‘Gorilla’ singer Bruno Mars‘ has found himself on the receiving end of new criticism this week, after his euphemism-laced songs were slammed by by the Eastern Lancaster County School District School Board!

Why they’ve banned his music from being played at school events?

Find out below…

PennLive reports:

A Lancaster County school board this week stood behind an administrative decision to remove two Top 40 hits from its high school marching band’s upcoming repertoire because of suggestive lyrics.

Garden Spot High School’s marching band had been practicing instrumental versions of Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven” and Fall Out Boy’s “Thnks for the Memories” for some time before administration decided to nix the songs as they contained inappropriate wording, according to school board members.

The Eastern Lancaster County School District School Board voted Monday 6-3 to uphold that administrative decision.

Board Member Heidi L. Zimmerman, who was among the majority vote, said parents in favor of the songs argued that spectators would only hear the music, not the lyrics, during a marching band performance.

But, since the tunes are popular music, people easily know the words.

Those lyrics, Zimmerman said, were “trashy” and “inappropriate” for high school students.

“We only voted on it because the parents asked us to reconsider,” said Zimmerman. Otherwise, she said, the songs would not have been in the realm of typical board action.

Like Zimmerman, Board Member Paul Irvin also voted to keep the songs out of what the band will play this year as he deemed them inappropriate. Irvin said if a student or staff member said some of the words in those songs to another person in the school, they would be “reprimanded, censured, suspended per not just school policy, but per law.”

Zimmerman said board members felt badly about the timing of the decision as band camp is just around the corner, but she believed the band still had enough time to learn new songs and routines — though she said the latter would be harder.

Wentzel, who voted in favor of keeping the songs, said the band director could have used more scrutiny regarding the songs, but he didn’t think the school board should be getting itself involved in “every little item that comes up like this.”

Wentzel said students voted in the songs. Irvin agreed that’s what board members were told, but, after hearing comments from a student Monday, he questioned whether one of the songs had been chosen beforehand.

Personally, Wentzel didn’t have much issue with the songs as instrumental music.

“I look back when I was growing up, the songs,” Wentzel said, referring to rock bands from the late 1960s and early 1970s. “I think we’re putting too much credence into the words that a song has and what it makes our children do.”

Board members who spoke with PennLive on Wednesday evening didn’t report a major backlash to the decision.

Hartz said the reaction has been “mixed.” Irvin also said he had heard from people on both sides.

“I’ve had people email me and ask me to go back and reconsider again and change our position,” Irvin said. “I’ve had people walk up to me on the street and say thank you for doing what you did and upholding what is right.”

Wentzel said the decision was emotional for some students — “for them, this was pulling the plug on something they were getting attached to.”

A veteran board member of nearly 20 years, Wentzel said the issue wasn’t controversial — especially compared to others in the past. He said he doesn’t expect to hear more on this issue, though it could influence policy in the district.

Bruno’s banning comes just months after fellow crooner Robin Thicke faced similar controversy, when his #1 single ‘Blurred Lines’ was banned by the UK’s  Edinburgh University.

Citing its supposed trivialisation of rape as their grounds for ban, the University revealed that its lyrics were in direct violation of their ‘End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus’ initiative, designed to protect its female students from harmful and dangerous from anything that would endorse or evoke sexual violence.

What do you make of the matter?