Seattle, WA -- Just because a song is censored doesn't mean it's banned -- and vice versa.

Musician and censorship scholar Peter Blecha says media organizations don't announce when a song is banned because, as he puts it, "they discovered long ago that banning something increases interest in it."

Blecha says censorship goes back centuries and tends to swing between extremes: conservative people objecting to lyrics about sex and intoxication and liberals protesting references to sexism, violence and racism.

But now censorship isn't as much a community effort as a corporate one. Most decisions to censor songs are made by a few powerful executives, who make musical decisions based on business and political expediency.

He figures that's the only reason to explain why the Steve Miller song "Jet Airliner" has been banned from the airwaves 25 years after it was a hit.

Blecha is the author of a new book, "Taboo Tunes" (Backbeat Books).

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