Songs in Reverse: Witness the Satanic Hilarity!

Ah, Subliminal Seduction, the sexiest of all music-related tropes. It's often been asserted that when you play *insert popular song here from nearly any genre* in reverse, you'll hear a secret backmasked message. Ever since this has been proven to be a completely bull method, however, people have instead taken to reversing songs for fun and profit (but mostly fun) to interpret the backwards lyrics hilariously.

So, yeah, post funny or interesting videos of songs played backwards here, or talk about any backwards "messages" you've heard. Personally, the funniest one I've ever seen was a video on You Tube of a song that I'd never actually heard before reversed that the uploader interpreted the chorus backwards to be "Oh Atari / And Maurice / Party inside of my ass", but I have never been able to find the video again since. So, instead, get this video I made when I was like 14 of Ashley's Theme from Wario Ware Touched reversed, which apparently is about how Ashley and Ness get it on most every night.

edited 13th May '12 2:50:34 AM by 0dd1

I still laugh my ass off to this.

I uploaded "Friday" backwards to soundcloud once, but never sat down to transcribe the subliminal messages - maybe you people could help out in that area. I do think part of it kinda sounds like "narf, narf, narf, narf, Vader, Vader".

edited 13th May '12 8:55:39 AM by MikeK

There are some funny words when you play "Never Gonna Give You Up" backwards. Something about Irish men, foolish Nazis, molesting oxes and bottles of soap.

…So does this mean that watching this video instantly negates the last time you were Rickrolled?

I love when Rick Astley says "Flip, come on" and one of the backup dancers complies with a backflip.

edited 13th May '12 11:38:51 AM by MikeK

The most Satanic reversed song, ever:

Reversed songs from Silent Hill? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?!

"Prayer", from Silent Hill 3 reversed. It doesn't sound all that different to me...

So no one cares, but I've actually started transcribing the subliminal messages in "Friday", and I guess at some point I'll either leave a video or just lyrics themselves here. So far it mainly revolves around a "snakey brother", senile deer, and praising arsenic and "the arf".

edited 15th May '12 12:18:03 AM by MikeK

A rather interesting example:

"3:38" by The Pop Group, the B-side to the single "She is Beyond Good and Evil", was composed by running the master tapes for the A-side backwards and adding a new rhythm track and a battery of strange effects. The results are intriguing, to say the least.

This tune was Frank Zappa's answer to the whole "backmasking" controversy, it originally appeared on his Them or Us album with the annotation, "backwards vocal, you figure it out."

As it turns out, it's basically the vocal part to "Sofa #2" reversed, with a bunch of random stuff (an insistent metal guitar riff, "demon" voices, outtakes of Moon improvising in her Valley Girl persona, clips from a few other songs) deliberately put in there to throw you off the trail.

Both of the above made me think of They Might Be Giants' "On Earth My Nina" - basically John Linnell listened to part of their song "Thunderbird" backwards, then did an acapella recording where he imitated the backwards vocals. The particularly weird part is that "On Earth My Nina" was released before "Thunderbird" itself (although "Thunderbird" was being played live around the same time, so fans knew the song thanks to bootlegs). So, to compare: "On Earth My Nina", "On Earth My Nina" backwards, and "Thunderbird".

edited 16th May '12 11:36:51 AM by MikeK

Dammit, you said what I was going to say.

This is as much of Friday as I was able to do without losing my shit:

edited 17th May '12 3:53:37 PM by RichReeders