Dave Wilton of Wordorigins.org has a Strong Language post about a notable development in sweary singing:
It wouldn’t be the annual Eurovision Song Contest without some sort of controversy. Most years the controversy is political in nature. The 2025 contest was no different in this regard, but in addition to the usual political rhubarb, this year’s contest saw a dispute over a certain four-letter word in lyrics of one of the entries.
The song in question was Malta’s entry in the contest: “Serving,” originally titled “Kant,” performed by Maltese singer Miriana Conte and written by Conte, Benjamin “BNJI” Schmid, Sarah Evelyn Fuller, and Matthew “Muxu” Mercieca. The song was released in January 2025.
The chorus features the phrase “Serving kant,” and Dave explains:
Kant, the only Maltese word in the otherwise English-language song, means singing in Maltese, and the word is descended from the Latin cantus, meaning song. The aural similarity to the the English word cunt is obvious, and the phrase serving cunt is ball culture slang meaning to be simultaneously bold, confident, and feminine, a quality that Conte exudes in her performances. (Ball culture is an African-American and LatinX LGBTQ+ subculture with antecedents that date back to nineteenth-century drag balls.)
The song is an anthem of feminine power, and the pun is quite clearly intentional.
Sadly, Mrs. Grundy intervened:
After complaints from the BBC Radio, which by UK regulations could not broadcast the word cunt before 9 pm, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) required the lyrics be changed. Conte reluctantly complied, changing the title of the song and replacing the lyric kant with aahh.
At any rate, I’m glad to have learned a pungent new phrase.
And here I was looking forward to transgressive wordplay about the Categorical Imperative!
Doubtless already a familiar tale to all Hatters, but
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser
My daughter the current college radio DJ tells me that the current U.S. “safe harbor” during which it is believed that you can play songs with Bad Words w/o getting in trouble with the FCC starts at 10 pm. Although I don’t know that mainstream commercial stations under chain/corporate ownership necessarily take advantage. I will say that in the hazy/crazy era of my adolescence when commercial rock radio was willing to play certain songs (maybe even during daylight hours) with a Bad Word or two if somewhat down in the mix, I don’t think they played any with that *particular* Bad Word. I actually have a reasonably clear memory of the first time I heard that particular Bad Word in a song on the radio circa 1981 on the very-unmainstream-in-those-days WXPN-FM-Philadelphia, the song in question being Marianne Faithful’s rather intense performance of “Why D’Ya Do It.” She took the lyrics from Heathcote Williams, who based on the wikipedia bio of him was so Eccentrically English a character that one rather suspects him of being a hoax.
“Cunt” is, I gather, considered significantly badder in the US than in the UK (where it’s hardly genteel, and certainly more offensive than “fuck”, but still doesn’t elicit the horror that it apparently does in America.)
I must say that in context the singer Ms. Conte’s surname looks suspiciously like an attempt to work the same double entendre. If she’s had it since she was born, the scheme has been a long time in the planning. Separately, another account of the situation carries at least an implication that complaints were made to the European Broadcasting Union (which apparently sponsors the song contest) about the lyrical content by sorehead competitors trying to undermine Malta’s chances.
Separately the use of “aahh” as the bowdlerizing replacement reminds me of:
MAYNARD: It reads, ‘Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh’.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: ‘…The Castle of aaarrrrggh’.
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LANCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that’s what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn’t bother to carve ‘aarrggh’. He’d just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that’s what’s carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up. Well, does it say anything else?
MAYNARD: No. Just ‘aaarrrrggh’.
Following up on David Eddyshaw’s story, “serving Kant” is a punchline I’ve seen multiple times on Tumblr* (a mixing ground of philosophy nerds and people familiar with ball culture and/or its descendant internet slang). Eg:
“call me Immanuel the way i’m serving Kant. siri, send post” (this is actually mixing together three different memes: “call me X the way I’m doing Y”, where Y is usually an malapropism-like description of X; “serving cunt” as already explained in the post; and “siri, send tweet” — converted to Tumblr’s format, which is posts not tweets — as a coda that means
“I know this joke is corny but I’m inflicting it on you anyways”or more generally just a kind of emphasis, like “I said what I said”.)“slaying philosophy call that serving kant” (this meaning of “slay” also comes from ball culture)
And one bringing in a different flavor of history nerd: serving Cnut
*not claiming that Tumblr is unique in this overlap, btw, just that I use Tumblr and not other social media, so I see it there.
Mention of Kant always reminds me of Lorelei Ambrosia’s (quite cogent) question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUjTkKpvrHQ
DE: As DM says, the Word here in the U.S. is primarily an insult addressed to women because they are women. It has no semantics except being offensive. There are of course other meanings.
@David Eddyshaw: I was thinking, Is that Superman III? And yep, it sure was. Not a film that has ever had a lot of cultural cache.
That’s probably the high point of the movie right there.
(It has its moments, though.)
“Cunt” is, I gather, considered significantly badder in the US than in the UK
More cosmopolitan Americans are now well aware of this, to the extent it has even become a trope. On a recent episode of the HBO comedy “Hacks” a female talent agent in LA calls another (off screen) woman a cunt. Her boss responds “Kayla, I told you not to use that word around me. Unless we’re in London…”
…as I did years ago on another thread, yes. In various intarwebz The C-Word is often treated as the second-worst word in the language, the word that Newt Gingrich called his 2nd wife shortly before marrying the 3rd or something. At least one webcomic censors cunt and bitch in the comments, and nothing else.
We’ve had quite a few posts about the word on Strong Language, including a few that focus on its particular status in one dialect or another. For example, Gary Thoms and E. Jamieson wrote about it becoming a pronoun in Scottish English, and Michael Adams wrote about its (gradual, partial) reappropriation in US English.
(It also features prominently in risqué comedy songs by UK groups Fascinating Aïda and Four Femmes on the Thames.)
Gary Thoms and E. Jamieson wrote about it becoming a pronoun in Scottish English
Absolutely fascinating — thanks for linking to it!
John Cooper Clarke: Some Cunt Used the N-Word
The rest isn’t on the screen.