Beyoncé's Run the World, which won Best Choreography at last night's VMAs, has been banned in China.
Beyoncé's track is one of a hundred on a new list of banned songs released by the Chinese Ministry of Culture on Friday.
Beyoncé wasn't the only VMA winner to have a song banned; Katy Perry had E.T banned, her collaboration with Kanye West which won Best Collaboration and Best Special Effects. Perry's Last Friday Night was also banned.
Lady Gaga's Born This Way was not on this latest list, but only by virtue of already having been banned in a previous list. Gaga did have 6 new tracks banned however: The Edge of Glory, Hair, Marry The Night, Americano, Bloody Mary and Judas. This makes Gaga the most banned artist on the list.
While Gaga's Judas has courted controversy from the get-go with its quasi religious themes, a more surprising appearance on the list was The Backstreet Boys' 1999 hit I Want It That Way.
The Chinese Ministry says that these bans are not related to content, but instead reflect a clamp down on internet music providers who are providing access to songs not submitted to the government for review or censorship. In a statement to CNN the Ministry said: “Our targets this time are online music products that we have not registered or reviewed. They don’t necessarily contain illegal content.”
Weibo, a Chinese alternative to Twitter (as Twitter is banned in China) has been in a flurry over the bans. One user, KeyboardChan, summed things up nicely “The most ridiculous pick has got to be Backstreet Boy’s ‘I Want It That Way’ from 1999. I have been singing it at karaoke for 12 years – have I been a cultural terrorist for that long?"
