Everything is relative. While very little seems to shock audiences today, there was a time when some music videos were deemed “too hot” and needed to be edited or even censored lest they cause innocent, unsuspecting viewers to be damned to hell.
More often than not, the offending videos alluded to or depicted some sort of same-sex relationship.Scroll down for 6 music videos by queer icons that were considered “too hot” when they were first released 20+ years ago but seem tame today…Queen’s “Body Language” made history when it became the first-ever music video to be banned from MTV in 1982 for its homoerotic undertones and nudity, despite all the members of the band being fully clothed.
Nevertheless, the song was still a massive hit, receiving extensive radio play and peaking at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100.George Michael channeled Freddy Mercury in this 1998 music video that caused quite a bit of chatter for its racy content and ultimately resulted in Michael being slapped with a $10 million lawsuit by Marcelo Rodriguez, the undercover police cop who arrested him earlier that year for lewd contact.
It featured scenes of public sex stylized like surveillance footage and interspersed with footage of Michael, dressed as an LAPD officer, performing in a men’s bathroom.