Radio New Zealand has let a spate of swear words slip through on air this week. Madeleine Chapman calls a crisis meeting.
We were listening to the national broadcaster exactly as god intended: two gay women sitting in my dad’s diesel ute after buying toilet paper from a suburban Woolworths. And that’s when we heard it.
He’s bouncing off my booty cheeks, I love the way he ridesI can hardly breathe when he’s pumping deep insideI kiss him on his neck and then he kisses on my bussy
I stopped trying to reverse out of the park so that the rear camera would disappear and be replaced by the radio details. Surely we misheard. I looked at my girlfriend, she looked at me, we both looked at “NATIONAL” on the screen. We must have misheard. I turned off the engine and we patiently waited for the innocuous second verse of this random country song to end so we could check back in on that chorus.
He’s bouncing off my booty cheeks, I love the way he ridesI can hardly breathe when he’s pumping deep insideI kiss him on his neck and then he kisses on my bussy
We screamed. What was happening? Had the national broadcaster been hacked? Was Emile Donovan being held hostage, unable to turn the volume down or press pause on the track after the first “bouncing off my booty cheeks” was crooned? It was 8.27pm, not even late enough for the AO programmes to start on the telly. Kids were probably tucked up in bed, listening to RNZ Nights as they drifted into slumber.
As the guitar strumming faded out to end the song, Donovan revealed himself as being both alive and free. “RNZ National,” he said, then let out a breathy, nervous laugh. A laugh that can only be described as an audible tremble. “That was a song called ‘Good Lookin” by Dixon Dallas. And um, perhaps a good lesson for us to, uh, lyric check songs.” I was recording the car stereo on my phone but the rest of his spiel is drowned out by my howling.
RNZ, of Concert cancellation outrage fame, played in full a song entirely about the act of anal sex. And the lyrics aren’t subtle either. If you’re unfamiliar with “bussy”, you can probably use some context clues to figure out what it means.
After the next (non-explicit) song played, Donovan explained that most requested songs get put through a profanity checker to ensure that words like fuck and cunt (he did not say the exact words) aren’t featured. Those words were not in ‘Good Lookin” and yet it would have been far less explicit if they were. I can only assume (read: hope) that “bussy” has been added to the list of words to check.
But even if Donovan was telling the truth about RNZ’s moderation practices when it comes to music, they’ve clearly been slipping. Yesterday as well, Afternoons host Jesse Mulligan played a remix of ‘Paper Planes’ by MIA that included a very distinct and crystal clear “motherfucker”. He swiftly stopped the track and apologised for airing the word “during school hours”.
And on Saturday, Charlotte Ryan pulled ‘Black Swan’ by Thom Yorke after remembering that it had the word “fuck” in it. Quite a slip of the ol’ memory from Ryan considering these are the first two lines of the chorus.
And it’s fucked up, fucked up
And this is fucked up, fucked up
What the fuck is going on at RNZ? Part of me is choosing to believe that the stately broadcaster is slowly loosening its at times unhealthy grip on decorum, but in regards to “bussy” at 8.27pm… that’s letting go entirely. Is RNZ trying to be down with the kids? Cool? Hip? Sending a push notification explaining the Drake and Kendrick beef a few weeks ago suggests that may be at least part of the plan but again, Occam’s razor suggests this is simply a slipping of standards. To have one motherfucker slip through is forgivable, but a motherfucker and a bussy within 12 hours? I hope there’s a crisis meeting happening right now and I hope a very senior motherfucker is leading it.