in a clean version - that is, the entire album, but with all the swearing censored. Famous examples include Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, Eminem's The Slim Shady LP, 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin'(track #7 "Heat" didn't appear on the clean version), and N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton. "Fuck Tha Police" (track #2 on Straight Outta Compton) was not included at all on the clean version, because it contained so much swearing that making a clean version would have been almost pointless. Though many fans object to releases of "clean" versions in general, some specific examples of clean versions seem especially pointless; for example, Theory of a Deadman's self-titled debut featured one profanity in the entire album, and a clean version was released. In addition to this, some "clean" albums are not censored at all in protest against such albums such as Slipknot's self-titled album or Limp Bizkit's Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. Also, on the edited version of Garbage's greatest hits album Absolute Garbage, the only song with the word fuck is not censored.

See also

• Censorship of music
• Censorship on MTV
• Songs deemed inappropriate after 9/11
• Loudness war

External links

• Arcane Radio Trivia Radio Edit Article