Over the weekend, 50 Cent appeared on Vh1’s Top 20 countdown—yes, it is focused on music videos!—and while introducing the No. 6 video of the week, Green Day’s “21 Guns,” Curtis said to host Jim Shearer, “Man, I’d love to be able to have a song called ‘21 Guns’ on VH1.” This isn’t the first time that 50 has (rightly) noted the odd discrepancies in MTV Networks’ lyric-bleeping thresholds, but it is a good moment to maybe do a rundown of what MTV and its matrix of sister networks have censored lately? (Hey, the lousy economy is resulting in all those channels playing more music videos!) I’ve started a list with few noticeable omissions and non-omissions from recent tracks after the jump—feel free to add your own, and we’ll see if we can divine any sort of actual guidelines from the mishmash of dropped words!


Obviously everything that falls under the “seven dirty words” guideline has been X-ed out by MTV. But here are a few non-dirty-word related bleeps (and non-bleeps) of note:
• Green Day, “21 Guns”: Well, the S&P department didn’t force the song to be renamed, like, “21 Buns” or anything. So.
• Beyonce, “Diva” (seen this AM on MTV Hits): “Stick up” is bleeped.
• Lady GaGa, “Paparazzi” (seen this AM on MTV): “I killed my boyfriend” (the line of dialogue) is not bleeped. (The “shit” in “shit on the radio” is, although it’s a very seamless edit.)


Those were the three most egregious examples that I saw this morning, although if Maroon 5’s video for “Wake Up Call” had been airing on the staler-than-stale Palladia playlist I could have added that. But feel free to bring up your own examples! (And please, leave all those ridiculous Real World-related challenges out of it, because those are just awful.)


[HT: joshservo]
Earlier: 50 Cent Committed To Decrying Questionable Standards Applied To Sexism, Homophobia, Pointless Violence / Adam Levine Of Maroon 5: I Still Kill