“Fuck” is nothing and the continued censoring of it is a farce. As you perfectly put it, “A song with the word “fuck” in it can only refer to the fact of its imminent censorship”. But I have to disagree that it can only be used ironically; it’s far more frequently used cynically, as the perfect ingredient to help a song on the way to the top of the charts.

Take Eamon’s “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” and Frankee’s, “F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back)”, the former an elegy for a broken relationship (“You questioned, did I care?/You could ask anyone, I even said your were my great one/Now it’s over, but I do admit I’m sad/It hurts real bad; I can’t sweat that, ‘coz I loved a ho’”) and the latter “revenge” (“Fuck what I did was your fault somehow/Fuck the presents, I threw all that shit out/Fuck all the cryin’ it didn’t mean jack/Well guess what yo, fuck you right back”) for the former. Both songs did considerable time at the top of numerous national pop charts, despite the fairly frequent use of the word “fuck”.

So, if it turned out that the whole thing was a sales gimmick, would it have surprised anyone? Would anyone have even cared? Or wasn’t the whole thing in any case — and as even Frankie seems to recognise — simply a sales and marketing ploy which thrived on the controversy and the publicity?

In that context, it sometimes feels that the only mildly interesting use of the term “fuck” is not simply when it is absent by virtue of the censoring device, which draws attention to its present absence, but rather when it turns out that it was never there in the first place, only present in its expectation, and hence not entirely absent either, as in The Cure’s “Doing the Unstuck”. [The transcription doesn't do it justice, but here it is anyway: "it's a perfect day for doing the unstuck/for dancing like you can't hear the beat/and you don't give a further thought/to things like feet/let's get happy!]

“Cunt”, on the other hand, remains controversial. “Cunt” retains a kind of offensiveness for many people that just can’t be ignored or tolerated. I find it very hard to imagine a song with “cunt” in the title that could possibly go to number one. Songs with the word “cunt” in the lyrics cause an outcry even on fairly “liberal”, “youth”-oriented radio stations that play a wide variety of “alternative” music. For example, Australian radio station Triple J, which regularly plays uncensored songs (albeit with a language warning) and whose audience voted Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer [a.k.a "I wanna fuck you like an animal"]” as one of the top 50 songs of 1994, was flooded with complaints when it started playing the Herd’s “77%”, which contains the lines “It’s time for you to/Wake up – this country needs a fucking shake up/Wake up – these cunts need a shake up”. The “cunts” really offended the cunts.

“Cunt” makes “fuck” seem as offensive as “shit”. It’s tempting to say that “cunt” is the new “fuck”, but it’s not. The problem here is that the people who, in the aforementioned case, found “cunt” offensive were not your usual culturally conservative grandpas and grandmas. In fact, it was largely women who largely thought of themselves as “feminist” who objected to the word, because it is “derogatory”.

There’s a lot that can be said about that fact, but perhaps it should be saved for another time….

With regard to your first comment, Andrew, I’ll note that in addition to hearing Will Smith and Gwen Stefani on what is quite possibly the second worst radio station in Ottawa (viz., Hot 89.9; c.f., Live 88.5; note, both are owned by the same company), we also heard a song from Joel Plaskett’s recent DVD on Bob FM (I assume you have that bastard format where you live under the varying names of Bob, Jack, Joe and, in the Niagara region, something sounding like “Che”). He didn’t use the trademark, “WTF?,” however.

On YouTube, natch.

On the charts, or just veering from them, Neil Young went so far as to shoot and release a music video for “Fuckin’ Up” and The Tragically Hip’s “Can’t be Nashville Every Night” charted w/ the opening lines, “He said fuck this and fuck that/And this guy’s the diplomat.” (a song against American jingoism inspired by Toby Keith, I’m told).

Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away” is brilliant and was on the high-selling Lost in Translation soundtrack.

While outside the mainstream there is Palace’s “If I could fuck a mountain/Lord I would fuck a mountain/And I’d do it with a woman in the valley.”

And The Fall’s “The Classical” is right up there with the greatest songs of all time. “This is the home of the vain!/ Where are the obligatory niggers?/Hey there fuckface!!/Hey there fuckface!!”

Also “the kill him/fucking kill him/kill him just fucking kill him” of Shellac’s “Prayer to God.”

Lots of NoMeansNo. “If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle/Maybe every fourth person is a DUMB FUCK.”

I could go on!