The music censorship begins.

MTV Europe have issued a memo to all staff, listing a selection of music videos that have been deemed unsuitable in light of the war in Iraq.
Videos including Aerosmith's 'Don't Want To Miss a Thing' (which features excerpts from the film 'Armegeddon'), Radiohead's 'Lucky' (war footage) and System Of A Down's 'Boom!' (a direct protest against war on Iraq) have all been blacklisted by the station.
War, soldiers, bombs, riots and social unrest are all currently deemed 'unsuitable video content'.
The memo also advises staff to omit songs with sensitive titles, such as Outkast's 'B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)'.

The rather bleak irony of banning the Radiohead video, of course, is that it was shot for use in a charity campaign to aid victims of the war in the former Yugoslavia. I suppose "Don't Want To Miss A Thing" could be read as a sarcastic comment on the Coalition's tendency to overshoot with its missiles, too.

Nigel Richardson has another, more peculiar example:

The NME reports that Hot Hot Heat's song "Bandages" has been removed from the BBC Radio 1 playlist because of a "prevalence of the word 'bandages' in the song".

No, he doesn't understand why either.

posted by James Russell | 1:14 PM