There is quite a laundry list of songs that the BBC banned during The Beatles’ heyday of the 1960s.
Many of those bans were warranted for the time due to their lyrical content involving drugs, sexual innuendos, and brand name drops.
Most of those things wouldn’t make the modern-day listener sweat, but 1960s-era Britain was a very different time and place.
In addition to songs like “I Am The Walrus” and “Come Together” getting the no-go stamp from the BBC, another song was banned for its controversial political content.
But it didn’t get banned until years after it first made the airwaves.
American fans weren’t happy about the lyrics “You don’t know how lucky you are, boys / Back in the U.S.S.R”, which alluded to potentially pro-Soviet leanings of the band.
It was released weeks after the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, and The Beatles’ sympathetic lyrics prompted outrage from both leftists and right-wing citizens and politicians across the pond.
However, the BBC is a British organization, not an American one.
Many would assume that residents of Great Britain shared similar distaste for the lyrics in “Back In The U.S.S.R.”.
We’re sure many did scoff at the song and its title.
But that didn’t stop it from peaking at no. 19 on the UK Singles chart and no. 11 on the Irish charts.
