These Boots - When censorship adds a new dimension to music

I remember the first time I heard Megadeth's cover of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" from their first album "Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good!".

The song and its versions

It was the version on Spotify at the time (which has now been removed in favor of the 2018 remaster). I was completely caught off-guard by the sudden bleeping of the lyrics in the middle of the freaking song. I thought at first that it was intentional, and just part of the song, as it seemed to fit with Dave Mustaine and Megadeth's rebellious and immature vibe at the time. As you will see, I was kind of right.
You can find this version here on YouTube now that it's been removed from Spotify. I actually recommend you listen to this version first, before any of the other ones.

After searching for a bit, I could quickly find the actual original version of the cover, with no bleeping. There even exists a live version on Spotify.
For the sake of completeness, there also exists a 1987 version that was recorded for the movie "Dudes". This is, funnily enough, the last studio recording made by the original Megadeth line-up¹, as their 1988 album "So Far, So Good... So What!" would feature a new drummer and a new guitarist.

The song itself is absolutely great. It's simply the original song, infused with Killing Is My Business energy. I love the bass line and the raw energy of the lead parts is pure 80s Megadeth. It's fast and raw, it's simply perfect. The lyrics, in classic Megadeth fashion, have been altered to be more vulgar, some would say immature.
This is how "something you call love but confess" became "something you call love but I call sex", and how "and now someone else is getting all your best" became "and now someone else can kiss your ass".

The song — especially the bleeped version — has been living rent-free in my head ever since. I'll first explain why the bleeped version came into existence, and then why I find it so great.

Lee Hazlewood "controversy"

The guy who wrote the song, Lee Hazlewood, didn't find the immature take to be funny, but apparently found it "vile and offensive"².

Threatened by legal action, the band didn't decide to exclude the song from the 2002 remaster of their debut album, they also didn't decide to re-record the song with the unaltered lyrics, or to simply mute the offending parts.
All of these options would have been perfectly fine, but this is Megadeth we're talking about, and their choice was to make the infamous bleeped version.

They did finally re-record a version with unaltered lyrics on the 2018 remaster of the album. They kind of managed to mix Dave Mustaine's current voice with his 80s voice from the original recording. It's kind of weird and it kind of works at the same time in my opinion, but let's not lose track of our main subject here.

Even though it was the first time, it wouldn't be the only time Megadeth created a cover featuring altered lyrics.

Other Megadeth covers at the time

By the time Hazlewood realized that he hated the Megadeth version, Megadeth had already done other covers in their own style in their 2nd and 3rd albums.

"I Ain't Superstitious", covered in "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?", is another great Megadeth-infused track, with crazy alternating guitar solos and altered lyrics, that the original artist — Willie Dixon — apparently found to be great³.

Their next album, "So Far, So Good... So What!", features a cover of the Sex Pistols song "Anarchy In The U.K.", also with altered lyrics. The altered lyrics in this one are actually a consequence of the band just guessing the lyrics from the recording.
Even though they managed to get Steve Jones to play on the track, it didn't stop the singer of the Sex Pistols from saying the cover was "a bunch of rubbish"⁴. It apparently wasn't bad enough rubbish to make them want to take legal action against Mustaine's crew though...

I don't know why Hazlewood was so mad that he thought the cover deserved to be wiped from existence, but I'm kind of glad that he did, as I will try to explain.

Why I love the censored version

I mentioned earlier that Megadeth could have chosen to do a number of things in response to the legal threats: removing the song, muting parts of the lyrics, changing the lyrics... And those options are actually what's often done in music censorship. For example Boris Vian's song, "Le Déserteur" has had its lyrics altered, and was banned for a while⁵.

They decided to bleep the altered parts of the lyrics, and I will try to explain here why I think this is an interesting artistic decision. Keep in mind that I don't know precisely why the band chose to do things that way, this is just my interpretation on why I find it great.

Protesting censorship

I think the main reason they decided to go for this approach is to make fun of music censorship. Adding huge bleeps in the middle of a song is absolutely ridiculous. Somehow, it sounds even more ridiculous when it's part of the mix like in this case (the whole track isn't censored, only the vocals). If Lee Hazlewood thought that the cover was a perversion of the original, adding bleeps in the middle of the lyrics doesn't seem like a way to restore its purity. If anything, it makes the song even more vile.
The chorus is unchanged, which makes it pretty easy to figure out that the song is a cover of Hazlewood's track, but the bleeps will make you wonder: "what the hell is going on around here?", and if you search for a bit like I did, you will find out about the story. This wouldn't have been possible with more subtle types of censorship.

Exaggeration of vulgarity

The other reason I love the bleeps is that they manage to exacerbate the vulgarity of the altered lyrics. Indeed, when you hear the bleeps, your mind fills the blanks, and since bleeps are typically used to cover up quite nasty stuff, you will almost always come to the conclusion that Dave is singing crazy profanities.
If you're like me and you listened to the censored version first, you must have been pretty disappointed when hearing the uncensored one, as the lyrics aren't that obscene (or maybe I just have a dirty mind).
The ridiculousness of bleeps and the exaggeration of the perceived vulgarity of the lyrics through censorship overall make this version of the song really funny to me.

Added depth through limitation

To conclude, maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but I'm a strong believer in the idea that limitation is a great fuel for creation. I think this applies to art, but also to engineering, programming, etc. For example, I'm fascinated by the efforts that went into creating old Nintendo games like Super Mario Bros., and how the technical limitations of the consoles shaped the final products⁶.
I think you could agree that the threat of legal action constitutes a limitation in some way: the band had to make a decision about their song, with this new constraint. This led to the censored version, and as you've understood by now, I believe it added a new dimension, a new depth to the track, although I'm glad that the original cover is still around to be listened to.
I highly recommend that you check out this song if you haven't already, and also take a listen at some of the other covers done by Megadeth! They've done great covers of Paranoid, No More Mr. Nice Guy, and Melt The Ice Away — one of my personal favorites — to cite a few.
I hope that this little blog post leaves you thinking about how censorship can shape music and art in general, for the better, or (and let's be realistic, this is most often the case) for the worst.

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