Banned From American Radio After 9/11 Bangles Walk Like an Egyptian

"Walk Like an Egyptian" is probably the most innocuous song ever written to have been banned twice. In 1991, it was featured on a "list of records to be avoided" distributed by the BBC to its radio stations and then featured on the 2001 Clear Channel list. Both times, it was for its brief references to the Nile and Egyptians, being technically references to the Middle East – even though the "Egyptians" the song is talking about are ancient ones depicted on tomb paintings.

Ironically, in October 2001 they were booked to perform the song at a party celebrating the launch of a new Egyptian show on the History Channel – a party that had been booked by a promotions firm owned by Clear Channel.

In a September 2001 interview with the LA Times, guitarist Vicki Peterson said: "This has got to be a joke. The healing power of music and especially some of those songs is comforting in times like these."

Drummer Debbi Peterson said of the song in the same interview, "It was always so tongue-in-cheek and the video was so silly and the way we sang it. Some people will find offense in anything. We took it as a novelty song, doing a little dance. Quite interesting lyrics, but we never took it seriously." Source: Newsweek

Right after the September 11, 2001 attacks, many media companies began censoring art deemed insensitive or anti-American, for fear of offending or upsetting the traumatized nation. One such entity was media corporation Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia), who, three days after the attack, sent a memo to its 1,100+ radio stations with a list of songs that they deemed “lyrically questionable” and insensitive to play following the 9/11 attacks. One of them was Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles. However, some of the motives behind certain songs’ inclusion now seem ridiculous. The Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian was added for having references to the Middle East. It should be noted, too, that some DJs chose to play these songs, but that they were adamantly urged not to do so.

For many Americans, the September 11 attacks are the most important cultural turning point in history. The tragedy – in which radical Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda flew passenger planes into both the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon – was the deadliest terrorist attack in world history, and sparked both rampant patriotism throughout the U.S. and jingoistic anti-Muslim sentiment across much of the world. It also had a dramatic effect on the arts, inspiring many musicians and artists to confront darker themes that fans were suddenly dealing with, whether they liked it or not. Source: Kerrang

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