Denis Leary Updates His 1993 Hit ‘A**hole’ With Jimmy Fallon

Denis Leary has updated his hit song about insufferable jerks—with help from Jimmy Fallon.

Leary first released the song on his comedy album No Cure for Cancer back in 1993. Thursday night on The Tonight Show, he and Fallon revised the lyrics to reflect what makes someone an **hole some 31-plus years later. 

According to the duo, that includes leaving one-star reviews on Amazon, removing screws form Boeing planes, singing the wrong lyrics during Wicked, and starting a mosh pit at a Taylor Swift concert. The duo also skewer Cybertruck owners who park in handicap spots and COVID patients who refuse to mask, before leading the crowd in an A-S-S-H-O-L-E chant.  

The titular word apparently doesn’t fly on broadcast television, leading NBC to bleep each utterance (or spelling) of the first syllable a whopping 28 times when it aired Thursday. The show later uploaded an unadulterated version to YouTube.

Leary’s “A**hole” became a pop culture phenomenon in 1993, with a censored version garnering airplay on radio and MTV. The song was also popular overseas, charting in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Leary has updated the song for late-night television before. Eight years ago, he performed a Trump-themed rendition of the song on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

Leary and Corden performed the duet, titled “(Trump’s an) a**hole,” dressed as Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Leary and Corden had some fun with network censors in that performance, playing with the fact that both syllables are able to be uttered separately without a bleep, but not together.)

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