No Rock And Roll Fun

OOH! SWEARING!: A few years back, a spot of mild profanity would be enough to condemn your song to oblivion: no airplay, no sales. Sure, there were exceptions - Frankie Goes To Hollywood were lucky because their song had already been played to death by the time Mike Reid discovered what cum actually was; the Sex Pistols could do a bit of mild swearing safe in the knowledge that the tabloid outrage would take up the slack of lost plays on the Paul Burnett programme. But, generally, self-censorship held sway. Voice of the Beehive even bleeped out 'fuck' on their album track 'There's A Barbarian in the Back of My Car', co-written with Zodiac Mindwarp. At the time it seemed odd: why bother getting Zode in if you're not going to give him his head?

Whatever, we're now in more enlightened times. Although you look at the humourless, please be shocked Eamon track that has outsold all other this week - someone's counted the 'fucks', there are twenty of them - and you almost wish we didn't. The only distinguishing feature of this record is that it says 'fuck'; if that's enough sell a record, then maybe we're not - as a nation - quite as grown up as we like to think we are.

And for the swearing in full, Acme's got the sweary bits, in order of appearance.