Another Peter and Gordon song, ''I Go to Pieces,'' made the list. ''I suppose a song about someone going to pieces could be upsetting if someone took it literally,'' said Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon after learning that the group's two songs were on the list. ''But 'I can't live in a world without love' is a sentiment that's as true in crisis as it is in normal times. It's a totally pro-love sentiment and could only be helpful right now.''

A Clear Channel spokeswoman emphasized that the list was not a mandate or order to radio programmers. In a statement, the company said the list came not from the corporate offices but from ''a grass-roots effort that was apparently circulated among program directors.''

Others in the Clear Channel network, speaking on condition of anonymity, told a more complicated story. They said that a smaller list of questionable songs was originally generated by the corporate office, but an overzealous regional executive began contributing suggestions and circulating the list via e-mail, where it continued to grow.

Either way, compliance with the list varied from station to station. Angela Perelli, the vice president for operations at KYSR (98.7 FM) in Los Angeles, said the station was not playing any of the listed songs and had previously pulled a couple of the cited songs, ''Jumper'' by Third Eye Blind and ''Fly'' by Sugar Ray, on its own accord. On the other hand, Bob Buchmann, the program director and an on-air personality at WAXQ-FM (104.3) in Manhattan, said that some songs on the list (''American Pie'' by Don McLean, ''Imagine'' and others) happened to be among the most-played songs on his station. In the meantime, the station decided not to broadcast some songs even though they did not make the list, such as ''When You're Falling,'' a collaboration between Peter Gabriel and Afro-Celt Sound System that had fictional lyrics too eerily similar to the truth.

In 1942 the United States government issued a list of suggested wartime practices for radio broadcasters. In the interest of national safety, it advised radio programmers to ban weather forecasts, which could help the enemy plan a bombing attack, and to avoid man-on-the-street interviews and listener music requests in case the interviewee or caller was a spy conveying a coded message to the enemy in words or song.