A Hit Song on YouTube, Unnameable on the Radio

While traditional entertainment increasingly relies on the anything-goes Internet to cultivate and stoke interest in music, TV shows and movies, there are still some important boundaries. The return to civilization comes at a cost.

A case in point is a recent viral musical sensation -- a bouncy song by the soul-pop singer Cee Lo Green with over three million views on YouTube in little more than a week. The singer is peeved at a girl who has left him and concludes that "If I'd been richer, I'd still be with ya" and though "there's pain in my chest, I still wish you the best ..." followed by a certain crude phrase, and an "ooh, ooh, ooh." This is hardly a fleeting expletive of the kind the Federal Communications Commission has tried to regulate. While songs with vulgarities in them are a dime a dozen (actually more like $12 on iTunes), Cee Lo's single is unusual in that the crude phrase is the title, chorus and punch line to the song, said Craig Marks, the editor of Billboard magazine. He could conjure up only a handful of hit songs in a similar bind -- rarer still was the song that played a peppy tune against the crude lyrics.