Software rekindles reverse lyrics fad
When Jeff Milner installed software on his Web site that could play digital songs in reverse, he tested it with a snippet of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. The song, heard normally, refers to “a bustle in your hedgerow.” Played backward, Milner says, the line sounds like : “Oh, here’s to my sweet Satan.”
Today, Milner’s Web site plays parts of songs from the Eagles, John Lennon, Britney Spears, Eminem and others — both normally and in reverse. Milner, a Canadian college student majoring in new media, offers interpretations of the reverse-plays. A line in Spears’ Baby One More Time, played backward, becomes “Sleep with me, I’m not too young,” Milner claims. What sounds like mumbling in Pink Floyd’s Empty Spaces, Milner says, becomes more intelligible in reverse : “Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message.”
Playing songs backward — a popular pastime from the days of turntables — went out of fashion when CDs arrived. But now it’s enjoying a new cult following thanks to Web sites and software that do the trick. Milner says his site — jeffmilner. com / backmasking. htm — has attracted more than 3. 5 million visitors.
Some bands deny engaging in the practice, known as backmasking. Message-hunters have said Another One Bites the Dust, the classic-rock hit by Queen, contains the backward message : “It’s fun to smoke marijuana.” Says a spokesman for Hollywood Records, the band’s label : “It’s not true.”
“I’m sure it’s not intentional,” a spokesman for Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones says about the alleged satanic reference in Stairway to Heaven. “And I don’t believe they’ve ever discussed it.”
BP Fallon, who worked as Led Zeppelin’s publicist during its 1970 s heyday, added in an email : “Play anything backwards, and you’ll find something.” He suggested that the mysterious backward lyric might actually be : “Oh, here’s to my sweaty satin,” a reference to guitarist Jimmy Page’s trousers.
Asked about a supposed satanic reverse-message in Hotel California, a spokesman for the Eagles said : “We refuse to dignify this kind of tripe with a response.” Representatives for Spears and Pink Floyd did not respond to calls seeking comment.
The search for hidden messages in music first gained popularity decades ago after Michigan disc jockey Russ Gibb, prompted by a caller, put a Beatles song, Revolution 9, on his turntable and spun it backward. He said he thought he heard : “Turn me on, dead man.” His observation fed rumors that Paul McCartney was dead. Mc-Cartney eventually turned up very much alive, but that didn’t stop music fans from finding all sorts of alleged backward messages when they spun their other records in reverse.
The advent of compact discs made the search for hidden messages nearly impossible for most music fans, at first. But software released in recent years, widely available and free, lets music lovers who have never touched a turntable play songs backward and share them on Web sites. Dozens of sites and message boards have cropped up to trumpet discoveries of alleged secret lyrics.
Talkbackwards. com, one of the most popular, allows visitors to feed in audio files, then play them backward. Eric Borgos, the site’s 36-year-old creator, said he wanted to find a way to take the former fad to the Internet. His site, which he says gets about 2, 000 hits a day, offers no interpretations of reversed lyrics. Instead, it invites users to share their own.
In some cases, such as in Pink Floyd’s Empty Spaces, clear words emerge. More often, however, vocals sound garbled, leaving listeners puzzling over whether the words they hear are intentional messages or just flukes.
Borgos’ site contains links to others where snippets of speeches by well-known people are played in reverse, sometimes slowed down considerably. One of the sites claims California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial acceptance speech, when reversed and slowed, sounds like : “Soon, I’ll beat the law.” (Taken from http://reversespeech.s3.amazonaws.com – ed)
The governor’s spokesman, Margita Thompson, responded by e-mail : “Sgurd gnisu eb yam yeht ekil sdnuos ti esuaceb wal eht kcab taeb ot evah yam siht did ohw elpoep eht, noos.” Her backward translation : “Soon, the people who did this may have to beat back the law because it sounds like they may be using drugs.”
Borgos thinks most alleged messages are just coincidence. “Mathematically, if you listen long enough, eventually you’ll find a pattern,” he says.
During the first round of secret-message hunting more than three decades ago, some parents, social psychologists, religious leaders and other critics worried that a diabolical effort was under way to corrupt children.
The revival of message-hunting has spawned new critics. Joseph Wasmond, president of the Knoxville, Tenn.-based Freedom in Christ Ministries, says he is concerned about secret messages because it has become so easy to share music files over the Internet.
“There is the potential for manipulating people’s behavior based on subliminal and subconscious music,” Wasmond says.
But James Walker, president of Watchman Fellowship, a Christian group that studies religious movements and subcultures, sees the hunt for messages as harmless.
“You could take a Christian hymn, and if you played it backwards long enough at different speeds, you could make that hymn say anything you want to,” he says.