Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

You are probably familiar with the band Led Zeppline and there song Stairway to Heaven. But what you may not know is that when the song is played backward it's a satan worship song.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/stairway.php
What do you think?

I'm not too sure about those type of things. There are a whole bunch of things, ranging from The Beatles to Britteney Spears.

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Well, I played the "backwards" loop backwards by recording it in sound recorder and reversing it, and I got the original, so that part isn't a fraud. I think it might just be coincidence that it turns out sounding a lot like what was written. Personally, I think that any time you accuse music of having a different meaning when played in reverse, you're giving the artists that made it a LOT of credit. Led Zep was a great band, very talented, but I doubt that even they were good enough to be able to do something like this intentionally.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure led zepplin didn't have satanic powers to make backwards music with secret devil-worshipping messages.

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Other sites with backwards messages in songs:

A flash page with 9 good examples (including the Stairway to Hell one)

A Website with heaps of mp3 examples.

EDIT: Sites contain some coarse language and adult themes.

I didn't here that. Led Zepplin was mystical not Satanic.

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Though Jimmy Page did live in Aliester Crowley's mansion/church. And Robert Plant said "David's seed wears a paper crown" at a concert. There's a bunch of little things like that that make you go "Hmmm..."

Good take, StrongRad! This hogwash about backwards masking, especially in regards to Stariway to Heaven, has been going on seemingly forever. And, to be totally inclusive, it's the same thing that a certain segment of "fundamentalists" has been trying to pull with rock going back to Elvis Presley, today's hip-hop, and even jazz from the 1920's...find something subliminally evil about it (even if it doesn't really exist), demonize it, and scare people back onto the "straight and narrow."

Believe me...I've listened to that supposed "Here's to my sweet Satan" many times going back to when people acutally did it by hand on their turntables. The only reason you notice it is because somebody else pointed it out. And, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever showing that such messages will actually cause a person to begin devoting his or her life to Satan or commit other heinous acts. At least for those of us who were around back in the days when music was played on vinyl using needles, the worst calamity that came from these "backwards messages" was that you would end up ruining your records trying to hear them.

SIDE NOTE: The best real "backwards message" is on an old Weird Al Yankovic song called Nature Trail to Hell. If you reverse the tape, you can hear Al say, "Satan eats Cheez-Whiz."

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The ONEitude is directly proportional to the COLDitude of the ONE.

What about the end of Strawberry Fields Forever? I can only make out something like "I buried" or maybe "Strawberry" and then something like "wool" or "awl".

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John says "Cranberry sauce" but it's distorted to say "I buried Paul"

True, if anything, I might start worshiping nataS, but, ya know... That's a different story for a different day. Like I said earlier, to do this in a way that you have a playable song one way, and a completely different, and understandable, message, the other, you'd have to be pretty good.
I do know of some Pink Floyd songs that backmask, but you can kinda tell, and all they'll say is something like "I'm talking backwards" or "you've found the hidden message." Given the way pink floyd liked to mess around with stuff, I kinda expected it, though. One the sites posted earlier in the thread has Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust"... It's the only one that I listened to in which I can "hear" the message when it's played backwards without listening to the words. Well, that, and the pink floyd one..

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

OK, well you probably know that some people think playing "Another One Bites the Dust" goes "It's fun to smoke marijuana". There is a flash that plays it backwards without the lyrics. I didn't hear anything. But when it showed what it says backwards, I hear it everytime. I believe it just is made up, and not deliberate or anything, and may not even exist.

Anyway, I was watching this show called "Starstruck", where these people dress up as singers and sing a song and everyone votes. Well, I heard the start of the Bites the Dust song, so I straight away got my microphone and recorded it. What's interesting is when played backwards, it does sound like it (and this is a live version by an impersonator). So even when it's a live version and with someone else, it sounds like the hidden message when backwards. I put the file on the web. It plays a small part of the song forwards, and then plays the same part backwards.

Sorry the quality of the song is crappy, it was recorded from the TV with a crappy microphone.

Hear it.

If this is against the rules, you can lock this.

Now i'm sure you all heard that if you play Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" backwards, it plays a Satanic message.
It's true.This website shows some songs played backwards in various parts.


Here it is.

[Edit by InterruptorJones: Toned down the subject a bit. P.S. I think this has been posted before.]

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Ever tried listening to the message without having read the backwards lyrics at all? YOu won't hear it. It means nothing. Some people just listened to it a few times and heard 'Satan', and then wrote in a lot of bullcrap (I don't see the offensive thing about the more normal term for crap, by the way). Thus, you will 'hear' it too.

The Britney Spears song was hilerious though

Here's the Nirvana/Prodigy version.

Cover up the bottom while backmaking.

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I actually got the Smells Like Teen Spirit one myself. I often reverse songs to see what happens and indeed, I heard that.

The other two are really 'created' by the lyrics.

Jimmy Page said in an interview that it isn't true and they don't make music like that. Read this for the intended meaning

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Strong Bad Bike!

It's untrue. Most instances of backwards messages are. There are some bands that play around with backmasking (They Might Be Giants and Weird Al are two of my favorite examples), but they don't put Satanic messages in their songs.

However, if you say the word "Teletubbies" and play it backwards, you hear something sounding a bit like "seahorse bisque" or "seahorse brisk". Hmm...I wonder why these people always inspect heavy metal or rock songs, but never "harmless" songs? It doesn't make sense. :/

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I actually sampled the 'here's to my sweet Satan...' thing in "Stairway To Heaven" at the very end of one of my songs a couple years ago, and no one could tell what it was without me saying anything. I actually could tell the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" one without looking, though you could interpret that as either 'I hate you' or 'I hurt you', and it really is probably unintentional. It's all in what the individual hears, like that stupid 'get the gun.. shoot shoot shoot' thing in Ozzy's "Suicide Solution".

Face it, most backwards messages that involve normally sung vocals on record (I'm not talking about intentionally backwards-masked samples - I use that effect all the time, mostly for parody) are pure coincidence. You could reverse a random phrase and sing how it sounds backwards normally, but I'd think it would be awfully hard to write any lines which would sound totally intelligible in two different ways both forward AND backward. Wouldn't it be such a pointless waste of time for bands to go through so much trouble just to create hidden 'Satanic' messages?

There is a hidden message in a Pink Floyd song, but it was intentionally recorded, reversed and put into the song, and you can HEAR it's reversed when the song plays normally. I don't know what song it was.....

Yeah, I'm discounting the messages that were recorded normally and put in reverse on record. I think the song you might be referring to is "Empty Spaces", with the 'hidden' message to Syd Barrett. Floyd might have done a few others, but I don't remember.

I remember the "You found the hidden message! Contact pinky at funny farm" pink floyd one. I forget what song it was though.

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Empty Spaces, which is the 3rd-to-last (i think) song on the first disk of The Wall.

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The only one I could get without the "help" was Smells Like Teen Spirit...
I could get the Come As You Are one with the lyrics, but, even with repeat playings, I still doubt that it says anything, much less what is suggested. But that's just me..

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I really doubt any of those are intentional. The Wierd Al one maybe, as a parody to all those other songs, but if you try to listen to something hard enough you can make yourself hear it.

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Whoa.

I recorded the current scroll button song, and reversed it. When I played it back, I distinctly heard "Meow, meow, meow" in it.

Seriously. Not kidding.

EDIT: http://freewebs.com/printerdude/creepyhomsar.wav

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i just got a Vinel copy of Ledzeppelin IV, Chicago, and BlackSabbath. im gonna check it out.

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I don't believe any of that backwards crap. It all comes form the expectancy effect--what you expect to hear (especially when the words you're looking for are RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN), you actually do hear. Some people expect to hear hidden messages when reversing songs, and therefore hear the messages, but to others it sounds like nothing more than random sounds. To me, I hear just that unless someone points it out to me.

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