So after doing so surfing around on youtube I stumbled onto a version of Led Zeppelin’s “stairway to heaven” played backwards, and you can hear what appear to be satanic messages very clearly. This is very strange becasue I have listened to other songs backwards before just for fun, and usually it just sounds like gibberish and you cant decipher anything clearly, sometimes if you get lucky you can hear an occasion word or sentence from the whole song that sounds that sounds legible. In “stairway to heaven” you can make out almost every word that he is saying and it sounds legible. Jimmy page who wrote the song was known to have a interest in the occult and guys like Alister Crowley. I am also wondering if you think the video was edited to make it sound like he is saying those things. This is the video Stairway to Heaven Backwards (With FULL Lyrics) - YouTube
It must be awfully difficult to compose lyrics that would express one message clearly as written and at the same time express a very different message when played backwards. Sure, the occasional word or phrase might be discerned, probably just accidental. But to contrive for anything more extended than that? That’s hard to imagine. I always thought that most English lyrics, played backward, sound like Russian.
There was the famous (infamous?) case of The Beatles “song” (if you can call it that), Revolution 9, from their equally famous (infamous?) White Album, November 1968. The elder surviving Dopers from that era will recall the story that Paul had died, which went viral even lo! those many years before the Era Of The Internet. It became widely known that the words:
Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine . . .
when played backward, said
Turn me on, dead man. Turn me on, dead man. . . .
Weird. That doesn’t even have the same number of syllables!
MAD Magazine did a piece with “modern” updated “nursery rhymes”. This was one of them:
Paul, Ringo, George, and John
Played a trick that put us on.
Laid hints that Paul was dead as nails,
And rocketed their record sales!
Here’s a fun one: Most music, played backward, just sounds crappy. But try it with the old classic This Old House as recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1954. I discovered that years ago, in the mid-1960’s. But someone else did too, and posted it on YouTube! GMTA! Take a listen. The backwards words make no coherent sense at all (even if you think you can hear the occasional recognizable word), but it’s a fun listen.
No. I think the person attributing the words said has an active imagination.
So that sounded legible to you? So what exactly did all that mean to you? You can do that to any song and decipher it anyway you want. To me, it wasn’t “clear as day” it was a bunch of jumbled syllables sorta twisted in words which were made into phrases and sentences that didn’t make a whole lotta sense.
I remember taking our records and spinning them in reverse and the part of Stairway to heaven that supposedly had the satanic part was when you reversed the lyric: " When there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now, it’s just a spring clean for the May Queen…"
It was something like, “Oh sweet satan…blah blah blah…666…blah blah blah…”
When you’re a young teen it’s scary stuff, but as an adult you realize how stupid it is.
The power of suggestion is strong.
There’s a very clear backtrack at the beginning of Empty Spaces on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
There’s a deliberate backward track at the beginning of ELO’s “Fire On High” on Face The Music. It says The music is reversible.
Try this one: One Day at a Time theme song in reverse (with lyrics). When they say Mickey Mouse–What a wuss, I thought I’d fall off my chair laughing.
IOW, it sounds exactly the same as most rock vocals played in the correct, forward direction! 
P.S. The next person that says “sounded legible” in this thread is getting the hose. We must nip these kind of things in the bud, you know.
Okay, you found us out. Next you’ll be looking for Jewish Freemasons among the record company owners.
(Are we back in the 1980s?)
Only slightly relevant, but around 98 or 99 I was playing with some freeware audio software - I think it was Cool Edit (not pro) and recorded my wife singing “I have to admit it’s getting better. Getting better all the time.” Just that line. I flipped it backward and in the midst of the gibberish came out quite clearly “Makes the dame lose my hat.” A little investigation revealed it was just the phrase “I have to admit it’s getting better.”.
I made a copy of the phrase, flipped it, then and appended it to the original line. I ended up with a short clip that sounded like “I have to admit it’s getting better, makes the dame lose my hat.” played forwards or backwards. Out of curiosity, I pulled the same snippet from the Beatles recording and reversed it. It kinda sorta sounded the same, but like John’s mouth was full of cotton when he sang it.
Interesting, but not Satanic.
Phonetic analysis shows how it’s bunk.
Here is the verse in question, transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet.
ɪf ðɛrz ə bʌsəl ɪn jor hɛdʒroʊ, dont biː əlɑrmd naʊ
ɪts dʒʌst ə sprɪŋ kliːn fɔr ðə meɪ kwiːn
jɛs ðɛr ɑr tuː pæθs juː kæn goʊ baɪ, bʌt ɪn ðə lɔŋ rʌn
ðɛrz stɪl taɪm tu tʃeɪndʒ ðə roʊd jor ɒːn
Now with the phonemes run backwards:
nɒː roj dʊor əð ʒdnɪeʃt ut mɪat lɪts zrɛð
nʌr ŋɔl əð nɪ tʌb, ɪab ʊog næk uːj sθæp uːt rɑ rɛð sɛj
niːwk, ɪem əð rɔf niːlk ŋɪrps ə tsʌʒd stɪ
ʊan dmrɑlə iːb tnod ʊorʒdɛh roj nɪ ləsʌb ə zrɛð fɪ
Which, in conventional English phonetic spelling, would be
naw roy dwor uth zhdnyesht ut myat lits zreth,
nuhr ngawl uth nih tub, yab woag nack ooy sthap oot rah reth say,
neewk, yem uth rawf neelk ngirps uh tsuzhd stih,
wan dmrahla eeb tnode worzhdeh-h’ roy nih lussub uh zreth fih
So all four lines include at the beginning sibilant, dental, and “eh” sounds. Reversed, those sounds provide raw material for the brain to reassemble into “Satan.” “Myat lits zreth” (“There’s still time” backwards) allows the brain to hear it as “My sweet Satan,” etc.
George Carlin: “Now here’s a song that when played backwards at a very slow speed…really fucks up your needle, man!”
Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” played backwards supposedly says: “I like to smoke marijuana!”
You’re not answering the question.
Yes. Worse than you think. There aren’t just satanic messages but messages actually from Satan. He told kids not to brush their teeth but that they should feed the dog under the table. Oh, and vote Libertarian.
Yes, compared to most other songs you can clearly hear what he’s saying. For example this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67DiyTOrlVQ by Judas priest played backwards is just a garbled mess compared to “stairway to heaven”. In addition they even mention the phrase you talk about on wikipedia and you can play a short clip of it it is clearly audible. Stairway to Heaven - Wikipedia
In that little clip on wikipedia you can hear this:
“Oh here’s to my sweet Satan.
The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
He’ll give those with him 666.
There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”
Sara, an honest question that I’d like an honest answer to: when you listened to the backwards excerpt, were you also looking at the lyrics as they flashed on the screen of the YouTube video? Or did you listen to the audio as a “virgin,” with no visual or other suggestion as to what you were “supposed” to hear?
I’m guessing it was the former. If you’re told in advance what you’re “supposed” to hear, it’s very likely that you’ll hear it.
I’ve got a standing offer I’ve been making for years…find me ten people who have never heard that the “number nine” in “Revolution 9” is supposed to sound like something when reversed. Play it to them. I’ll give you a hundred dollars if a single one of them says, without prompting, that he/she hears “turn me on dead man.”
You only hear this if you’re told in advance you’re supposed to hear it.
Moderator Action
Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.
A couple of decades ago, the heavy metal band Judas Priest was involved in a lawsuit where it was claimed that satanic messages hidden in their music drove someone to suicide. In their defense, the band played part of their music backwards showing where it also contained the phrase “I want a lollipop” backwards (or something like that - I’m going from memory here). The lawsuit quickly fell apart after that.
The human brain is the greatest pattern matching machine in the known universe. If you pick up an apple, your mind instantly recognizes it as an apple and you an instantly recall all sorts of apple-related things, like how it should taste, for example. There isn’t a supercomputer in the world that can even come close to that. The way your brain works, though, if you feed it gibberish it will still try to match it to something that you can understand. If you want to find lollipops, you’ll find lollipops. If you want to find satanic messages, you’ll find satanic messages.
The fact that you are hearing satanic messages probably says more about you than it says about the band that recorded the music.
When I played the youtube video it does show the lyrics, but when I played the audio clip on wikipedia it does not show the lyrics but I still heard them.
SoundGarden has a track called 665-667 that is backmasked backmask…as in its backwards when you play it forward but when you play it backward its still effing backwards gibberish. They seem to have done this just for the giggles.
lol after hearing this I now question my thoughts on it being unintelligible noise.