LONDON Australian musician Nick Cave has criticized BBC radio for adding a censored version of the song Fairytale in New York to his program. According to Cave, the “chopped” version of the song loses its value.
The British BBC has announced that it will give all its music presenters a choice of which version of the legendary 1987 hit they want to play. The problem is the English word fagot in the original text, which could be translated into Czech as a derogatory term for a homosexual.
Cave talked about the song on his own stránce The Red Hand Files, where he often answers questions from his fans. “It’s possible that fagot is a very offensive word, I can’t know that,” Cave wrote. “In that case, however, the song should have disappeared from the broadcast completely and it could have maintained its dignity,” he added.
In the censored version, the radio exchanged the word fagot for haggard. “It lowers the song at its most important moment, and it loses its value as a result,” Cave thinks, adding that he can’t be considered a hit after this “dragging through the mud.” He marked the song as massacred.
The BBC briefly removed the song from Christmas broadcasts as early as 2007. Shane McGowan, the author and lead singer of The Pogues, said he didn’t mind. In a recent interview for the British version of the Metro newspaper, however, he made it known that the new censorship would be ridiculous.
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