# albums spinning backwards **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 27, 2001, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941 "2001-07-27T06:25:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2001, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/21 "2001-07-27T18:33:13Z")
Way back in 1975 … the Electric Light Orchestra … _Face the Music_ “Fire On High” … (this was in the days of primitive audio technology known as the phonograph which unlike today’s sophisticated CD players, you could actually put your finger on the record and make it revolve the wrong way) … and you could clearly hear ELO’s backwards message: [quote] **The music is reversible, but time is not — turn back, turn back, turn back** [quote] _muahahahaha…_ Just Jeff Lynne having a bit of fun at the expense of backmask conspiracy theorists. ---
**Author:** ![MrDeath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@MrDeath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDeath)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2001, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/22 "2001-07-27T20:34:25Z")
**Spoons** : My great goodness! I’d never tried that before. Thanks for the tip eh? ---
**Author:** ![Beruang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/77aa72/32.png) [@Beruang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beruang)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2001, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/23 "2001-07-28T06:18:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FarmerOak \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Guy Propski \* > > \*\*In fact, it was John saying “strawberry ice cream” played backwards. \*\* > > Um… no. > > In point of fact, John said “cranberry sauce.” \*\* Second point of fact: it was “Strawberry Fields Forever,” not “I Am The Walrus.” ---
**Author:** ![pezwookiee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9d8465/32.png) [@pezwookiee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pezwookiee)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2001, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/24 "2001-07-28T18:23:21Z")
For some examples of this and many other possible straight dope questions, please try to find copies of the books “Big Secrets” and “Bigger Secrets.” They have sections talking about the albums that can be played backwards and the validity of each one. Plus lots of other REALLY COOL straight dope. I’m sure you can stil find these books on [amazon.com](http://amazon.com) (I’m too lazy to post a link right now.) ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2001, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/25 "2001-07-28T18:39:43Z")
If you read the list of ingredients on a tomato soup can, and record it, and play it backwards, it says Paul is alive. Join PETA… ---
**Author:** ![DPWhite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DPWhite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPWhite)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2001, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/26 "2001-07-28T19:01:06Z")
I have heard the Pink Floyd thing from the wall on the radio in the 70s, I don’t know if it was true. On the Beatles White Album, Revolution # 9, there was a rumor that the “number nine” played backwards said “turn me on dead man”. So when I was in college and during my sophomore year (1981-1982) my roommates and I first tape recorded it, and then turned the tape around. It sounds like: “earnmeondebtmin”, kinda like what what was claimed. The Beatles did a lot of stuff with hidden messages, some of them forward. Listen closely to Revolution on the White Album (not the single version and not the #9 version). Also the refrain of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2001, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/27 "2001-07-28T23:03:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by flodnak \* > \*\*Because of the nature of human speech, it is impossible to say something that will sound correct forwards and backwards. Not just very difficult, but impossible. \*\* Sure, but it’s very easy to listen to recorded speech being played backwards and pick out sounds that can _be interpreted_ as words or phrases, particularly if that’s what you went looking for and were expecting to hear in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![BigStar303](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@BigStar303](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigStar303)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/28 "2001-07-29T08:10:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by flodnak \* > > \*\*Because of the nature of human speech, it is impossible to say something that will sound correct forwards and backwards. Not just very difficult, but impossible. \*\* > > Sure, but it’s very easy to listen to recorded speech being played backwards and pick out sounds that can _be interpreted_ as words or phrases, particularly if that’s what you went looking for and were expecting to hear in the first place. \*\* And that’s the whole point, and why I’ve always been so amused by the whole “Revolution #9” business. I’ll pay $100 to anyone who plays the “number 9” bit backwards without comment to someone **who has never been told or has never heard that it’s supposed to sound like “turn me on dead man”** and gets that person to say “it sounds like he said ‘turn me on dead man.’” ---
**Author:** ![Cabbage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@Cabbage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabbage)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/29 "2001-07-29T08:56:06Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ll pay $100 to anyone who plays the “number 9” bit backwards without comment to someone **who has never been told or has never heard that it’s supposed to sound like “turn me on dead man”** and gets that person to say "it sounds like he said ‘turn me on dead man.’ Obviously it’s happened before, but I do see your point. (I gotta admit, though, that to me it does, in fact, sound an _awful_ lot like “turn me on dead man”). It’s just a natural tendency of the human brain to try and find patterns in things, just like finding faces in clouds, the grain of wood, or whatever. It’s not hard to find an image in a piece of wood that virtually everyone agrees looks like a face, maybe even a particular face, like Jay Leno’s. It’s not at all surprising to me, either, to hear something intelligible in reversed speech that virtually everyone interprets the same, our brains are wired that way. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it was intentionally _put_ there, which seems to be everyone’s point in this thread, including mine. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Mick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/838e76/32.png) [@The\_Mick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mick)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/30 "2001-07-29T21:52:10Z")
on the topic of playing what someone says backwards, I remember about a year ago on the Howard Stern show this guy was on with info on the JonBenet Ramsey case. As it turned out, he had sound bites from the mother, I believe it was the audio of the police questioning her. Anyway, this guy played them backwards, and what I heard chilled me to the bone, to say the least. I don’t know if maybe I imagined it in my mind because I was trying to hear something, but the mother had some very questionable things to say when her clip of her denying any involvment was played backwards. I can’t remember the specifics because it was quite a while ago, but it was one of those very creepy moments. I don’t think the authorites have paid any attention to the guys theorires, either. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/31 "2001-07-29T21:58:53Z")
The song “Lift Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)” by the Bloodhound Gang has the backwards message “devil child, wake up and eat Chef Boyardee beef-a-roni.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/32 "2001-07-29T22:58:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cabbage \* > **It’s just a natural tendency of the human brain to try and find patterns in things, just like finding faces in clouds, the grain of wood, or whatever. It’s not hard to find an image in a piece of wood that virtually everyone agrees looks like a face, maybe even a particular face** “The face of Jesus miraculously appeared on my burger bun, I knew it was Jesus straight away, because he looked the same as when his face miraculously appeared on the lid of my lunch box last Tuesday” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/33 "2001-07-29T23:02:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Mick \* > \*\*on the topic of playing what someone says backwards, I remember about a year ago on the Howard Stern show this guy was on with info on the JonBenet Ramsey case. As it turned out, he had sound bites from the mother, I believe it was the audio of the police questioning her. Anyway, this guy played them backwards, and what I heard chilled me to the bone, to say the least. I don’t know if maybe I imagined it in my mind because I was trying to hear something, but the mother had some very questionable things to say when her clip of her denying any involvment was played backwards. I can’t remember the specifics because it was quite a while ago, but it was one of those very creepy moments. > > I don’t think the authorites have paid any attention to the guys theorires, either. \*\* What I’d like to do is record the reversed speech that all these crackpots are saying contains hidden messages (not inserted deliberately like the ones on albums, but the supposed spontaneous ones in normal speech) and reverse it again, so it plays _forwards_ - I’m not entirely convinced that they’re not doctoring the reversed recording to make it sound like there are real phrases in there; if they are doctored, playing them the right way again should make it obvious. ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/34 "2001-07-30T02:40:39Z")
I saw avideo of a cool experiment where a University of Washington researcher video tapes herself saying a syllable repeatedly (ga, ga, ga… I think) and then synchronized the movement of her lips to the sound of her saying another syllable (ta, ta, ta… I think). If you closed your eyes you heard ta, ta, ta (or whatever the audio was), but if you looked at the screen so that you could see her lips, you heard something like da, da, da or tha, tha, tha. You didn’t have to look very closely, as long as your eyes could really follow her lips you heard a sound that was midway between the two syllables. The wierd thing is that no matter how hard I tried to hear the ta, ta, ta, audio I could not hear it unless I closed my eyes or looked away. Apparently no one is immune to this effect (other than deaf people, I suppose). I realize this doesn’t really pertain to the OP, but it is an interesting demonstration of how our mind doesn’t just use the physical properties of the sound waves to determine meaning. A lot goes into creating the sounds we hear. ---
**Author:** ![clavin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eb9ed0/32.png) [@clavin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clavin)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/35 "2001-07-30T04:35:29Z")
First, whoever mentioned Prince’s “Darling Nikki” is right on. I have heard this myself, and it says “Hello. How are you? I’m fine. Cause I know the lord is coming soon…” Very clear. Another song is “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. Says “It’s fun to smoke marijuana” over and over. Not as clear as Darling Nikki, but close. I have listened to numerous albums backwards (used to have a cheap cassette player when I was a kid that did this for me when a certain button was pressed), including most of the rumored ones, and these are the only two songs that I have found to have intelligible lyrics when played backwards. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/36 "2001-07-30T06:13:26Z")
\*You can phonetically analyze an utterance backwards if you first put it into IPA. “Number nine” in IPA would be n/\mb@r na:jn. Run backwards, that’s nja:n r@bm/ . Something like “nyonn r’b mun.” If you allow for /r/ sounding a bit like /d/, it might come out vaguely like “neon d’b mun” — but your imagination would have to fill in the rest. Not very close, if you ask me. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/37 "2001-07-30T06:26:30Z")
\*Hello, how are you, I’m fine 'cause I know the Lord is coming soon backwards IPA— nu:s NIm/\k zI drOl @ð wo:n ja: z/\k nja:f mja: u:j r@ wa:h wolEh It’s fun to smoke marijuana @na:wirEm kwoms ut n/\f stI The music is reversible but time is not — turn back, turn back, turn back k&b nr3t, k&b nr3t, k&b nrut — ta:n zI mja:t t/\b l@bIsr3vIr zI kIzu:jm @ð ---
**Author:** ![ZRUDEDOG13](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/51bf81/32.png) [@ZRUDEDOG13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZRUDEDOG13)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/38 "2001-07-30T09:11:01Z")
Its probably a myth, but i heard if you play a certian Iron maiden album backwards you hear “IF your playing this record backwards your stupid!” I would love for that one to be true. ---
**Author:** ![warmgun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecccb3/32.png) [@warmgun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/warmgun)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/39 "2001-07-30T09:49:16Z")
I, too, heard the “number 9” theory, DPWhite, and I can tell you from experience that backwards it sounds exactly like this (phonetically): ninny ahn duh mun. Doesn’t sound much like “turn me on dead man” to me. You can verifify this, as I did, by recording this phrase and playing it backwards - you will get, “number 9”. I used to play ‘A Day in the Life’ backwards for fun - it actually sounds good - and even transcribed the ‘words’ to it backwards. But it was just me putting words where there were none. Seriously, folks, most recording stars are artist not satanist. Think a little… ---
**Author:** ![MrDeath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@MrDeath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDeath)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2001, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941/40 "2001-07-30T14:53:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by clavin \* > **Another song is “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. Says “It’s fun to smoke marijuana” over and over. Not as clear as Darling Nikki, but close.** Not even. I heard this one because some high school kid did it as his science fair project a decade or so ago. When he did it, it was supposed to be, “We tried to smoke marijuana”. And it didn’t especially sound like that either. (This is “Another one bites the dust” (the one followed by an arpeggio of "aaaay"s) played backwards. “Another one” backwards sounds _very vaguely_ like “marijuana”. The rest of the phrase requires some really serious imagination.) **Jomo Mojo** : Your bit about the IPA is interesting. Unfortunately, when you play a “t” backwards, it doesn’t come out as a “t” any more. Likewise for most of the consonants. (And trying to do up the IPA in ASCII looks really silly.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/albums-spinning-backwards/73941.md?page=3)