Backward masking

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(Why backwards masking)
(Real backward "masking")
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Pink Floyd included the message "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont" at the start of "Empty Spaces" on their classic album "The Wall". <ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiveqbMsHwQ Empty Spaces forwards and backwards</ref>
 
Pink Floyd included the message "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont" at the start of "Empty Spaces" on their classic album "The Wall". <ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiveqbMsHwQ Empty Spaces forwards and backwards</ref>
  
"P5hng Me A*wy", from Linkin Park's first remix album ''Reanimation'', features a backmasked version of one of the song's verses.
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"P5hng Me A*wy", from Linkin Park's first remix album ''Reanimation'', features a backmasked version of one of the song's verses. "Somewhere I Belong", from Linkin Park's second album is based around an acoustic guitar part played backwards to give the sample it's distinctive sound envelope.<reF>[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2647 Songfacts.com - Somewhere I Belong]</ref> Although this latter example didn't include reversing lyrics, it's a good example of why running sounds backwards can produce interesting and unusual effects.
  
 
"Weird Al" Yankovic has included backmasked segments at least thrice:
 
"Weird Al" Yankovic has included backmasked segments at least thrice:
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On the other hand, however, punk band Choking Victim (now known as Leftover Crack) placed a backward mask on their song "Hate Yer State" where vocalist Stza Sturgeon sarcastically promoted, amongst other things, Satan worship and suicide.<ref>http://www.seanbluestone.com/20-backmasked-songs-a-few-others</ref>
 
On the other hand, however, punk band Choking Victim (now known as Leftover Crack) placed a backward mask on their song "Hate Yer State" where vocalist Stza Sturgeon sarcastically promoted, amongst other things, Satan worship and suicide.<ref>http://www.seanbluestone.com/20-backmasked-songs-a-few-others</ref>
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===Swearing===
  
 
Most radio stations (in the United States) will reverse swears in order to allow songs to be played on air without having to constantly edit the songs "live" (aka cut the sound channel on the board for the swear) during safe harbor hours (6 am - 10 pm local time).  The Beastie Boys did this on their 1983 "Cookypuss" with uncensored, and censored radio versions, the latter reversing all the nasty language.  This has to be done frequently with hip-hop and modern dance music, along with several late 1970s/early 1980s rock songs, and [[Shit|tihs ekil sdnuos]]<ref>For this we can thank Janet Jackson and her "wardrobe malfunction" along with numerous other shock jocks who irked the FCC one too many times.</ref>.
 
Most radio stations (in the United States) will reverse swears in order to allow songs to be played on air without having to constantly edit the songs "live" (aka cut the sound channel on the board for the swear) during safe harbor hours (6 am - 10 pm local time).  The Beastie Boys did this on their 1983 "Cookypuss" with uncensored, and censored radio versions, the latter reversing all the nasty language.  This has to be done frequently with hip-hop and modern dance music, along with several late 1970s/early 1980s rock songs, and [[Shit|tihs ekil sdnuos]]<ref>For this we can thank Janet Jackson and her "wardrobe malfunction" along with numerous other shock jocks who irked the FCC one too many times.</ref>.

Revision as of 19:23, 28 December 2011

Wingnut.jpg
Wingnut.jpg
Warning: Extreme Wingnuttery
This topic may or may not be bullshit, and is either nonsensical or idiotic.
May damage the mind and lead to drinking of the Kool-Aid.

Backward masking was a scare promoted by a number of Christian evangelists, most notably Jacob Aranza during the early 1980s. Allegedly, several rock songs had messages that could be heard if the record was played backwards, glorifying Satan, drug abuse, or the occult. It was part of the Satanic Panic.

The backward masking scare alleged that a large number of songs contained backwards messages, and that most of them promoted Devil-worship. Another concern was that the brain could grok backward-masked speech, thus making this a form of subliminal messages. These songs did not, in fact, contain any deliberately placed backward vocals at all. When played backward the result was gibberish that could be interpreted as a backward message by somebody letting their imagination run away with them. Among the songs alleged to contain such messages:

  • "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Allegedly contained long passages of Satanic stream of consciousness drivel if played backwards along the lines of "happy is the man who makes me sad whose power is Satan"
  • "A Child Is Coming" by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. Allegedly, "Son of Satan" repeated over and over when played backwards.
  • "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. Allegedly, "Start to smoke marijuana" (or "It's fun to smoke marijuana") when played backwards. Worse, rumors suggest a celebration of mass murder when played forward.
  • "Eldorado" by Electric Light Orchestra. Allegedly, "He is the nasty one, Christ, you're infernal, It is said we're dead men, Everyone who has the mark will live" when played backwards.
  • "Snowblind" by Styx. Allegedly, "Satan move through our voices" when played backwards.
  • "When Electricity Came To Arkansas" by Black Oak Arkansas. Allegedly, "Satan Satan Satan, He is God, He is God, He is God" when played backwards.
  •  !natas liah

William Poundstone's 1983 book Big Secrets investigated these and many other alleged backward messages and found them nothing but unintentional gibberish. [1]

Backward masking even got a day in court when the band Judas Priest was sued in 1990 over their 1978 song "Better By You, Better Than Me". The song allegedly contained a subliminally recorded "do it!" The lawsuit alleged that the subliminal message in the song led two Nevada teens to enter into a suicide pact. The court dismissed the lawsuit. Interestingly, the song is actually a cover, and the original was by a band named 'Spooky Tooth'.

So many Black Oak Arkansas songs were accused of having Satanic backward messages that the scare is probably responsible for most of the post-"Jim Dandy" album sales of that obscure one hit wonder.

Contents

Real backward "masking"

Even though much of the panic was over non-existent or unintentional maskings, there have been real instances of artists deliberately placing backward vocals and sounds in their recordings. Early examples include the Beatles, Frank Zappa, and the band Bloodrock, who placed such a message in "Gotta Find A Way" on their 1969 debut album. These messages were either humorous or done for artistic effect, and not "Satanic" in nature at all. The Beatles, for example, recorded several songs with various tracks, including vocals, running backwards. They tend not to contain Satanic lyrics, however. Usually they are repeats of things already sung forwards.

On the triple-disc[1] set Sandinista!, by the Clash, the master backing track of "Something About England" is also used for "Mensforth Hill" - but played backwards.

The Electric Light Orchestra, Styx, and the Canadian band Klaatu reacted to the backward masking scare in a snarky way by putting dozens of deliberate backward messages in their music, often garbled pseudo-religious sentence fragments. (ELO did an entire album called Secret Messages.) The B-52s included a backwards "watch out, you might ruin your needle" in one song, and the aforementioned Bloodrock put a backwards "anyone who is stupid enough to play this record backwards deserves what he is about to hear". The Christian Rock band Petra even pulled a funny on their own evangelical audience with "what are you looking for the devil for when you oughta be looking for the lord?"

Prince put a deliberate Christian message backwards in "Darling Nikki", the controversial song about masturbation which set off the censorship campaign in the late 1980s that led to "Parental Advisory" labelling of music: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, because I know that the Lord is coming soon."

Released in 1966, the 45rpm record for "Yellow Balloon" by the band of the same name has the forwards version on side 1, and the same song played backwards in its entirety (called "Noollab Wolley") on side 2.

Pink Floyd included the message "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont" at the start of "Empty Spaces" on their classic album "The Wall". [2]

"P5hng Me A*wy", from Linkin Park's first remix album Reanimation, features a backmasked version of one of the song's verses. "Somewhere I Belong", from Linkin Park's second album is based around an acoustic guitar part played backwards to give the sample it's distinctive sound envelope.[3] Although this latter example didn't include reversing lyrics, it's a good example of why running sounds backwards can produce interesting and unusual effects.

"Weird Al" Yankovic has included backmasked segments at least thrice:

  • "Nature Trail to Hell" includes the words "Satan eats Cheez Whiz".
  • "I Remember Larry" includes the words "Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands."
  • The six-second 'song' "Bite Me", a hidden track on the Off The Deep End album, is a reversed sample from another song.

They Might Be Giants have several songs that involve reversed lyrics, but this is on purpose.[4] A specific instance in a more well-known song is the end of the song "Subliminal".

On the other hand, however, punk band Choking Victim (now known as Leftover Crack) placed a backward mask on their song "Hate Yer State" where vocalist Stza Sturgeon sarcastically promoted, amongst other things, Satan worship and suicide.[5]

Swearing

Most radio stations (in the United States) will reverse swears in order to allow songs to be played on air without having to constantly edit the songs "live" (aka cut the sound channel on the board for the swear) during safe harbor hours (6 am - 10 pm local time). The Beastie Boys did this on their 1983 "Cookypuss" with uncensored, and censored radio versions, the latter reversing all the nasty language. This has to be done frequently with hip-hop and modern dance music, along with several late 1970s/early 1980s rock songs, and tihs ekil sdnuos[6].

Reversed backwards

There are several noteable instances of recording something that has already been spoken or acted backwards, and then played in reverse so it sounds and/or looks like it is actually forwards, creating a sensical but somewhat creepy effect:

  • The song "Dinner Bell" by They Might Be Giants features lyrics (body parts)
  • A scene in the movie Top Secret! starring Michael Keaton Val Kilmer
  • Dream sequences from the television show and movie sequel Twin Peaks

Forward masking

In the Cheap Trick song How Are You? from the album Heaven Tonight, after a lyric that says roughly "What you said, I know you're lying", there is a speeded-up bit of vocal tracking that, when slowed down, is revealed to be a recital of the "Lord's Prayer". Pretty damning, no excuses there.

At the end of the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever there is a slowed down sample of John Lennon allegedly saying, forward, "I buried Paul," but he's really just saying "cranberry sauce".

Why backwards masking

Out of hundreds of possible maskings for a song, why did the religions choose backwards masking? Why not a flanger, stutter or AM modulation on 666MHz? The answer is as simple as it is stupid (cheap). Back in the days, when music was on LP records, or worse, on tapes, digital and analog effects tended to be pretty expensive. A decent AM modulator could cost several hundreds of dollars, which is not productive when you try to alarm the sheeple. Reproduction of the evil sound must be easy and cheap so that everyone can become scared.

With a tape recorder, it is rather simple to backmask by simply spooling the tape in reverse on the disk. LP players, being mechanical devices, can be easily tricked to spin the other way around. With a band driven player one can loop the band in an 8 and voila, backmasking for dummies was born. Given the human mind's tendency to recognize patterns, and notoriously bad quality of hacked mechanical LP players, it's not difficult to force any song into producing satanic lyrics if you prep someone to hear satanic lyrics beforehand and tell them what to listen for.

See also

Footnotes

  1. On vinyl, it sprawled over three twelve inch records. It's a two-disc set on the CD release. Or, for today's generation, it's 36 mp3s.
  2. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiveqbMsHwQ Empty Spaces forwards and backwards
  3. Songfacts.com - Somewhere I Belong
  4. Backwards stuff on TMBW.net
  5. http://www.seanbluestone.com/20-backmasked-songs-a-few-others
  6. For this we can thank Janet Jackson and her "wardrobe malfunction" along with numerous other shock jocks who irked the FCC one too many times.
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