Off-mic, rockers are probably just as foul-mouthed as the average person, if not more so, but for various reasons expletives are not used in recorded rock all that often. If nothing else, it hinders the likelihood of a song getting airplay. Still, there are plenty of notable exceptions, good and bad, of rock expletives that made it onto the record. What are your favorite examples?
I’ll start things off with these two. First: I am curious if anyone knows whether Roger Daltrey‘s “who the fuck are you?” was part of the penned Pete Townshend lyric for “Who Are You” or just ad-libbed at the mic.
Second: Warren Zevon‘s “My Shit’s Fucked Up.” Zevon gets extra credit for using two high-scoring expletives, putting them right there in the song title, and not using them just for a joke, but also for something serious. It’s all the more poignant to watch this video now, given his untimely death just 3 years later, when his shit got incurably fucked up.
