Radio 2 switches to censored version of Fairytale Of New York this Christmas

completemusicupdate.com:

BBC Radio 2 has this year, for the first time, joined the group of radio stations that have decided to play an edited version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’, the popular festive classic from The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.There has been increasing controversy around the inclusion of the word ‘faggot’ in the lyrics of the song in recent years.On one side, there are people who think that a homophobic slur such as that shouldn’t really be heard on daytime radio in this day and age – regardless of whether or not it’s delivered as the words of an unsympathetic character within the context of the song.On the other side, there are those who think it’s been in the song for years now and people are just being overly sensitive – given that it’s delivered as the words of an unsympathetic character within the context of the song.Anyway, we have this conversation every year, even though everyone involved seems to have agreed that the song should be edited and the original should not be played on the radio anymore.

Last year people got upset because Warner Music created a new radio edit, which replaced the line “you cheap lousy faggot” with “you’re cheap and you’re haggard”.The new line was lifted from a live performance by Kirsty MacColl, who herself had begun censoring the song before her death in 2000.

You’d think people might be happy with that, given that it’s less disruptive to the song than simply cutting or bleeping the offending word.