A Grammy-nominated song that dare not speak its name

When the Grammy Awards are presented Sunday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in a ceremony broadcast on CBS, a naughtily infectious song by soul man Cee Lo Green has an excellent chance of being named both song and record of the year.

But if it wins, you won't hear the song's correct name. That's because it contains an obscenity.

The devilishly catchy pop tune, which is up for four awards, is about a heartbroken guy moved to shout out the two words that best express his frustration at losing the girl he loves to a well-heeled rival.

It became an instant viral Internet sensation when it was released last summer. So far, the official video has racked up more than 43 million YouTube hits in its unexpurgated version, which also has garnered plenty of play on satellite radio. If there has hardly been an outcry over the song, that's partly because it's inherently charming and partly because when it's played on mainstream radio, the audience hears an alternate, sanitized version, usually one that adds a syllable to become "Forget You."

That's the way the supremely nonthreatening actress Gwyneth Paltrow sang it on the TV show Glee, and presumably it will be the way it's sung when she joins Green - and, to boost the cuteness factor, a puppet troupe directed by Jim Henson's son Brian - on the Grammys.

So, even though the Recording Academy nominated Green's song under its original (albeit, asterisked) title - in the record, song, urban/alternative performance, and short-form music video categories, it's listed as "F*** You" - don't expect to hear the first syllable enunciated out loud.

Taken along with such other recent exercises in titling as Doylestown native Pink's "F- n' Perfect"; Green Day's live album, Awesome as F-; the forthcoming Chris Rock-starring Broadway show, The Motherf**ker With a Hat; and the William Shatner-starring CBS sitcom, $#*! My Dad Says, you might think that pop-cultural profanity has gained complete mainstream acceptance.

Not so fast, say dirty-word watchers. Taboos have eroded considerably since the Rolling Stones had to sing "Let's spend some time together" - instead of "the night" - on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. But they're not entirely gone - yet.

"The function of broadcast TV is to keep these words dirty so we can still enjoy saying them," says Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

"The whole pleasure of saying it is in breaking the rules," says Nunberg, a commentator on the NPR program Fresh Air who is working on a book about a seven-letter word that can't be written in a daily newspaper.

"The prudes and the libertines need each other. They feed off each other. If nobody cared, there'd be no point to it. It's like when you're 9 years old and you first start learning these words. That's what's attractive about them. It's because they're naughty."

Not everyone has been charmed by the profane ditty. Dan Gainor, vice president of the conservative Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute, said: "The entertainment world has so little creativity that Cee Lo Green gets nominated because he teaches children how to sing four-letter words. They could vote based on talent, but that's a six-letter word, which is clearly beyond them."

When the Grammy nominations were announced in December, National Review columnist Dennis Prager wrote in the conservative journal that the song "has little, if any, redeeming moral, social, or artistic . . . value. The lyrics are as vapid as they are obscene."

Grant Barrett, a lexicographer and slang specialist who cohosts the public-radio show A Way With Words, says Green's song is not an example of how broadcast standards are eroding.

On the contrary, it's a sign that they still exist. The song uses not only the F-word but also the N-word and the S-word.

"Cee-Lo's song was played with the S-word, the N-word, and the F-word altered," said Barrett. "So the actual words themselves weren't used. Same for the title of the song when used in news outlets, regardless of the medium. Change that, and then we have mainstream acceptance. Euphemized uses don't count as acceptance."

The tradition of altering song lyrics for radio play gathered steam in the 1980s, thanks to Tipper Gore's monitoring efforts with the Parents Music Resource Center. And the Federal Communications Commission began enforcing violations with hefty fines after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, says Kannon, drive-time DJ and program director for Philadelphia hip-hop station Wired (96.5 FM).

"We have some songs by Lil Wayne or Kanye West and Jay-Z where we take out one syllable or one letter," says Kannon, talking last week from backstage at the Grammys in Los Angeles. "We like to keep it as close to the original word as possible. . . . And believe me, the kids who are downloading this music are not downloading the edited versions. They are all downloading the explicit versions."

Still, the Cee Lo Green hit is a special case. Unlike, say, "Little Lion Man," the hit by British best-new-artist Grammy nominees Mumford & Sons, which also drops an F-bomb, Green's expletive is right there in the title.

That's made for some amusing musical gymnastics, such as when Green appeared on Comedy Central's Colbert Report. "My guest has a hit song whose name I cannot legally say on air," host Stephen Colbert said. "So I don't know how the [bleep] he's going to sing it."

The singer made it clear the song was not autobiographical - because he had never been rejected by a woman in his life. Then he agreed to change the lyric to "Fox News." As in: "I've got pains in my chest, 'cause I'm getting so stressed over Fox News."

On pop radio, the song is played as "Forget You." But at Wired, says Kannon, "we thought 'Forget You' took the essence out of the song." So the station requested, and received, an edit from Green's record company in which he pronounces only the sound of the first letter of the offending word.

"It's a little closer to what he was trying to convey," explains the one-named DJ. "When he and Bruno Mars wrote the song, they were really trying to communicate the way the audience does. You don't hear people who are mad on the street saying, 'Forget you.' They say . . ."

Language watchers are split on what Green's success means for the future of the word, which comedian Lewis Black, in his foreword to the 2008 edition of the Oxford University Press' quasi-dictionary The F Word, claimed to have "true medicinal qualities. It clears our heads of the cobwebs that our bosses, our politicians, and our pundits seem to spin with their tired and useless clichés."

Barrett believes the Cee Lo Green song is a phenomenon mainly because it's irresistibly good. "Maybe the F-word had something to do with its success, which would further underscore that there's a frisson of naughtiness associated with it."

Robert Thompson, television and popular culture professor at Syracuse University, sees a larger societal significance for the hit.

"I wouldn't call the Cee Lo song the tipping point we'll point to 500 years from now when we study the unraveling of this word," he said, while adding the song's sheer catchiness reminded him of Hanson's 1997 hit "MMMBop." "But it's a little anthem of a culture well over halfway through reclaiming a word to normalcy. I think we're well past that halfway mark."