Where to find clean songs for cheerleading, how to make one yourself, and the competition rules that decide what "clean" actually means.
Try CENSORLY Free →Almost every competitive cheerleading and dance program in the United States — school, all-star, college, and most regional leagues — requires music with no explicit lyrics. The rule isn't optional: routines have been deducted, disqualified, or stopped mid-performance over a single uncensored word slipping through a competition mix.
The reasoning is straightforward. Cheer and dance routines perform in front of mixed-age audiences: elementary-school crowds, parents, judges, school administrators, and broadcast feeds. Sanctioning bodies like USA Cheer, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA), and the major all-star event producers all enforce family-friendly content standards. If your mix has an audible f-bomb, the routine isn't competition-legal — even if the choreography is flawless.
This guide covers what "clean" actually means under those rules, where licensed clean cheer mixes come from, and the fastest way to clean a track yourself when no pre-cleaned version exists.
"Clean" in cheer and dance contexts is stricter than what radio considers clean. A song that's edited for daytime FM may still get a routine flagged. The working checklist most coaches and choreographers use:
The safe bar is full silence (or a clean instrumental fill) over the explicit word, with smooth fades on each side so there's no audible click. That's what an officially-licensed clean version sounds like, and that's the standard a cheer mix needs to hit.
Cheer and dance music is one of the few corners of the music industry with its own dedicated licensing framework. Because routines remix, splice, and re-edit commercial recordings, programs can't just buy a song on iTunes and use it. The two main paths most teams use:
This guide focuses on the second case: you've licensed (or otherwise legally sourced) a song, and now you need it clean before you build the routine around it.
Before you spend any time editing, check whether a clean version of the song already exists. Major-label pop, hip-hop, and country singles almost always have one — the label's engineers produced it specifically for radio and family-friendly use, and it will sound better than anything you produce yourself. The most reliable sources, in order:
When no official clean version exists — older hip-hop catalog, indie releases, deep album cuts, or artists who deliberately don't release clean versions — keep reading. The next section covers how to make one yourself.
If no pre-cleaned version of the song exists, you'll need to produce one. You've got four options, ranked from cheapest-but-slowest to fastest:
Audacity is free and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Open the song, find the timestamp of every explicit word using the lyrics on Genius, select the word on the waveform, and apply Effect → Fade Out followed by Effect → Fade In to crossfade into silence (a hard mute creates an audible click). Export as 320 kbps MP3.
Two things choreographers consistently get wrong:
Full step-by-step Audacity tutorial: How to make a clean version of a song.
If you already work in a DAW, drop the song on an audio track and use a volume automation lane to drop the gain to silence over each explicit word, with 30–50 ms ramps on each side. Non-destructive, easy to tweak after listening. Same time commitment as Audacity once you account for the cleaner workflow.
Licensed cheer music companies (CheerSounds, USA Cheer Music, etc.) will produce a fully custom mix — cleaned, sectioned, sound-effected, and built around your routine. Pricing typically runs from a few hundred dollars to over $1,000 depending on length and complexity. Worth it for competitive all-star teams where the mix is a major part of the performance. Overkill for a sideline routine or a school pep-rally piece.
For a one-off "just clean this song" job, Fiverr and Upwork freelancers run $5–25 per song with 1–2 day turnaround.
CENSORLY is built specifically for the "the official clean version doesn't exist and I don't want to spend 30 minutes in Audacity" problem. Drop the song in, the AI transcribes the vocals with word-level timestamps, every explicit word is automatically muted with crossfades, and you download a 320 kbps MP3.
For cheer and dance use specifically:
However you produced the clean version, do a final inspection pass before you cut the song into your routine mix. Re-cleaning an explicit word after the choreography is locked in is much harder than catching it now.
With a clean version in hand, the rest of the routine-mix workflow is the same as any cheer or dance edit: cut to length (typically 2:30 for cheer, 1:30–2:00 for dance depending on division), splice multiple songs together with smooth transitions, layer in stingers and sound effects on the 8-counts, and bus the whole thing through a limiter so the dynamics survive a competition PA.
If you're working with a licensed cheer music provider, that's where their value really compounds — they handle clean lyrics, sectioning, transitions, and stings in one package. If you're building it yourself, get the clean step out of the way first so you're not retroactively patching audio after the choreography is set.
The fastest path is to upload the song to an automated clean-edit tool like CENSORLY, which transcribes the vocals with word-level timestamps and auto-mutes every explicit word with crossfades — about 30 seconds of work for a 320 kbps MP3 ready for your routine. If you'd rather DIY for free, open the song in Audacity, find each explicit word on the waveform using the lyrics on Genius as reference, and apply Effect → Fade Out followed by Effect → Fade In on each side of the word to crossfade into silence (a hard mute creates an audible click). Always extend selections 50 ms before fricative consonants ('f', 'sh', 's') so they don't slip through, and listen on headphones at performance volume during a final QC pass before locking in the choreography.
Yes, in practice. USA Cheer, NFHS, UCA, and the major all-star event producers all enforce family-friendly content standards that ban audible profanity, slurs, and sexually explicit lyrics. Specific rule wording varies by sanctioning body and changes year to year, so check the current rule book for the event you're competing at — but the safe operating assumption is that any audible explicit lyric will get the routine flagged.
Sometimes, but not always. The official clean version released alongside a single is usually safe — it was mastered by the label's engineers specifically for non-explicit play. But user-uploaded 'clean' edits on YouTube often miss ad-libs or use sloppy bleeps, and some 'radio edits' only trim runtime without removing all explicit lyrics. Verify by listening to the full track on headphones before committing to it.
CheerSounds (and similar licensed cheer music providers) produce full custom routine mixes — sectioned, sound-effected, and pre-licensed for cheer use, with clean lyrics handled at the source. CENSORLY handles only the clean-lyrics step on a single song you've already chosen, in about 30 seconds. They solve different problems: use a licensed cheer provider when you want a custom mix built; use CENSORLY when you've licensed a specific commercial track and just need a clean edit of it.
Yes. Cleaning explicit lyrics doesn't change the underlying copyright. For competition use, most programs work under USA Cheer's Sound Recording License (or an equivalent licensing program from the event sanctioning body) which covers commercially-released music in cheer and dance contexts. Check the current usacheer.org guidance for what your specific program needs.
The same workflow applies — you just need word lists for both languages. CENSORLY's auto-detector includes a full Spanish explicit dictionary alongside English and runs both whenever Spanish is detected in the vocals, which is common for reggaeton and Latin pop tracks that show up in dance mixes.
Almost always one of three things: (1) ad-libs or background vocals in the second verse that the first pass missed, (2) the 'f' or 'sh' consonant of a word slipping through because the mute started too late, or (3) a partially-muted word that's still recognizable. Always do a final QC pass on speakers at performance volume with a second person listening blind.