They’re everywhere: our friends say them, our music belts them out, even our parents sometimes mumble one when something goes horribly awry. Swear words are such a prominent yet rarely discussed topic in our culture, but today I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind. So lets crawl out of our “Lavender Haze” and talk about explicit songs. More specifically, how they’re written.

Explicit songs are songs that have prominent swear words in them. These songs are marked with either a “Parental Advisory” label or an “E” with today’s streaming services. While it is very simple to click the album that’s sure to be around the original version, many people choose to listen to the explicit versions. And it shows: many  people my age I’ve encountered are prone to mouthing off in obscene language. But what some people don’t know is that clean music can be so much better written than explicit songs. It forces artists to exercise their creative muscles because they can’t just drop an f-bomb and move on. Let me show you what I mean using my favorite artist: Taylor Swift.

In the last three years, Taylor Swift has released four albums that have been labeled explicit: Folklore, Evermore, Red (Taylor’s Version), and Midnights. Coming from a Christian household and making the decison to be a follower of Christ myself, when I go to listen to these albums, I always choose the clean versions of them. Recently, I’ve encountered the explicit lyrics of these songs and I have to say, it’s bland. Now, don’t get me wrong: I certainly start paying attention when I’m watching an video and they choose not to use the censored version, but the bad words just rob the song of so many details. Here are a few examples from Swift’s music:

From Maroon:

Explicit: That’s a real f****** legacy, legacy

Clean: That’s a real lasting legacy, legacy

From Champagne Problems:

Explicit: “…what a shame she’s f***** in the head.” they said

Clean: “what a shame she’s stuck in her head.” they said

Notice how the clean versions, instead of simply censoring them, give new details. For instance, in Olivia Rodrigo’s “brutal”, instead of cursing out a supposed “teenage dream”, the clean version states she’s “over this teenage dream”. This shows she thinks people are overrating the “teenage dream” and ignoring the pain, confusion, and heartbreak when they talk about it. That speaks volumes over her demanding where it is. In some cases, like Swift’s song “Snow on the Beach”, it can make the song more poetic. She replaces the f-word with “it was” in the chorus, and it gives the song more of a dreamy recalling vibe than of a sharp one, which is what the other lyrics the background track enforces.

This is not only a revealation I want to give to listeners, but also to teens who want to be music artists one day. Do you want your music to be well-written and for you to seem older in your years? Skip the bank of swear words and be creative! And while you’re at it, listen to clean versions of songs. As I just showed you, they can be better written and contain greater weight and detail. 

(Totally not dancing to Hits Different where “Love is a lie” is what her friends say to get her through.)

(If you want to get the joke, listen to the clean version.)