This thesis is concerned with the investigation of the reasons why certain songs in the sixties were banned from BBC radio. Since antiquity, censorship has been a useful device to protect people from ‘bad or ‘dangerous ideas. Today, the most important censors are radio, television, press and internet, due to their function as media of mass communication. The BBC is one of the most important broadcasting corporations worldwide and for a long time they held the absolute monopoly for broadcasting in the United Kingdom, only disrupted by the illegal pirate radio stations that appeared for a short while between 1964 and 1967. In its role as moral guardian, following the motto Inform, Educate and Entertain, the BBC censored and even banned numerous songs from being broadcast, due to their controversial contents. For this thesis, the relevant period is the (long) sixties since music then played a particularly important cultural part. At first glance, the reasons for banning certain songs are easily comprehensible, as they deal with precarious topics such as violence, drugs, sex and politics. However, many songs were concerned with these topics, but not all of them were banned. Therefore the question arises, why was a particular song banned? To find out, four songs, each of them representative of one precarious topic, are analysed in terms of lyrics, music and context. The results show that the songs were banned due to (1) the coincidence of the topics and the then prevailing moral anxieties and/or (2) due to the popularity and the image of the artist(s). |