Rihanna’s raunchiness: Five music videos that shouldn’t have been banned

Given that raunchy Rihanna's latest track from her new album Loud has been banned in 11 countries thus far, JOE takes a look at five other banished music videos.

By David Hawthorne

As the title suggests ‘S&M’ has scenes of sexual nature and even though many scenes are classified as nudity, this is not exactly true in our eyes.

Prudes won’t necessarily agree with this video, however, as scenes containing latex, whips, ball gags, sex simulation, life-size dolls and banana sucking are used in the production. More of the same please Rihanna.

BBC Radio 1 is refusing to air Rihanna's tune before 7pm due to lyrics such as those in the chorus: 'Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it. Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me.'

As word spread that the “S&M” video had been banned by the powers that be, Rihanna immediately tweeted to defend her lyrics and production of the video.

In her opinion there’s a major difference between “metaphorical sex” and the real thing. She also stated how her video for ‘Umbrella’ was not banned and that she was completely nude in that particular video.

Anyway, we say more of the same please Rihanna and in your honour we’ve compiled five music videos which were shelved, but shouldn't have been. What do you think?

Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls"

Banned by MTV, the video contains fully naked women dancing around the members of the band in a strip club. Eventually, Mötley Crüe did make another version of the video that was accepted by MTV.

Nowadays this kind of thing probably wouldn’t get touched but back in 1987 they saw it as bang out of order.

“Rock DJ” from Robbie Williams

Way back in 2000 Robbie caused huge controversy over the graphic nature of the video showing the bold boy himself completely naked and peeling off his flesh. The video was censored in the UK and was only once broadcast uncensored at 2am. Interestingly, the video was banned in the Dominican Republic due to allegations of Satanism.

“Body Language” by Queen

The first ever video banned by MTV in 1982. It was seen as homoerotic and was taken off air due to high levels of bare skin and lots of sweat. At the time it was found unsuitable for a television audience. No surprise there, it was 1982.

The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up"

Why, oh why? One of the best videos ever to be made in my opinion and a track that is on almost every iPod in the country. It was banned in some countries due to depictions of drug use and nudity.

"Born Free" from MIA

This video shows military soldiers taking gingers away from a town and using acts of violence to round up the poor boys, battering anyone who gets in the way. At the end of the nine-minute video it shows the soldiers turning their wepons on the red haired boys.

It was banned from YouTube and MIA tweeted her fans stating, "F*ck UMG who won't show it on YouTube!". This suggested that it was her record label that banned the video. This was later corrected when MIA stated her record company was not to blame.

Unfortunately, YouTube has disabled embedding all versions of the video we've attempted to use so you'll have to click here to see it.