Radio-Friendly Gear Shifter

I looked up the lyrics to the song "Starboy" by The Weeknd. Before telling you why, I ask you to reflect on how hard it is to type "The Weeknd" on a modern smartphone with auto-correct. I'm hoping musicians of the future will take that into consideration when choosing their names. Can you imagine if they had smartphones in the heyday of Lynne skyrocket... interred skinned... dammit, the guys who did "Sweet Home Alabama."

Anyway, I wondered about some of the lyrics, particularly:

• What is he saying about The Wrath of Khan?
• Does he know he's pronouncing "wrath" wrong?

Apparently I'm not the only one, since I found this whole explanation. To answer both those questions, it's actually a pun on the Rolls-Royce Wraith, and thus, yes, he meant to pronounce it that way. In fact, most of the song is bragging about his expensive cars. It's easy to miss that because some of the references are cryptic (for instance, "lamb" for "Lamborghini.") Though I may have to hand in my car guy membership card for not realizing that the mention of "P1" near the start of the song referred to the McLaren P1.

But the big discovery for myself (and I'm assuming many people who have only heard the song on radio) is that the repeated "I'm a I'm a" in the chorus is actually to cover up profanity in the original recording. I have to say, they did a pretty good job; it's always bugged me when a song has a bunch of really clumsily blanked-out words. As a kid, I annoyed people on the phone by pushing the mute button on and off while speaking, and that's what these songs sound like on the radio.

Look, I came of age musically in the eighties at the height of Tipper Gore's crusade against naughty song lyrics, so I don't like the idea of Bowdlerizing music. But if you're going to release it as a single, can't you put a little effort into the clean version? Sometimes I think they add the awkward censoring just to make sure everyone knows there's lots of profanity, to encourage kids to buy it so they can feel badass. Really, all it advertises is that there can't be many good songs on the album or they would have picked a single that doesn't sound like a bad cell connection.