8 Radio Edits That Completely Changed The Song's Meaning

1. Everlast - "What It's Like"

The Song You Heard On The Radio: Seriously, who even knows? There's so much back masking and random sound effects in place of actual words that this song becomes nothing more than a bluesy hip-hop puzzle that's missing too many corner pieces. What we do know is that there are three main characters: a beggar, a pregnant girl named Mary, and a guy named Max who gets murdered by the song's end.

The Edit: First of all, Max is actually a drug dealer and addict. In the song's most egregious case of over-censoring, a valuable cautionary tale is glossed over in order to make the song "clean" enough for radio play. They flat-out censor the word "drugs."

Not even a specific type. Just...drugs. And then there's the following verse, which had the words "sh*t faced," "gun," "Chrome .45," "sh*t," and "dead" all removed, thus removing the entire lesson about not selling drugs and being a macho idiot.

He liked to hang out lateHe liked to get sh*t facedAnd keep pace with thugsUntil late one nightThere was a big gun fightMax lost his headHe pulled out his Chrome .45Talked some sh*tAnd wound up dead

It's fine to remove curse words, but there's a point where censorship goes too far. This is certainly that point.