10 Amazing Rock Songs That Got Banned

If Queen aren't the most successful rock band of all time, there's a case to be made that they are the most beloved. There are even some fans of rock music that might hate bands like the Beatles but can still sing along to bits of Bohemian Rhapsody or Another One Bites the Dust if they wanted to. When MTV launched though, Queen making videos was pretty much a no brainer...until things got a little too out of hand for their label.

Because when you look at it, I Want to Break Free is a fairly straightforward single, launching the band into their synth era that much more and Freddie Mercury giving a showstopping performance behind the mic. When it came time to shoot the video, Freddie originally thought it would be funny for the entire band to dress in women's clothing, with Brian May donning hair curlers and Freddie himself wearing a skirt while keeping his trademark mustache.

Everything seemed to be fine until the American market got a little too uncomfortable, banning the entire video because of how ludicrous the whole idea was, which the band thought was hilarious. Offering up no new video to substitute for it, the song still killed on radio and left more questions than answers as to where MTV had to draw the line back then. There's no reason to censor this kind of stuff in the first place, but whoever was in charge of censoring had some wires crossed when Boy George could have screen time on the network and this couldn't.