Wal-Mart is now the country’s largest distributor of music CD’s. They are also notorious for refusing to distribute albums with racy or profane album covers, or any album with the dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker.
Because of Wal-Mart’s influence on the industry, many artists choose to make alternate, bowdlerized versions of their albums to pass Wal-Mart’s “family-friendly” muster. John Mellencamp airbrushed away Jesus and a devil on the cover of “Mr. Happy Go Lucky” (scroll halfway down). Nirvana changed the title of their song “Rape Me” to “Waif Me” and removed pictures of fetuses from their “In Utero” album. White Zombie had to paint a little bikini string onto the cover model on “Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds”, whose breasts were already well-hidden by her arms. The Butthole Surfers’ albums are released as B***H*** Surfers. (See more examples of censored album covers here. To be fair, they’re not all Wal-Mart censors.)
Not all artists bow to Wal-Mart’s pressure, though. When Sheryl Crow released her self-titled album with the lyric “Watch our children as they kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores”, Wal-Mart objected and Crow refused to change the lyric. Her album was not carried by Wal-Mart. Another artist to stick to their principle was Prodigy, who would not relent when Wal-Mart pulled their “Fat of the Land” album due to the lyrics of the song “Smack My Bitch Up”.
Well, now the self-censorship bug strikes again. Willie Nelson’s latest album, Countryman, features the legendary country singer performing reggae tunes. The album’s cover features a background of the red-yellow-green-black color schemes popularized by reggae performers in the Rastafarian tradition. Also in that tradition is the placement of a marijuana leaf in the middle of the cover.
But for the Wal-Mart version, the marijuana leaf is airbrushed out and replaced with the silhouette of a palm tree.
UPDATE: Yes, I know, it’s not technically censorship. Government is not restricting anybody’s free speech. Companies have the right to determine what they will and will not sell. The artists are choosing to censor themselves. What I’m angry about is that Wal-Mart has such muscle that artists feel the need to censor themselves. I’m angry that some artists are willing to do this, rather than boycott Wal-Mart. If enough major artists didn’t sell their albums at Wal-Mart, maybe they wouldn’t be the #1 distributor… and maybe not, but at least consumers would know why they had to go elsewhere to get their Willie album.
