K-Chuck Radio: ?sgninaem lanimilbus cinataS evah yllaer yeht od – segasseM sdrawkcaB

You’ve heard this a gazillion times. If you play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” backwards, it will allegedly produce Satanic messages. And that by listening to these messages in the forward mode, the backwards messages will get into your subconscious and convince you to do things that you aren’t normally disposed to do. You know – stuff like worship the Devil, do drugs, rip the tags off of mattresses…

Here’s a clip of the offending song in question.

But come on already. By that argument, nearly every song in the pop music genre has a hidden message of one form or another. Take a listen.

Here’s Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” backwards.

And here’s Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” backwards.

How about Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” backwards?

Oh man, if you thought that was weird, check out Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” in reverse…

Of course, if an artist INTENTIONALLY puts a backwards lyric on a song, people skip by it like they’ve never heard it before.

Now us old heads might remember the Electric Light Orchestra – well surely their backwards messages must have inspired something!

Styx also put a backwards message on one of their songs, “Heavy Metal Poisoning” from the Kilroy Was Here album. You might know the phrase they used – “Annuit Cœptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum” – and if you’re not sure where you’ve seen or heard it before, look at the back of a dollar bill, it’s printed on the Great Seal.

“Weird Al” Yankovic also did this on one of his early albums. On the track “Nature Trail to Hell,” he put a little backwards lyric on it. Here’s proof.

The Beatles were accused of putting backwards lyrics on their songs as clues to the “death” of Paul McCartney and the identity of the person currently pretending to be him. But there are instances where the Beatles actually DID use backwards lyrics – check out the song “Rain,” in which John Lennon put one of the vocal tracks in backwards and liked the way it sounded. Here’s the clips, forwards and backwards.

Personally, I think this whole backwards subliminal message stuff is a joke. If such a concept – that you could control the youth of America by putting backwards messages in popular songs – actually worked, then why don’t record companies have backwards messages like, “Get a job. Cut your hair. Respect your parents.” Guess that doesn’t sell downloads, does it? 🙂

Of course, this whole “playing a record backwards” would ruin one of the best music industry jokes of all time.  “What happens if you play a country music record backwards” “You’d get your truck back, you’d get your dog back, and you’d sober up.”