These Classic Rock Songs Were Banned From Radio — Yet Still Became No. 1 Hits

Just because a song is banned, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is going to flop. Indeed, as these classic rock songs show, in some cases, a good dose of controversy can stir up enough interest with the right people to make a banned song a No. 1 hit regardless. As the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

These four tracks from the classic rock era were once banned by American radio stations, with broadcasters worried that their content — which may seem harmless today — might offend and alienate listeners. These songs were deemed to have hidden references to drugs or sex, or in one instance were so overt in its political stance that it was deemed to be un-American. Nevertheless, despite the controversy — or perhaps because of it — each of these songs found their way to the top of the charts and have remained bona fide rock classics ever since.

On the surface of it, the Beatles' 1967 classic "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is an innocent song about a girl flying through the sky. Indeed, that's what John Lennon, the song's principal writer, said it was. By the late 1960s the various members of the Beatles had become open about their drug use when speaking to the media and even showed their support for its legalization, and listeners increasingly searched their music for hidden drug references and allusions.

Eagle-eyed commentators noted that the song's title invoked the initialism LSD, one of the most popular drugs of the 1960s, counterculture and a drug that the Fab Four and their manager had readily admitted to taking. However, Lennon stood firm that the song was not an intentional reference to the drug, stating it was inspired solely by a picture his son Julian had drawn of a school friend when he was a small boy. 

Nevertheless, in 1967, the BBC banned it for its supposed connections to LSD, while it also saw a ban in the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was included on a list of 164 songs Clear Channel (now iHeartRadio) regarded as "insensitive or Anti-American," or were "lyrically questionable" according to Karrang!. The company sent the ban list to more than 1,100 radio stations.

The song was never released as a single for the Beatles, instead standing as one of the highlights of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." However, it went to No. 1 in 1974, when Elton John, a friend and collaborator of John Lennon, released it as a single featuring the former Beatle.

The first No. 1 hit of The Everly Brothers' career, 1957's "Wake Up Little Susie" proved to be a hugely influential rock 'n' roll classic. The brothers' infectious harmonies, driving guitars, and radio-friendly melodies would be emulated by later artists including the Beatles, who later recorded their own version of "Wake Up Little Susie."

The song tells the story of a young couple who go on a date to the movies and fall asleep, only to wake up at four in the morning, having missed Susie's 10 p.m. curfew. The narrator worries about the damage their reputation will suffer for having stayed out all night, reflecting the conservative values of the era.

So it might be surprising for modern listeners to learn that "Wake Up Little Susie" was banned by radio stations in Boston for being too suggestive, despite nothing in the lyrics to suggest the young couple had done anything except innocently fall asleep. Don Everly was nonplussed and recalled in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel: "They called and said it had been banned in Boston, and I said, 'What?' I was naive in those days. To me, they just fell asleep at a movie. Everybody else took it like some big deal."

By their very nature, it's not often that soft rock singles prove controversial, but in 1971, Melanie's "Brand New Key" caused something of a mild storm. The track, which was the singer's mega-selling No. 1 hit, was penned by Melanie herself and was, she has claimed, a simple, innocent song about roller skates.

But not everyone took it that way. For many listeners, there was some overt innuendo in the song's imagery, though Melanie denied this was ever her intention. The song was banned by numerous radio stations, which deemed the lyrics suggestive enough to potentially offend some listeners.

Nevertheless, the controversy helped propel the track to the top of the charts. In the years since, Melanie has admitted that some sexual undertones do exist in the song, telling The Tennessean in 2021: "It had all kinds of meanings. I'm gonna say, subconsciously, there could have been some sort of Freudian thing. I was just remembering roller skating and learning the apparatus." Melanie says that she felt pigeonholed by the song, but later gained a renewed appreciation for it.

The Vietnam War was one of the defining aspects of the 1960s, with the counterculture of the decade becoming more emboldened in its anti-war stance as the damaging conflict wore on. Folk rock musician Barry McGuire was one of those who found themselves addressing the war that by 1965 saw thousands of young Americans drafted and overseas. 

Songwriter P. F. Sloan penned "Eve of Destruction" in 1964, and though he initially received backlash from his songwriting partner and publisher, he recorded the track with McGuire the following year. The raw track — which famously retained McGuire's first rough vocal take — became a hit with DJ's but was subsequently banned in certain territories, including Chicago, Washington, Baltimore, and Memphis, as well as by the BBC, due to its anti-war message, which some deemed unpatriotic and harmful toward the war effort. McGuire would later claim that the song led to him being investigated by the FBI. None of that stopped the track from climbing to the top of the charts, though. "Eve of Destruction" peaked at No. 1 in September of 1965.

As Sloan recalled in 1999 in the "Stories Behind the Songs" feature on his website: "The media frenzy over the song tore me up and seemed to tear the country apart. I was an enemy of the people to some and a hero to others, but I was still only 20 years old, and nobody really was looking. I have felt it was a love song and written as a prayer because, to cure an ill you need to know what is sick. In my youthful zeal I hadn't realized that this would be taken as an attack on The System!"